Simier’s departure with the draft agreement—The Queen suddenly cools towards the match—Her perplexity—Her efforts to temporise—Suggestions for an alliance with France—Simier’s letters pleading Alen?on’s cause—Alen?on’s plans in Flanders—Signature of the Peace of Fleix—Queen Margaret’s intrigues against the Alen?on match—Simier’s disgrace—Catholic intrigues to gain Alen?on—Alen?on’s new envoys to England—Clausse de Marchaumont’s negotiations—His favour with the Queen—“La belle jarretière.”

On the 9th of November, 1579, Simier came to the Queen and told her he could delay no longer going back to his master; and if a final decision was not at once adopted, he must return without it. He was closeted with her for several hours, and the next day she summoned the principal councillors to her chamber, and told them that she had made up her mind to marry, and they need say no more about it; their duty now was simply to devise the necessary means for carrying out her wishes. She then sent post-haste to bring back Stafford, who was on his way to Alen?on, and for a day her councillors thought the matter was settled. But the next day a cool gust of prudence passed over her passion, and she again sent to the councillors ordering them to give her individually their opinions in writing. This did not suit221 Simier, and he rushed off to the Queen and told her it was now unwise and unnecessary, as she had made up her mind. She haughtily asked who told him that, to which he replied that it was Cecil; whereupon she flew into one of her violent rages against councillors who could not keep their mouths shut, and flung out of the room, leaving Simier to meditate upon the inconstancy of woman. She then ordered the councillors to send a joint letter begging Alen?on to expedite his coming, but they refused to do so, and urged that before the Prince himself came a person of higher rank and more serious standing than Simier should come to settle the conditions. When Simier heard this he booted and spurred without more ado, and went in a huff to take leave of the Queen. She mollified him, however, with blandishments, and during the next few days the terms of settlement were hastily agreed upon and signed in draft, giving Alen?on and his household the right to attend the Catholic service in his own chapel. But when the protocol was handed to Simier for conveyance to France the Queen characteristically insisted upon his giving an undertaking which always left her a loophole of escape. The original document in Simier’s handwriting is at Hatfield, and agrees that the articles shall remain in suspense for two months, “during which time her Majesty hopes to have brought her people to consent to the marriage.” If before that time she did not write to the King and Alen?on consenting to receive ambassadors to sign the contract, the whole present conditions were to be absolutely null and void.

Simier left London on the 24th of November, loaded with presents, and from Gravesend wrote a222 long letter to the Queen, warning her against those who, for their own ends, were trying to persuade her to forego the match, and who had been publicly boasting in London that as soon as his back was turned they would easily change her mind. He finishes his letter by what comes perilously near a bit of love-making on his own account, and during his two days’ stay at Dover, and from Calais, letter followed letter from him to the Queen, in all of which the hope is fervently expressed that “le singe restera tousjours vostre, et que la distance des lyeus, ni la longeur du tanps, ni les fausses invantions des mes contrères, ne me pouront aporter aucun préjudisse en vos bonnes grasses ni enpecher le souleil de mes yeulx, qui ne peuvent être contans que voyent vostre grenouille aupres de vostre Majesté et moy coume singe me voyr hordinere à vos piés,” and so on, page after page. Stafford accompanied him across, and brought back a letter with a great emerald embedded in the seal, from Alen?on to the Queen, telling her of the efforts which were being made to bring him and Navarre again into good agreement with the King, to which the Queen replied, leaving for once the philandering strain, and writing a serious and statesmanlike warning against his being too pliant. There is no doubt that for a time after Simier left, the influence of Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham somewhat cooled her towards the marriage. Stafford went first with Simier to Paris to lay the draft conditions before the King, and took the opportunity of demanding some further limitation with regard to the exercise of the Catholic religion. Henry III. would have nothing to say to this, but left it to his brother’s223 conscience, but he wrote to his ambassador in England pointing out that this was another of their tricks to break off the affair.

Stafford found Alen?on no more yielding than his brother, and for a time matters looked unpromising, the “monkey” continuing to write gushing letters to the Queen, begging her not to be influenced by the “mile faulx bruis” of Walsingham and others, who are trying to render the affair abortive. At this juncture, doubtless, the Queen wrote the long letter without date to the Duke,115 pointing out to him the unpopularity of the match and the many difficulties of carrying it through, unless the terms taken by Simier, particularly with regard to religion and the pension, were relaxed. If this is impossible, she says, and the affair falls through, let us not worry any more about it, but remain faithful friends for ever. This did not at all please the Prince, who plainly told her (January 28, 1580, Hatfield Papers) that some people believed that she was only making use of the religious question as an excuse to break off the match, and that he is not at all astonished that she has requested that the departure of commissioners for the ratification should be stayed. He was probably right in his conjecture, for only a few days before (January 17, 1580, Hatfield Papers) the Queen tried to pick a quarrel about the rank of the ambassadors to be sent. She had roundly told the King, she said, that she did not think France was so short of princes that he must needs send her a child or a low-born person. A person of the very highest lineage must come or none at all: she would never have the chronicles record that any slight was224 offered to her honour on so great an occasion. The poor “monkey” might write his inflated letters to the Queen, deploring, and denouncing the enemies who were impeding the match, and pleading in heartbroken accents the cause of his lovelorn “frog”; but there can be no doubt that at the end of January, 1580, in London, the affair was looked upon as at an end. A long and instructive State paper exists at Hatfield in the writing of Sir Thomas Cecil, dated the 28th of January, addressed to the Queen, and setting forth that the Alen?on marriage, having fallen through, the Prince would probably seek revenge for his disappointment, and ally himself to the King of Spain, with the object of aiding a general Catholic assault on England and Ireland. Sir Thomas then lays down a certain course of action necessary to meet this danger. Alen?on is to be encouraged to push his ambitious projects in Flanders in order to keep him at issue with Spain; the Queen’s forces by sea and land are to be put on a war footing, and German mercenaries are to be hired; English trade, as far as possible, is to be carried in foreign bottoms; the Irish are to be conciliated by large concessions to their national traditions; the Queen of Scots is to be more strictly held and her son subsidised; and the Netherlanders and the Huguenots are to be vigorously helped. This was a bold programme indeed, but was fully warranted by the circumstances as we now know them. The Guises were moving heaven and earth to prevent an understanding between Alen?on and the Huguenots; the Queen of Scots was in active negotiation with Philip, through Beaton and Guise, for a Spanish invasion of England in her interest;225 and the Spanish troops, under the Papal banner, were backing up the insurgent Irish.116

