Elizabeth was at Hatfield, and probably there with an "evil head,” but we find no reference in Edward's diary to any illness of his own. No contemporary or other evidence that suggests such an illnessand again all the official documents discover his continuous and normal activity.

In the following year, 1550, when on 24th March the diary becomes a day to day one, and so continues throughout the MS., we have more detailed accounts of the boy's life, and from then until the last entry, late in November, 1552, we need not look elsewhere for information.

In this March of 1550, there is an entry on the 24th, the 25th, the 29th, the 30th, and the 31st. In April there is a daily entry up to the 21st, except upon the 1st, 4th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 17th. No illness is referred to; the days omitted do not give time for any serious affection; and all the extraneous evidence, official or contemporary, discloses the boy to be in good health.

In 1551, the diary has entries in April for every day except the 2nd, 4th, 13th, 14th, 17th, 18th, and 19th up to the 21st, the date of our letter, and still no hint of sickness, and all the other contemporaneous documents show the boy still well.

Let us first dispose of 1553, the last April of Edward's life. There will be no dispute that for several months before that, he had been growing steadily worse with his fatal illness, which, as we have already shown, was of a progressive nature. So there is no chance that in April he could have been recovering from any two or more illnesses; and all the contemporaneous documents show his desperate state at the period concerned.

This, then, leaves us 1552 as the only possible year that will fulfil our four requirements; and now as we turn the pages of Edward's diary for April of that year, we find on page 58 verso, et seq., these entries :

APRILE.

2. I fell sike of the mesels and the small pokkes.

15. The parliment brake up, and bicause I was sike, and not able to goe wel abrode as then, I signed a bil conteining the names of the actes wich I wold have passe.

30. Removing to Greenwich.

Now there remains but one fact to be established, namely, that Elizabeth was then at Hatfield. There are several ways of doing so-but the fact is sufficient that then, and for years before and

afterward, she made her home nowhere else, and there is no record suggesting her temporary absence on this date, and her presence elsewhere would inevitably have been chronicled. But we can do better than this rather negative evidence, through the MS. Household Account of Elizabeth's establishment for the year 1st October, 1551, to 1st October, 1552.* This shows that on the 20th of April, 1552, the day before the date of Elizabeth's letter," Beamonde, the King's servaunte," was paid at Hatfield by Parry, Elizabeth's cofferer, "for his boies which plaied before her grace-X.s."-and the item immediately following shows a payment to " Mrs. Carrye, at her departing from Hatfelde, IIII. li." Scores of other items show further payments day by day for the several months followingso we are certain that this 21st April letter is of 1552; for we have shown not only that in no other year could it have been written, but also that in 1552 all the four things we had to prove are demonstrated: 1. Elizabeth was at Hatfield on the day of the month upon which the letter was dated; 2. Edward for several weeks prior thereto had been ill; and, 3, ill with two or more diseases; and from the fact that he moved to Greenwich, some ten miles, on the 30th, we must admit, 4, that he was improving as recently as the 21st.

Camden Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 39, 2nd item. Miss Strickland and the famous antiquarian, Thomas Astle, F.R.S. and F.A.S. (the latter now F.S.A.), have fallen into a curious error with respect to this MS. In 1807, Astle, one of the two chief compilers of the Antiquarian Repertory, communicates thereto an article covering this account, giving the date in his heading as 1553; and in his text he states that the items are " for one year ending Oct. 30th in the 6th year of the reign of her brother Edward VI. A.D. 1553. The MS.... was in the possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq.'

Miss Strickland, writing nearly half a century later, comes across Astle's article, and quotes copiously from it, adopting his dates, namely, Oct. 1552 to Oct. 1553. She also prints extracts from what she styles a similar MS. "in the possession of lord Strangford" covering the household expenses "... from Oct. 1st, 5th of Edward VI. to the last day of September in the 6th year of that prince." In her haste, Miss Strickland unquestioningly adopts Astle's dates for the Brander book, namely, for the period Oct. 1552 to Oct. 1553, and at the same time adopts Strangford's date for his book, i.e. Oct. 1551 to Oct. 1552, thus giving apparently two successive books covering two successive years-Oct. 1551 to Oct. 1553.

The fact is that there has never been more than one book. Miss Strickland is first misled by Astle into the chronological error of placing his Brander MS. a whole year too late. The MS. itself says on its first page that it is "From the first daie of October in the fifte yere of the raigne of Edward the sixte . . . unto the last daye of September of the Vjth yere of his Maties moste prosperouse raigne."

Mr. Astle says that October, 1552, is in the 5th year of Edward VI., and that October in the 6th of that monarch is in 1553. Mr. Astle, of course, is a year too late in each case; and Miss Strickland had not learned that Brander had sold his MSS. to Strangford, with several intermediate transactions. There is, moreover, no foundation for Mr. Astle's statement that the account closed upon any Oct. 30th—he should have said Sept.

And we may now give a date to our No. 13, which, by almost necessary inference, carries her own invalidism five months further still-four months into its fifth consecutive year. This letter is as follows:

"I hope, most illustrious King, that I shall readily obtain pardon that for such a long interval of time you have received from me so few letters either returning thanks for your benefits or at least bearing witness to my due regard for you, especially as no kind of forgetfulness of you whom I never can or ought to forget has been the cause of the delay. Now, however, as I understand your majesty is sojourning in places not far from London, I have thought I ought to break silence. . . . While I recount severally the blessings of the great and good God, I indeed judge this one to be the greatest of all that he hath quickly and mercifully restored you again to London, after your late disease; into which I think you had fallen by God's especial providence (as in my last letter I wrote to your majesty), in order that, the cause of the diseases having been now removed, you may be preserved, to the greatest length of years, to handle the reins of Government. . . . Since, then, the life of every one is not merely exposed to, but is overcome by, so many and so great accidents, we judge that your last disease has been removed by the special mercy of Divine Providence; and in all those so frequent changes of air and of places (which I know have been not entirely free from diseases) that you have been preserved, by a miracle, from any peril of infection.

