Martin A. S. Hume

“ Simier was not long in conveying this to the Queen, and took care to have another fling at his enemy, Leicester, at the same time. He was surprised, he said, as all the world was, that she should still favour a man who had deceived her as Leicester had done by telling her he was not married when he was. But Elizabeth’s object was not to quarrel with Leicester, but to learn by the hasty words of Alençon whether he was intriguing with the King of Spain, and she turned the subject by saying that Leicester was too powerful to be disgraced all at once. ”

“ Her undisguised help to the revolted Flemings and her depredations on Spanish shipping had alienated her more and more from Philip, and now another circumstance had arisen which must drive both her and Catharine de Medici into more pronounced antagonism to Spain. The King of Portugal was old, ailing, and childless, and intrigues were ripe as to the succession of the crown. The strongest claimant was Philip himself, and it was felt that a further addition to his power and the acquisition of so fine a seaboard as that of Portugal would gravely prejudice the interest of France and England. ”

“ The “monk” Marchaumont, too, was equally undeceived and sick of the whole affair; blamed by Alençon for his ill-success, and ceaselessly begging for his recall. Indeed, by this time there was not a soul who believed any more in the marriage negotiations, and Elizabeth began to grow angry that the trusty weapon which had served her well for so many years had lost its point. So when La Mothe Fénélon, on his way to Scotland, spoke to her about the relations between France and England, she gave him a piece of her mind. ”

“ They were loaded with gifts, cloyed with fine words, and some of them even cajoled into the idea that Elizabeth was a Catholic at heart; but whatever the young figureheads may have thought, statesmen like Pinart, Brisson, and La Mothe, knew full well by this time that the marriage was all moonshine. Sussex of course threw all the blame on Leicester, and tried to arouse the indignation of the French against him, whilst Leicester boldly said the Queen had never intended to marry, and those who said she did only wished to bring about a quarrel between England and France. ”

“ On the strength of this negotiations were being conducted with the Emperor, and yet, said Norfolk, no sooner was the imperial ambassador gone than Leicester pushed his own courtship more strongly than ever. He was told plainly that if he did not desist evil would befall him, as all the nobility were against him; whereupon Leicester went off in a huff and sulked for a fortnight, until the Queen recalled him and petted him more than ever, upon which Norfolk in turn took umbrage and went home, leaving the Archduke’s interests in the hands of Sussex. ”

“ It seems impossible that the result could have been attained excepting under the very peculiar combination of circumstances and persons then existing in England. Elizabeth triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength; her bad qualities were as valuable to her as her good ones. Strong and steadfast Cecil would never have held the helm so long if he had not constantly been contrasted with the shifty, greedy, treacherous crew of councillors who were for ever ravening after foreign bribes as payment for their honour and their loyalty. ”

“ Elizabeth, too, was in a better position now than she had been to drop the hollow negotiations, since the civil war in France, and Philip’s own difficulties in the Netherlands and the South of Europe, secured her from present danger from either power, whilst the standing menace of Scotland had disappeared for the first time for years, as Mary was a prisoner with a cloud of doubt and disgrace hanging over her head. ”

“ In very truth the farce of marriage by this time had been played out to the bitter end. Elizabeth was now fifty years of age and there were no princes left in Europe marriage with whom would have given her any advantage. From the far-off Ivan the Terrible, who had been dismissed with a gibe, to the youngest of the Valois, with whom she had played for years, every marriageable prince in Christendom had, in his turn, been suggested as a suitor for Elizabeth’s hand. ”

“ Almost at the same time as he received this letter false news came to Alençon from his sister Margaret that the King had consented to the whole of Elizabeth’s demands. He was almost beside himself for joy; a letter, which is now at Hatfield,162 was instantly sent off to the Queen, containing the most exuberant expressions of pleasure and relief. There never was happiness equal to his, which he can conceal no longer. ”

“ A good portrait of the Archduke had been sent, and her own agents had seen him. If, said the Emperor, this were not enough, the young man should come himself; but only on a distinct pledge that she would marry him if he did. Beyond this the Emperor would not go, and the Queen always stopped short at a binding promise. Nor, indeed, would the match have pleased the extreme reform party in England led by Cecil, Bedford, and Clinton, which was now the paramount one. ”