The reason for Alen?on’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. It will thus be seen that the position was full of danger and uncertainty to Elizabeth, as she could never allow a Frenchman to be dominant in the Netherlands unless he was her humble servant. This, of course, was obvious to Alen?on as it was to her, and it was necessary for him to know upon which side he would have to depend for the promotion of his ambition, either the Queen of England and the Huguenots, or the Catholic Flemings and his brother. On the very day, therefore, that the two months stipulated with Simier expired, namely, the 24th of February, 1580, Castelnau, the French ambassador, went to the Queen and asked for a definite answer as to whether she would marry the Prince on the terms arranged or not. She replied that it was not a matter which could be settled in such a hurry, and she must consult her Council and her people. After a good deal of bickering the ambassador unmasked his batteries, and told her that if she did not carry out her agreement226 to marry him, the Prince, in his own justification and to show people that he had not come to England out of mere flightiness, would be obliged to publish all her letters. She replied, in her usual vein, that she was surprised that Alen?on should think of treating any lady in this way, much less a Queen, and with this she closed the colloquy in great anger and indignation.

Mendoza tells the story,117 and adds that after the ambassador had left, “she being alone in her chamber with Cecil and the Archbishop of York, whom she considers a very clever man, she said, My lord, here am I between Scylla and Charybdis. Alen?on has agreed to all the terms I sent him, and he is asking me to tell him when I wish him to come and marry me. If I do not marry him I know not whether he will remain friendly with me; and if I do I shall not be able to govern my country with the freedom and security I have hitherto enjoyed. What shall I do?” The answer of the Archbishop was that every one would be glad with whatever she decided upon. She then turned to Cecil and asked him what he thought, as he had been absent from the Council for three days past. He said that if she wished to marry she should do so, as no harm could come to the country now that Alen?on had agreed to their terms; but, he added, if she did not mean to marry him she ought to undeceive him at once. She sharply told him that the rest of the councillors were not of his opinion, but that the Duke should be kept in hand by correspondence. How could she tell, she asked, the feeling of the King of Spain towards her, and whether it would227 be safe for her to let go her hold on France? Cecil, not relishing the snub, replied that those who tried to trick princes were themselves generally tricked in the end. The Spanish ambassador thought, and he was no doubt right, that Alen?on’s pressure and covert threats were for the purpose of forcing the Queen to help him in his designs in Flanders as some solatium for the slight she had put upon him and his family by throwing him over in the marriage negotiations; and colour is given to this view by the fact that envoys arrived simultaneously from La Noue, the Huguenot chief, who was now in the service of the States, from Orange, and the Prince of Condé, to beg the Queen to send help to establish Alen?on in the Netherlands. This appeared to the Queen a good way out of her difficulty, and she seems to have seized it with avidity, though always with a pretence that the marriage negotiations were still pending, in order to save appearances and disarm the French Government. On the receipt, therefore, of a letter from Alen?on by Captain Bourg, on the 7th of March, announcing that he only awaited her permission to send Marshal de Cossé, to settle the conditions, the Queen took what was for her a very unusual step, namely, to pay a ceremonious visit by water to the French ambassador, to promise him shortly to fix a date for the coming of the commissioners. How hollow the pretence was, however, is seen by a letter written at the same time by Simier to the Queen, headed by a true lovers’ knot, in which “her faithful monkey” deplores that she has broken off the match which he ascribes to the machinations of his enemies, and says that he would rather have given his right arm and228 ten years of his life than it should have happened, or if she had decided to break it off that she had not done so ten months before. Elizabeth continued her great show of cordiality to the French ambassador, and when the Prince of Condé himself came in June to complain to her of the treatment suffered by the Protestants in France, and to beg her aid, she went to the length of refusing to receive him excepting in the presence of Castelnau, and by every means in her power sought to bring about an understanding with the French Government before she pledged herself single-handed too deeply in the troubled affairs of Flanders. But this did not at all suit Alen?on, who had his own game to play and knew full well that if a cordial alliance were arranged between his brother and the Queen of England there would be no need for the latter to marry him, or for either part............