Note 961 — Chapter X

Throkmorton's despatches from Orleans, several frequently sent off on a single day, acquaint us with the rapid progress of the king's disease, and the cold calculations based upon it. "The constitution of his body," he writes in the third of his letters that bear date Nov. 28th (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 156), "is such, as the physicians do say he cannot be long-lived: and thereunto he hath by his too timely and inordinate exercise now in his youth, added an evil accident; so as there be that do not let to say, though he do recover this sickness, he cannot live two years; whereupon there is plenty of discourses here of the French Queen's second marriage; some talk of the Prince of Spain, some of the Duke of Austrich, others of the Earl of Arran." No wonder that cabinet ministers and others often grew weary of the interminable debates respecting the marriages of queens regnant, and that William Cecil, as early as July, 1561, wrote respecting Queen Bess: "Well, God send our Mistress a husband, and by time a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession. This matter is too big for weak folks, and too deep for simple." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 174.