, was resolvedly
bent on marrying herself!]

[Footnote 334: Harl. MSS. 7003.]

[Footnote 335: It is on record that at Long-leat, the seat of the
Marquis of Bath, certain papers of Arabella are preserved. I leave to
the noble owner the pleasure of the research.]

[Footnote 336: Harl. MSS. 7003.]

[Footnote 337: These particulars I derive from the manuscript letters
among the papers of Arabella Stuart. Harl. MSS. 7003.]

[Footnote 338: "This emphatic injunction," observed a friend, "would be
effective when the messenger could read;" but in a letter written by the
Earl of Essex about the year 1597, to the Lord High Admiral at Plymouth,
I have seen added to the words "Hast, hast, hast, for lyfe!" the
expressive symbol of _a gallows prepared with a halter_, which could not
be well misunderstood by the most illiterate of Mercuries, thus

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[Footnote 339: Lodge says she "was remanded to the Tower, where she soon
afterwards sank into helpless idiocy, surviving in that wretched state
till September, 1615," when, with miserable mockery of state, she was
buried in Westminster Abbey, beside the body of Henry Prince of Wales.
Bishop Corbet wrote some lines on her death, very indicative of the poor
lady's thoughts:--

How do I thank ye, death, and bless thy power,
That I have passed the guard, and 'scaped the Tower!
And now my pardon is my epitaph,
And a small coffin my poor carcass hath;
For at thy charge both soul and body were
Enlarged at last, secur'd from hope and fear.
That amongst saints, this amongst kings is laid;
And what my birth did claim, my death hath paid.]

[Footnote 340: This conjecture may not be vain; since this has been
written, I have heard that the papers of Sir Edward Coke are still
preserved at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke; and I have also heard of
others in the possession of a noble family. The late Mr. Roscoe told me
that he was preparing a beautifully embellished catalogue of the Holkham
library, in which the taste of the owner would rival his munificence.

A list of those manuscripts to which I allude may be discovered in the
Lambeth MSS. No. 943, Art. 369, described in the catalogue as "A note of
such things as were found in a trunk of Sir Edward Coke's by the king's
command, 1634," but more particularly in Art. 371, "A Catalogue of Sir
Edward Coke's Papers then seized