The compact was not the work of a moment, and Cecil's rivals do not appear to the end to have understood how absolute it was. Neither was it of very old standing. For long Elizabeth's councillors hesitated to throw in their lot with the Scottish claim to the succession. They could not read clearly the national inclination. The country had been undecided. As Cecil confessed he had once said, there were several competitors for whose right it was possible to argue. The Suffolk family possessed some sort of Parliamentary title. Arabella Stuart was not, like James, an alien, or a foreign sovereign. Discussion, or even advocacy, of either title, whether by Cecil, Ralegh, or Cobham, was, till the actual proclamation of James, not treasonable. But after the death of Mary Stuart, and, more plainly still, after that of Essex, it became manifest that the English people meant to crown the King of Scots. Cecil and Ralegh equally discerned the certainty. Both acted accordingly, and each suspected the other's procedure. Both started evenly with the same stain, in James's eyes, of enmity to Essex. Cecil, however, had the advantage of partnership with Henry Howard, and Ralegh the disadvantage of partnership with Cobham. He had to overcome the more invincible obstacle of his possession of a character, demeanour, and policy, in good features as well as bad, essentially distasteful to the Prince he had to conciliate. [Sidenote: _Prejudices of King James._] Without Elizabeth's knowledge, Cecil kept up an active correspondence with the Scottish Court. Ralegh had his concealed relations with it too. Neither is to be severely blamed for feeling an attraction to the nearest heir to the throne. Something even of personal enthusiasm at the prospect was not so absurd a sentiment as it seems to posterity. The nature of James was not well understood, and hope was placed in his youth. Contrasts were drawn, as Ralegh expressed it at his trial, between a lady whom time had surprised, and an active king. Ralegh had recognised that no other successor was possible. Lord Northumberland, writing to persuade James to be courteous to him, declared that he 'must allow Ralegh's ever allowance of the King's right.' Ralegh indeed had never favoured any rival candidate, Arabella Stuart as little as the Infanta. About Arabella there is no cause to doubt the veracity of his assertion, reported by Dudley Carleton, that 'of all women he ever saw he never liked her.' Simply he had opposed, as Elizabeth herself opposed, and in his character of her faithful servant, the termination of the abeyance of the dignity of heir presumptive. In the interest of her tranquillity he had addressed to Elizabeth a written argument against the announcement of a successor. Eventually, some time before Elizabeth's death, he had perceived that it was useless to act as if any successor but James were possible. With his sanguine temperament he acquiesced in the inevitable as if it were positively advantageous. He