Parliament rejected the favorite project of James, who desired to unite not only the two crowns, but the two nations of England and Scotland by common laws and a common religion. The plan was good and useful, but premature. Scotland rejected it angrily, fearing to be subjected to England. The latter rejected it with disdain, asserting that the beggars of Scotland already came to England in sufficiently numerous bands, without its being necessary to make Englishmen of them. The subsidies were not voted. The king, dissatisfied, abandoned his proposals; but for two years he did not convoke Parliament. {20} It was necessity alone which compelled him, in 1610, to claim the co-operation of his people in filling the treasury. Cecil, who had become successively Lord Cranborne and Earl of Salisbury, now sat at the Treasury and proposed enormous subsidies to the Commons; but Parliament presented a petition of grievances, and refused to vote anything without being assured of the redress of its wrongs. Negotiations were carried on for several months. Parliament at length granted a greatly reduced subsidy, without having obtained all that it demanded in return. A weak, indolent monarch, often indifferent concerning the most important affairs, James was as obstinate when it was a question of his prerogative as he was in matters of theology. Cecil died, it is said, of the sorrows and vexations which Parliament had compelled him to endure in the two sessions of 1610 and 1611. He expired on the 24th of May, 1612. Cunning and avaricious as his father, he had not always given proof of that greatness of purpose and firmness of resolve which made Burleigh the worthy minister of Queen Elizabeth. While the king was discussing with the Dutchman Conrad Vorstein, upon the nature and attributes of the divinity, demanding of the States of Holland the banishment of his adversary, Lady Arabella Stuart, whose name had so often served as a watchword for conspiracies, without her ever having been implicated in them herself, for the first time in her life had become a plotter. Her object, however, was simply to marry William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hereford, to whom she had been attached from infancy. When the secret was discovered, the princess was imprisoned at Lambeth, and her husband thrown into the Tower. She saw him, however, sometimes, and being forcibly removed to Durham, she contrived to escape. {21} Seymour also fled from his prison. Both desired only to live together abroad; but the husband alone reached a free country. The poor Lady Arabella was arrested aboard the vessel which was taking her across the Channel, and consigned to the Tower for the remainder of her life. She lost her reason and died in 1615, long forgotten even by those who had dreaded her name.