Great French embassy to England to settle the Alen?on match—Elizabeth’s efforts to gain her objects without marriage—Alen?on’s determination to relieve Cambrai—Henry III. strenuously opposes his brother’s plans in Flanders—Alleged flying visit of Alen?on to England—Catharine’s efforts to divert Alen?on from his plans in Flanders—Elizabeth attempts to draw France into war with Spain without her marriage with Alen?on.

At length, after endless bickering about the rank of the proposed ambassadors and the Queen’s assent had been received by Alen?on, the envoys were ordered to rendezvous at Calais. There they were delayed for some weeks, first for the young Prince Dauphin, of Montpensier, whom the King had added to the list of ambassadors to please the Queen at Alen?on’s request, and then by the illness of other members of the embassy. Early in April, 1581, however, all was ready for their crossing, and then the English Council began to get alarmed at the number of their following and the sumptuous nature of the embassy, which most of the councillors knew was destined to return with the marriage still undecided. At last, however, a general passport was granted at the instance of the Queen, who said she could not afford to offend Alen?on at this juncture. Workmen were set on in furious haste to build a grand-stand in the palace at Westminster, wherein238 to entertain the visitors. Ten thousand pounds’ worth of plate was ordered for presents, and jousts, banquets, and balls were hastily organised. “The Queen went to the length of issuing an order in Council that shopkeepers were to sell their cloth of gold, velvets, silks, and other such stuffs at a reduction of one quarter from the price per yard, as she says she wishes them to do her this service in order that the ladies and gentlemen may be the better able to bedizen themselves. “This seems an evident sign that her only object is to satisfy her own vanity and keep Alen?on in hand.”125 The writer goes on to say that the Queen is paying no heed to the weighty questions which will have to be settled by the embassy, but is entirely absorbed by the consideration of new devices for jousts, where a ball is to be held, what beautiful women are to be at Court, and such-like trifles. On the 14th of April the glittering embassy embarked at Calais. It consisted of nearly five hundred persons in all, and included Francis de Bourbon, Dauphin of Auvergne, the son of the Duke of Montpensier; Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons, the youngest of the Condé family; Marshal de Cossé; the Counts of Sancerre and Carrouges; Lansac, Barnabé Brisson, the famous president of the parliament of Paris; La Mothe Fénélon; Pinart, Catharine’s Secretary of State; de Vray; Jean Bodin, and others of high rank. Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque ports, the Earl of Pembroke, and others, received them at Dover with a great train of the Queen’s carriages, in which they were conveyed to Gravesend, where239 a great number of the nobility met them with the Queen’s barges to carry them to Somerset House. London itself was crowded with the nobility and Parliament-men, who had been specially ordered to remain in town with their families. “They are also collecting,” says Mendoza, “all their servants and trains, both for the sake of ostentation and because, being a suspicious folk, they fear some disturbance, particularly Leicester, who is making greater efforts than any one to collect a large company of kinsmen and servants.” London itself was gloomy and discontented at the coming of the embassy, but withal was kept from open disturbance by the underlying belief, now pretty general, that State alliance rather than marriage would be the ultimate result of it all. A salute of two hundred guns greeted the envoys as they passed under London Bridge in their barges on the 21st of April. Saturday, the 24th, was St. George’s Day, and the ambassadors were taken in great state by water to visit the Queen at Whitehall. A vast banqueting-hall, says Hollingshead, had been erected on the south side of the palace covered with painted canvas and decorated in a style of most fantastic splendour. Pendants of fruits, and even vegetables, were hung from festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and flowers, the whole lavishly sprinkled with spangles. The ceiling was painted like a sky, with stars and sunbeams intermixed with escutcheons of the royal arms, and a profusion of glass lustres illuminated the whole. The envoys themselves, giving an account of their reception,126 say that the walls of the chamber were240 hung entirely with cloth of gold and silver; the throne, raised on a dais, being surmounted by a silken canopy covered with roses embroidered in pearls. The Queen herself was dressed in cloth of gold spangled with diamonds and rubies, and smilingly inclined her head as the less important members of the embassy passed before her. When the young Dauphin, a prince of the blood and the representative of the King, approached, however, she stepped down from the dais and in English fashion kissed him on the lips, and said a few gracious words to Marshal de Cossé, Brisson, Carrouges, and La Mothe Fénélon, who followed him. Again and again she besought the young Prince to don his plumed bonnet, and the crowd being dense and the heat great, instead of again mounting her dais she retired to an open window overlooking the Thames. Lansac seized the opportunity of presenting to her a French painter who had been commissioned by Catharine de Medici to paint her portrait, whereupon the Queen, ever avid for compliments, said he must represent her with a veil over her face, so that they might not think her too old. That day and the next passed in almost interminable entertainments, which, as they are described in the pages of Hollingshead, and by the ambassadors themselves, appear to us incredibly far-fetched, childish, and absurd; but which doubtless at the time were considered models of poetry and delicate compliment to the Queen and her guests. At length, on taking leave of the Queen after the third day of feasting, the Prince Dauphin asked her when they should get to business, and which councillors she would appoint241 to negotiate with the embassy. She was of course well prepared for the request, and had planned her course before the envoys had set foot in England. Leicester and Walsingham had done their best to prevent the passport for them from being sent, but had been overborne by Cecil, Sussex, and the Queen herself; and when Leicester, on the day before their crossing, came again to his mistress and pointed out the danger she ran in, carrying the matter so far, she tranquillised him by saying that if the embassy became too pressing she would confuse the negotiations by bringing Alen?on himself over to England for a few days, whilst the envoys were here. She