2»<» S. X Not. 3. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



303 



though it could not have been ■written later than 

 1604, it might have been written as early as 1603; 

 and therefore, to guard against the chance of mis- 

 take, I described it as written, not '■''about 1604," 

 but in " 1603 or 1604 " (p. Ixvi.). This is what 

 Mr. Gardiner calls my " own guess." 



But this "guess," adds my acute critic, "happens 

 to be erroneous." How so ? I have said that the 

 letter was written in one or other of two given 

 years; in other words, that, li not written in 1604, 

 it was written in 1603. Now, Mr. Gardiner 

 himself tells us that it was certainly written in 

 November of the latter year (ix. 320.) ; and yet 

 my assignment of that year, as a probable date of 

 the document, is " erroneous" ! 



The second part of Mr. Gardiner's charge is, 

 that I have " made use of my erroneous guess at 

 the date of the letter to bring an unfounded 

 charge of hypocrisy against James." But, in the 

 first place, if Mr. Gardiner has really read the 

 note, which he professes to cite from my Dodd, he 

 must know that the date of the letter has not the 

 remotest possible connection with what I have said 

 of James ; and in the next, if, instead of printing 

 only one-half of my sentence, he had more can- 

 didly laid the whole of it before the reader, that 

 reader would at least have had an opportunity of 

 knowing not only the actual ground of my charge, 

 but also whether that charge was really as un- 

 founded as he would have the world believe. To 

 place the matter, then, in its proper light, I will 

 here subjoin the note, as it appears in my Dodd, 

 distinguishing by italics the parts which Mr. Gar- 

 diner has omitted. It is a note on James's letter 

 to Sir Thomas Parry : — 



" The present letter," I say, " affords an additional illus- 

 tration of that hi/pocrisy on the part of James to which I 

 have elsewhere directed the reader's attention (p. 9. ante). 

 How far its declarations, particularly as regards the edu- 

 cation of the young prince, agree with the instructions 

 given to Lindsay before the death of Elizabeth, is un- 

 certain : but its acknowledgment of the services rendered by 

 Pope Clement to the cause of the monarch, and of the pon- 

 tiff's anxiety to cut off every source whether of danger or 

 of opposition to his government, are unequivocal ; and it 

 will be difficult to reconcile with these the pretended fears 

 of papal interference, put forward ly James as the Justifi- 

 cation of his proceedings against the Catholics." — Dodd, iv. 

 Append, p. Ixxi. 



I will only add, in regard to any reliance to be 

 placed on the veracity of James, that, though the 

 instructions to Lindsay, mentioned above, were 

 avowedly given in answer to the letter which that 

 messenger had brought from the Pope, yet not 

 only did the King assure Elizabeth, at the time, 

 that he had dismissed Lindsay, telling him that he 

 " wold receave no message nor letre from him " 

 (^Letters of Elizabeth avd James, p. 152., Camden 

 Soc), but, eight years later, on the trial of Bal- 

 merino, to whicli Mr. Gardiner has somewhat 

 unadvisedly referred, the Lord Privy Seal was 

 actually instructed to declare that " his Majestie 



refused " that letter, " and would not so muche as 

 suffer the same to be unclosed" (Calderwood, vi. 

 810.) ! 



And here, as I have no intention to discuss the 

 general question of James's conduct to the Catho- 

 lics, I might fairly take leave of Mr. Gardiner. 

 There are, however, so many inaccuracies of vari- 

 ous kinds in his three papers, that I cannot wholly 

 pass them by : and he must, therefore, excuse me 

 if, by way of showing that his statements are not 

 always to be received with implicit faith, I take 

 the opportunity, before I conclude, of laying some 

 few of them before his readers : — 



1. I begin with his references and his dates, in 

 which, as he comes forward to correct others, he 

 might be expected to be particularly exact him- 

 self. Let us see : -r 



He professes to "fix the date" of James's let- 

 ter to Parry by that of Cecil's, which, he says, was 

 " written on December 6." (ix. 320. note.) But 

 Cecil's letter is both dated and indorsed ^'■No- 

 vember 6." 



He represents the instructions to Lindsay as 

 dated in 1605, and proceeds to account for this 

 impossible date by referring it to that of "Lind- 

 say's proceedings in Rome" (x. 82. note). The 

 paper is dated by endorsement only, but in a clear 

 contemporary hand, " 1604." 



Twice he refers to my Dodd for the letter to 

 Parry (ix. 320. ; x. 82.) : in each instance he gives 

 a different reference ; and in both he is wrong. 



He quotes Villeroi's letter to Beaumont, which 

 flatly contradicts one of the very statements for 

 which he cites it, and tells us that it is dated 

 "December if? 1604" (x. 82.). It cost me a 

 long search, in a folio volume of State Papers, to " 

 discover the letter ; and then I found that it was 

 dated December 22. 



These are some of Mr. Gardiner's errors, in 

 the way of reference, which I have particularly 

 selected, because they refer directly to the imme- 

 diate question between us. To say that they are 

 intentional, or " made use of" for a purpose, 

 would be ungenerous, and, I doubt not, unjust : 

 but he must see that, trifling as they may appear 

 in themselves, they are calculated to embarrass, if 

 not ultimately to defeat, an inquirer ; and they, 

 as well as the others which I am about to point 

 out, ought most assuredly to caution him against, 

 attributing unworthy motives to others. 



2. In the course of his three papers, Mr. Gar- 

 diner tells us, no less than four different times, 

 that, "at the close of the year 1603, James was 

 conducting a negotiation with the Pope, with a 

 view to the alleviation of the sufferings of the 

 priests" (ix. 320., 497. col. 1. and 2.; x. 83). 

 Now, the fact is that no such negotiation ever 

 existed. The Fope, indeed, as the reader will re- 

 collect, attempted to open a communication of the 

 kind ; and James, in the letter to Parry, pre- 



