[Footnote 81:  Foreign authors who had an intercourse with the English court seem to have been better informed, or at least found themselves under less restraint than our home-writers.  In Bayle, note x. the reader will find this mysterious affair cleared up; and at length in one of our own writers, Whitaker, in his “Mary Queen of Scots Vindicated,” vol. ii. p. 502.  Elizabeth’s Answer to the first Address of the Commons, on her marriage, in Hume, vol. v. p. 13, is now more intelligible:  he has preserved her fanciful style.]

[Footnote 82:  A curious trait of the neglect Queen Mary experienced, whose life being considered very uncertain, sent all the intriguers of a court to Elizabeth, the next heir, although then in a kind of state imprisonment.]

[Footnote 83:  This despatch is a meagre account, written before the ambassador obtained all the information the present letter displays.  The chief particulars I have preserved above.]

[Footnote 84:  By Sir Symonds D’Ewes’s Journal it appears, that the French ambassador had mistaken the day, Wednesday the 16th, for Thursday the 17th of October.  The ambassador is afterwards right in the other dates.  The person who moved the house, whom he calls “Le Seindicque de la Royne,” was Sir Edward Rogers, comptroller of her majesty’s household.  The motion was seconded by Sir William Cecil, who entered more largely into the particulars of the queen’s charges, incurred in the defence of New-Haven, in France, the repairs of her navy, and the Irish war with O’Neil.  In the present narrative we fully discover the spirit of the independent member; and, at its close, that part of the secret history of Elizabeth which so powerfully developes her majestic character.]

[Footnote 85:  The original says, “ung subside de quatre solz pour liure.”]

[Footnote 86:  This gentleman’s name does not appear in Sir Symonds D’Ewes’s Journal.  Mons. Le Mothe Fenelon has, however, the uncommon merit, contrary to the custom of his nation, of writing an English name somewhat recognisable; for Edward Basche was one of the general surveyors of the victualling of the queen’s ships, 1573, as I find in the Lansdowne MSS., vol. xvi. art. 69.]

[Footnote 87:  In the original, “Ils avoient le nez si long qu’il s’estendoit despuis Londres jusques au pays d’West.”]

[Footnote 88:  This term is remarkable.  In the original, “La Royne ayant impetre," which in Congrave’s Dictionary, a contemporary work, is explained by,—­“To get by praier, obtain by suit, compass by intreaty, procure by request.”  This significant expression conveys the real notion of this venerable Whig, before Whiggism had received a denomination, and formed a party.]

[Footnote 89:  The French ambassador, no doubt, flattered himself and his master, that all this “parlance” could only close in insurrection and civil war.]

[Footnote 90:  In the original, “A ung tas de cerveaulx si legieres.”]