156 Wulfhall and the Seymours. 
that be but our Cousin of Scotland?”! It is, however, a remarkable 
fact in the history of the descent of the Crown, and one not commonly 
known, that for nearly twelve months after her death, and King 
James’s accession, March 1603, the legal right to the throne, ac- 
cording to the Statutes then in force, actually vested in this very 
Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, eldest son of the Earl of Hertford 
and the Lady Katharine Grey. James’s hereditary pretensions were 
not acknowledged and ratified by Parliament until March, 1604.7 __ 
We must now go back to the old house at Wulfhall, the text of 
my story. The Earl of Hertford having been a minor several years 
after his father the Protector’s execution, came of age about 1559. 
I find from letters (Appendix, No. xiv.) written by him as he drew 
near his majority, that he had proposed to come down into the 
county, where he was quite unknown, to be introduced by Sir John 
Thynne to some of the principal friends near his place, and to stop 
there for a fortnight to shoot bucks for the benefit of the said friends ; 
and he hoped Sir John would let him have 100 marks for the ex- 
penses of his journey. But it was just after this design that the 
troubles of his marriage and imprisonment began. So that for those 
ten years, lacking one month, he saw very little of Wulfhall until 
1569. Early in that year, (six after Lady Katharine’s death), he 
sends down into Wiltshire a letter to Sir John Thynne for some in- 
formation as to the condition of his house, which he had heard on 
eredible report was in the way of utter ruin, and desiring some 
estimates to be obtained of the entire expense of putting it into 
repair. Appendix, No. xiv., 5.) Something in this way was done, 
for in September of that year (1569) he writes from Wulfhall 

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1 Readers in the present day, accustomed to attach to the word ‘‘ rascal’’ the 
sense of ‘‘ scoundrel,” would instantly, and most properly, be glad to puta 
charitable construction upon the poor Queen’s language, and say that in the 
moment of expiring faculties she had forgotten herself. But there seems to be 
no occasion for this. Rascal was a word of the Forest, and at that time was 
used to signify a lean or inferior deer, as distinguished from those in full eon- 
dition. All that the Queen probably meant was, that she would have for her 
succesor one of full blood Royal: not one whose blood was of less fine quality. 
The word is so used, with reference to deer, in Appendix, No. vii., Letter 4, 
2Sir H. Nicolas. Chronology of History, p. 320. 
