rds him, where he might see the queen dancing
to a little fiddle; which was to no other end than that he should tell
his master, by her youthful disposition, how likely he was to come to
the possession of the crown he so much thirsted after: for you must
understand, the wisest in that kingdom did believe the king should never
enjoy this crown, as long as there was an old wife in England, which
they did believe we ever set up as the other was dead[126]."

[Note 126: Weldon's Court of King James.]

Though in her own letters to James, Elizabeth made no scruple of
treating him as the destined heir to her throne, she still resisted with
as much pertinacity as ever, all the proposals made her for publicly
declaring her successor; and on this subject, a lively anecdote is
related by sir John Harrington in his account of Hutton archbishop of
York, which must belong to the year 1595 or 1596.

"I no sooner," says he, "remember this famous and worthy prelate, but
methinks I see him in the chappel at Whitehall, queen Elizabeth at the
window in the closet; all the lords of the parliament spiritual and
temporal about them, and then, after his three curtsies that I hear him
out of the pulpit thundering this text, 'The kingdoms of the earth are
mine, and I do give them to whom I will, and I have given them to
Nebuchodonosor and his son, and his son's son:' which text when he had
thus produced, taking the sense rather than words of the prophet, there
followed first so general a murmur of one friend whispering to another,
then such an erected countenance in those that had none to speak to,
lastly, so quiet a silence and attention in expectance of some strange
doctrine, where text itself gave away kingdoms and sceptres, as I have
never observed before or since.

"But he... showed how there were two special causes of translating of
kingdoms, the fullness of time and the ripeness of sin.... Then coming
nearer home, he showed how oft our nation had been a prey to foreigners;
as first when we were all Britons subdued by these Romans; then, when
the fullness of time and ripeness of our sin required it, subdued by the
Saxons; after this a long time prosecuted and spoiled by the Danes,
finally conquered and reduced to perfect subjection by the Normans,
whose posterity continued in great prosperity to the days of her
majesty, who for peace, for plenty, for glory, for continuance, had
exceeded them all; that had lived to change all her councill