could, she said, square matters without a marriage and without offence by giving him a money aid to his Netherlands projects. To Sussex, and, above all, to Marchaumont, she artfully told an entirely opposite tale, and led them to believe that if the Duke came suddenly and secretly she would certainly marry him, and, needless to say, “the monk” at once wrote pressing his master to make ready to come over if necessary. But Marchaumont at the same time told the ambassadors that he was of opinion that unless they could get a distinct pledge that the marriage should take place they ought to veto the Duke’s visit. The control of events was thus cunningly centred in the Queen’s hand. As the Spanish ambassador points out to Philip, she had silenced the opposition of Leicester and his friends, had convinced those favourable to the marriage of her sincerity, whilst providing herself with a loophole of escape in any case. If Alen?on did come she could deal with him over the heads of the embassy, and so confuse242 matters, whilst if he did not come she could allege that as a reason for not marrying him, and infer that the negotiations had fallen through by no fault of her own.127 When the Prince Dauphin therefore asked her to appoint a committee of the Council she was ready for him, and named Cecil, Bedford, Leicester, Sussex, Hatton, and Walsingham—that is to say, three men who were determined to prevent the marriage if possible, one—Sussex—honestly in favour of it, and the other two—Cecil and Bedford—only concerned in rendering the match innocuous to English interests, if the Queen determined to carry it through, which neither of them believed she would. Business began with a grand banquet at the Lord Treasurer’s new house in the Strand, hard by the lodgings of the embassy. After a verification of powers Cecil made a long speech to the effect that, although he had formerly opposed the marriage, he now considered that it would be conducive to the interests of England, and Brisson replied in a similar strain. Walsingham then launched his thunderbolt. He alleged that since, and as a consequence of, de Bacqueville’s mission eighteen months before, the Pope had flooded England with Jesuit emissaries, and had sent armed forces to Ireland. The projected marriage, he said, had raised the hopes of the Catholics in England, who were already discounting its effects. He dwelt upon the dangers which might attend an accouchement of the Queen at her age, and complained bitterly that Alen?on, even since the negotiations had been in progress, had entered into dealings with the States-General of Flanders. The marriage243 might therefore drag England into war, and the Queen had consequently written a letter to the Duke, to which she was now awaiting the reply.128 The envoys replied in astonishment that they had looked upon the principle of the marriage as settled before they came, and could not enter into discussions of that sort, but pointed out that as England had now offended Spain past forgiveness, it was needful for the Queen to gain the friendship of France by means of the marriage. They were told that if the Queen married it would be from no such consideration as this, but out of pure affection, and suggested that if the marriage did not take place an offensive and defensive alliance against Spain might be concluded. But this, although the main object of the Englishmen, did not at all suit the French. They were only authorised, they said, to conclude the marriage, for which purpose they had come, and not to arrange an alliance. Let the Queen marry Monsieur first, and then she might be sure the King of France would help her in the Netherlands and elsewhere. “In the meanwhile,” says Mendoza, “no formal commission has been given to the English ministers, by which it is clear that the Queen is simply procrastinating about the marriage in order to draw the French into an offensive alliance without burdening herself with a husband, whilst the French wish first to make sure of the marriage.129 That the Spanish ambassador was quite right in his reading of events we may now see by the note in Cecil’s hand summarising the arguments244 pro and con for the Queen’s guidance, and also by the draft of the discourse pronounced by Walsingham to the ambassadors which very plainly show that the Queen at this time, notwithstanding her honeyed words to “the monk” and loving letters to Alen?on, was not in earnest. Banquet succeeded banquet, but the Frenchmen could get no further. In vain they protested that they had simply come to conclude the draft contract negotiated by Simier, that their mission was limited, and that they had no more time to waste in merrymaking. Let us get to business first, they said, and feast afterwards. On the 7th of May they were invited to a ball at Whitehall, after which the Queen again pressed upon them the necessity for an alliance between England and France, but said she could not go any further with the marriage until she heard again from Alen?on. In vain her plaintive “monkey,” from his abbey of Bourgueil, wrote praying her to make her lovelorn “frog” happy without further delay, in vain Marchaumont pressed in his master’s name that she would not shame him by throwing him over after all that had passed between them. Smiles, sweet words, and vague protestations were all they could get; and Secretary Pinart wrote on the 21st of May to Catharine: “The Queen makes all sorts of demonstrations to us, but we can get no further. At a supper given by Sussex the Queen expressed her satisfaction to La Mothe Fénélon at the approaches the French had made to Leicester, who, she said, had done his best to forward their views and to maintain a friendly understanding between the two countries. La Mothe drily replied that245 such an understanding would be easy when the marriage was concluded. Oh! said the Queen, as for the marriage, that is in the hands of God, and she could say nothing more about that until she received a reply from Alen?on. La Mothe thereupon declined to discuss any other question and the Queen closed the colloquy in a huff. Two days after this, when the envoys had become quite disheartened and perplexed at Marchaumont’s secret dealings with the Queen and Sussex over their heads, Elizabeth suddenly sent de Vray to Alen?on with a private autograph letter,130 in the sealing-wax of which she embedded a diamond; and at the same time Marchaumont wrote urging his master to come over and gain the prize by a coup-de-main, on the strength of a document which he had obtained from the committee of the Council containing some favourable expressions towards the match. At the same time Marchaumont was brought to a lodging in the gardens of Whitehall and an elaborate pretence of keeping some important personage concealed there was made, partly to prepare the public mind for the coming of the Duke a............