“ Month after month Anjou cast his men fruitlessly against the impregnable walls of Rochelle; well supplied with stores from England by Montgomeri’s fleet, the townspeople bade defiance to the Catholics, and the reformers through the rest of France were rendered the more confident thereby. It was clear to Catharine and her son that Protestantism had not been extinguished in the blood of St. Bartholomew, and they began to think it time to make terms with an enemy they saw they could not crush. ”

“ The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world’s chessboard was that consummate succession of intrigues which for nearly half a century was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of the Queen herself were indissolubly bound up. ”

“ Elizabeth had aided the Protestant Hollanders bravely, but the Catholic Flemings did not wish to be merged in and governed by the Dutch States, and had to seek help from a Catholic prince. Conciliation they had tried, and they had been betrayed. A prince of the house of Austria had been chosen, and had turned out useless. Where, then, could they look but to a prince of France, unfettered by Spanish sympathies? So Alençon was approached, and expressed his willingness to raise his friends, the moderate Catholics and the Huguenots to aid the Flemings in their resistance. ”

“ But no sooner were Walsingham, Cobham, and the French ministers in conference to settle the terms of an alliance which was to accompany a marriage, than Alençon sent, by de Vray, peremptorily refusing to have anything to do with an alliance. It must, he said, be a marriage pure and simple first, and after that they could make what leagues they pleased, but he was sure that if the endless negotiations for an alliance had to be settled first he should never be married at all. ”

“ The matter never seems to have got beyond a suggestion; and the youth soon after dying, Arundel, as will be told, subsequently became a suitor himself. But whilst these nebulous speculations with regard to Elizabeth’s hand were going on, Renard had been arranging a clever scheme by which the Spanish party should ensure to themselves the control of England not only during the Queen’s life but after her death. When Egmont and his splendid embassy arrived all England was in a whirlwind of panic and indignation at the idea of a Spanish match. ”

“ The Pope, through his Nuncio, offered the young prince a great pension if he would retire, his brother alternately threatened and cajoled, Catharine de Medici held out the bait of a marriage with one of the infantas, and Alençon himself was already disappointed at the failure of the States to fulfil their promises to him and place some strong places in his hands. In fact, the French prince was looked upon by the northern Dutchmen as coldly as Mathias had been, and if he could bring neither the national support of England or France he would be as useless as the Austrian had been. ”

“ If the new Emperor was going to fulfil the promises he had made to the Protestant princes who had elected him, and turn reformer, no husband would have been so favourable to England as the Archduke Charles, who would have disarmed Philip and the Catholics whilst satisfying the Protestants and avoiding the dangers to English independence which would arise from the marriage of the Queen with a prince of the reigning houses of France or Spain. When Cecil saw de Foix, therefore, he diplomatically combated the views advanced by the ambassador. ”

“ The reason for Alençon’s tardy resistance to further surrender about his religion must be sought in the fact that the Catholic Flemings were still in active negotiations with him for his assuming the sovereignty of the States, and any wavering on his part in religion would at once have made him an impossible candidate for them. The fact of the Prince of Orange and the Huguenots being in his favour was already rather against his chances with the Walloons, and it was necessary for him to assume a devotion to Catholicism, the sincerity of which may well be doubted. ”

“ The real difficulties of the marriage with the Archduke, hampered as he would be by unacceptable Spanish conditions, were soon obvious to the Protestant party, who tried a bold stroke, which, if their weapon had been a strong instead of a lamentably weak one, might have altered the whole course of English history. To a French Catholic princess, as Queen of Scotland and heiress to the crown of England, the natural counterpoise was a close alliance between England and Spain ”

“ Elizabeth replied that she would rather die than be neglected; but still, though her people would prefer that she should marry an Englishman, there was none she could marry but the Earl of Arundel, “and he was as far off as the poles are asunder.” As for the Earl of Leicester, she had always esteemed his merit, but her sense of dignity would not allow her to endure him as a husband. It was agreed between the Queen and de Foix that the matter should be kept secret, and she promised him a reply shortly. ”

