Note 465 — Chapter VI

D'Ossat, ubi suprà. Clement had, some years before, indulged the idle hope that France and Spain might unite to conquer England, and either bestow the kingdom on some catholic prince or divide it between themselves, as Louis XII. and Ferdinand had done with Naples in 1501; an example not very inviting to the French. D'Ossat, Henry's minister at Rome, pointed out the difficulties of such an enterprise, England being the greatest naval power in the world, and the people warlike. The pope only replied, that the kingdom had been once conquered, and might be so again; and especially being governed by an old woman, whom he was ignorant enough to compare with Joanna II. of Naples. Vol. i. 399. Henry IV. would not even encourage the project of setting up Arabella, which he declared to be both unjust and chimerical. Mem. de Sully, l. 15. A knot of protestants were also busy about the interests of Arabella, or suspected of being so; Raleigh, Cobham, Northumberland, though perhaps the last was catholic. Their intrigues occupy a great part of the letters of other intriguers, Cecil and Lord Henry Howard, in the Secret Correspondence with King James, published by Sir David Dalrymple, vol. i. passim.