Add MS 48098

This treatise addresses Queen Elizabeth, and addresses her as "we". It was evidently written by Thomas Norton, a leading polemicist against the claims of Mary, Queen of Scots to the English crown, who was active in the parliaments of 1571 and 1572 in attempts to (at the least) bar Mary from the succession. There is another copy of the text, in another hand, with variations, in Add MS 48049, ff. 74r-103v. The two copies can be identified as amongst Norton's papers when they were seized by the crown at his death, coming in time into the hands of Norton's friend Robert Beale: "A treatise written to her ma[jest]ie concerning the title of the Scottishe Queene to the crowne of England" and "A treatise written to her Ma[jes]tie against the Q. of Scottes" (The Cecil papers, 140/5, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1858034158?accountid=9735 [accessed 7 Feb 2019]), cited in Taviner, 'Robert Beale', 271-79). Variations between the two texts are generally minor, but a whole passage which presents the case for executing Mary Queen of Scots only appears here, at ff. 33r-v.

The treatise can be dated to after the Rebellion of the Northern Earls (1569), the papal bull against Elizabeth (1570) and "great Norff[olk's] treasons": either the immediate treasons that brought the Duke of Norfolk to the block in April 1572 or earlier entanglements in 1569-70. In a lengthy treatise on the internal and external threats to the Queen, and the dissimulation of her enemies, Norton pays particular attention to "a declaration of the right, title, and interest of the highe and excellent princesse Mary. the Quene of Scotland unto the succession of the Crowne of England".

Norton also argues strongly for the right of Parliament to determine the succession and the context of the treatise is evidently either the parliament of 1571 or, probably more likely, 1572. Norton indeed writes how "now at your assembly of p[ar]liamen]t good laws" are being provided to defend the queen's and aginst those who challenge her right to the throne and the succession (f. 35r.). In 1571 Norton drafted the Treasons Bill which originally called for the right to exclude from the succession anybody who challenged the Queen's right to the throne. In 1572 he went further and advocated executing Mary, Queen of Scots for treason, an approach strongly hinted at in this treatise (ff. 33r-v).

The text is written in a scribal hand, with Norton's emendations at ff. 3v, 4r-v, 12r-13r, 25r. In the margin of f. 35 has been added the name 'Anthonie Browne', the lawyer whose assistance was acknowledged in the 1571 edition of John Leslie's sucession tract A defence of the honour of the right highe, mightye and noble Princesse Marie Quene of Scotlande and dowager of France, with a declaration as well of her right, title & intereste to the succession of the crowne of Englande .