“ Unstable Anjou had again veered round to the Catholic side, and Spanish intrigues were active all over Europe to prevent the marriage. Anjou had just told de Foix that he knew it was “all dalliance,” and reproached him for drawing him so far in the match. “I will take no step forward,” said the prince, “unless a decisive reply is sent from England.” When Walsingham learnt this from de Foix he saw that it would be unwise to repeat his mistress’s words about religion, and simply told the Queen-mother that Elizabeth was disposed to accept the hand of the Duke of Anjou. ”

“ The full discovery of Norfolk’s plot in England, with its extensive ramifications abroad, the troubles in Scotland and Ireland, and the final rupture of diplomatic relations between England and Spain, were so many more black clouds gathering from all quarters over Elizabeth; and Cecil’s letters to Walsingham at the time were almost despairing. The marriage, he said, was the only chance for the Queen’s safety, and he thought now she was resolved to accept the King of France’s conditions. But the French were now cold. ”

“ The nimble shifting from side to side, the encouragement or discouragement of the French and Flemish Protestants as the policy of the moment dictated, the alternate flouting and flattering of the rival powers, and the agile utilisation of the Queen’s sex and feminine love of admiration to provoke competing offers for her hand, all exhibit statesmanship as keen as it was unscrupulous. ”

“ Simier at the same time was pressing him warmly to come over to England at once, strike the iron whilst it was hot, and marry the Queen offhand; but the Queen’s own letters persistently threw cold water on this proposal, as did Castelnau, the French ambassador, who was bitterly jealous of Simier; and Alençon, for the present contented himself with staying at his town of Dreux awaiting her favourable decision as to the conditions “for which hope alone he lives.” ”

“ If the grounds for the divorce of Queen Catharine were good she was never Henry’s lawful wife, and her daughter had no right to the crown. If they were bad, then Elizabeth was necessarily the bastard that the law of England inferentially had just declared her to be. The King of France, foiled in his attempts to prevent the Queen’s Spanish marriage, instructed de Noailles13 to use every possible means to hinder a match between Elizabeth and Savoy, “poor and dispossessed as he is”; and, alert as the ambassador was, no great effort on his part was needed. ”

“ The young Prince had been brought up in a Court where love-making was the great business of life, and flattered and languished as successfully as La Mole and Simier had done, and Elizabeth’s overweening vanity had probably never been so satisfied before. She gave a ball on Sunday, the 23rd of August, 1579, at Greenwich, Alençon, being only half hidden behind the arras. The Queen danced and posed even more than usual, and ever and anon made signals to her guest, of whose presence all the courtiers pretended to be ignorant. ”

“ Castelnau had instructions in case the Queen were not satisfied with this to drop the fruitless marriage negotiations, and frankly propose an offensive and defensive alliance between the two countries. The Guises were openly discontented, and Paris swarmed with their men-at-arms. It was clear to Henry and his mother that they must cling to England and the Protestants, or the house of Valois was doomed, and France must become subservient to Spain and the bigots. So, marriage or no marriage, Elizabeth must be conciliated. ”

“ At last, after infinite trouble, Sussex was despatched at the end of June, 1567, bearing full instructions to negotiate the marriage. He was to raise no great difficulty except on two points: first the question of the Archduke’s income, and secondly that of religion. He was to say that “the Queen will take care that he wants for nothing, but she does not wish her people to think she had married a man too poor to keep himself.” The Archduke might privately hear Mass in his own chamber, but must conform outwardly to the law of England and accompany the Queen to Protestant service publicly. ”

“ So when Baron Ravenstein arrived in London on his matrimonial embassy the Queen was quite ready for him. Ravenstein himself was as devout a Catholic as his master, and was received very coolly at first. The Queen told him she would marry no man whom she had not seen, and would not trust portrait painters; and much more to the same effect. To his second audience Ravenstein was accompanied by the Bishop of Aquila, as it was desirable that, if anything came of the negotiation, Spain should get the benefit of it. It soon became clear to the wily churchman that Ferdinand would never do. ”

“ Two days after this Lord Buckhurst, with a brilliant suite, arrived in Paris, ostensibly to congratulate Charles IX. on his marriage, but with secret instructions from the Queen to negotiate with Catharine again about the Anjou match. Fêtes and banquets, masques and coursing, kept Buckhurst brilliantly busy until the eve of his departure, when Cavalcanti came and asked him whether he would not like to see the new gardens of the Tuilleries, of which Catharine was extremely proud. ”