"At Ashridge, 20th of September.

"To the most illustrious and noble Your majesty's very humble sister king Edward the Sixtx.

66 ELIZABETH."

From the first italicized words in this letter we know that Edward" is sojourning in places not far from London ;" and from the last words italicized we learn that the King has lately made "all those so frequent changes of air and of places." The letter is of some September 20th, and we must place Edward so as to fulfil the requirements of these two quotations. His diary is again decisive. We need turn no further back than to 1550. In the three months preceding 20th September of that year, Edward was at Greenwich on 25th June, at Windsor on 23rd June, at Guildford on 12th August, at Woking on 20th August, on 8th September at Nonesuch, and on the 15th at Oteland. Plainly 1550 will not apply.

The year 1551 is even more remotely improbable. In the three months preceding 20th September, Edward moved only to Hampton Court on 11th July, to Windsor on 22nd August, to Farnham on 10th September, and on the 18th to Windsor.

In 1552, however, Edward went on Progress, leaving London on the 27th of June, and not returning to the vicinity of London until 12th September, when he came to Reading from Donnington Castle, finally completing his visits three days later, when he went to Windsor. He visited 23 places on this journey, on the way to and from Southampton, by way of Portsmouth. The last month of the trip is consumed by the return from the latter city. He left it on the 16th, when Beaulieu was reached, two days later Christchurch, three later Woodlands, three later Salisbury, five later Wilton, four later Motisfont, three later Winchester, two later Basing, thence in three days to Donnington Castle. As already stated, Reading was reached in two days, on 12th September, and the trip came to its close with the arrival at Windsor on the 15th, five days before Elizabeth wrote her letter. Plainly 1552 satisfies the conditions demanded.

The reader, however, will not have failed to notice in the remaining italicized portion of the letter phrases which seem familiar; for it was only a few moments ago that he read in the 21st April letter (No. 12) quoted in extenso:

For now do I say with Saint Austin that a disease is to be accounted no sickness, that shall cause a better health when it is past, than was assured afore it came. For afore you had them, every man thought that that should not be eschewed of you that was not escaped of many. But since you have had them doubt of them is past, and hope is given to all men, that it was a purgation by these means for other worse diseases, which might happen this year. Moreover, I consider that, as a good father, that loves his child dearly, doth punish him sharply, so God, favouring your Majesty greatly, hath chastened you straitly; and, as a father doth it for the further good of his child, so hath God prepared this for the better health of your Grace."

That is patently the sentiment referred to in the letter (No. 13) from Ashridge on 20th September, when Elizabeth refers to Edward's "late disease; into which I think you had fallen by God's especial providence . . . in order that, the cause of the diseases having been now removed, you may be preserved. . . .'

There can, therefore, be little reasonable doubt that this letter (No. 13, of 20th September) dates from 1552; and it seems almost certain that Elizabeth can have in mind only an illness of hers already well known to the King when she writes: "I hope . . . that I shall readily obtain pardon for that such a long interval of time you have received from me so few letters . . . especially as no kind of forgetfulness of you has been the cause of the delay."

We know, by No. 12, that on 21st April, five months before, Elizabeth writes craving pardon " that I did write no sooner; desiring you to attribute the fault to my evil head." If she did not know that Edward was aware of her continuous illness when she wrote the September letter, or, if she had had any other excuse for her seeming neglect, she would doubtless have said so much. The weight of the evidence, surely, is that she was still afflicted with that same "evil head" late in September, 1552. If the inference be sound, we may be practically certain that Elizabeth was in the anæmic state already described, for more than four consecutive years; we know, moreover, that she had not recovered even when four years and four months had elapsed—that is, by 20th September, 1552. As a most desperate illness began fourteen months later (December, 1553, Med. Rec. No. 14A), and as the entire interim had been filled with the greatest anxieties (the fatal illness of Edward, her prevention from seeing him, the conspiracy to disinherit her when she could not be got out of the country, or bribed or frightened into compliance with the scheme of the Dudleys to seize the throne through Lady Jane Gray, and the contest of Mary for her rights), it seems most likely that these two illnesses overlapped. If so, we must conclude that the Princess Elizabeth was never well from the middle of 1548 up to at least April, 1557 (Med. Rec. Nos. 14A to 29).

Most of the items in the Medical Record were known to all writers on Elizabeth, but, lacking the particulars of the first illness, the starting point of all her life struggle with disease, nearly all of them confined themselves to the political aspects of her time. Confronted besides with a bibliography unanimous in opinion that Elizabeth was a physical giant without nerves, they failed to pursue to their logical conclusion scores of significant indications as to frequent ill-health; not to mention most desperate illnesses, any one of which, even had she been of the most exceptional physique, would have ruined her health for life.

Such are the best reasons we can devise for the misunderstanding that has so long persisted; and yet its long life is still astounding. It must always rank as one of the most remarkable phenomena in historical writing.

NOTE 5

THE STORY OF ARTHUR Dudley

The following is all the evidence known concerning that Arthur Dudley who claimed to be a son of Leicester and Elizabeth.