374.

Heylin, p.

102.
After employing a few days in ordering her domestic affairs, Elizabeth notified to foreign courts her sister's death, and her own accession.
She sent Lord Cobham to the Low Countries, where Philip then resided; and she took care to express to that monarch her gratitude for the protection which he had afforded her, and her desire of persevering in that friendship which had so happily commenced between them.

Philip, who had long foreseen this event, and who still hoped, by means of Elizabeth, to obtain that dominion over England, of which he had failed in espousing Mary, immediately despatched orders to the duke of Feria, his ambassador at London, to make proposals of marriage to the queen; and he offered to procure from Rome a dispensation for that purpose.

But Elizabeth soon came to the resolution of declining the proposal.