[959] La Planche, 404; De Thou, ii. 835 (liv. xxvi.). The latter does not place implicit confidence in these reports, while conceding that subsequent events would induce a belief that they were not destitute of a foundation. According to Throkmorton, also, writing to Cecil, Sept. 3, 1560, the chief burden was to rest with the clergy, who gave eight-tenths of the whole subsidy. State Paper Office.
[960] Ibid., 403; De Thou, iii. 82.
[961] Throkmorton's despatches from Orleans, several frequently sent off on a single day, acquaint us with the rapid progress of the king's disease, and the cold calculations based upon it. "The constitution of his body," he writes in the third of his letters that bear date Nov. 28th (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 156), "is such, as the physicians do say he cannot be long-lived: and thereunto he hath by his too timely and inordinate exercise now in his youth, added an evil accident; so as there be that do not let to say, though he do recover this sickness, he cannot live two years; whereupon there is plenty of discourses here of the French Queen's second marriage; some talk of the Prince of Spain, some of the Duke of Austrich, others of the Earl of Arran." No wonder that cabinet ministers and others often grew weary of the interminable debates respecting the marriages of queens regnant, and that William Cecil, as early as July, 1561, wrote respecting Queen Bess: "Well, God send our Mistress a husband, and by time a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession. This matter is too big for weak folks, and too deep for simple." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 174.
[962] Throkmorton to Chamberlain, Nov. 21, 1560. British Museum.
[963] De Thou, ii. 833, etc. (liv. 26); D'Aubigné, liv. ii., c. 20, p. 103.
[964] On the 17th of Nov. Throkmorton had written: "The house of Guise practiseth by all the means they can, to make the Queen Mother Regent of France at this next assembly; so as they are like to have all the authority still in their hands, for she is wholly theirs." Hardwick, State Papers, i. 140. D'Aubigné (ubi supra), who attributes to the sagacious counsel of Chancellor de l'Hospital the credit of influencing Catharine to take this course.
[965] I must refer the reader for the details of this remarkable interview and its results, which, it must be noted, Catharine insisted on Antoine's acknowledging over his signature, to the Histoire de l'Estat de France, tant de la république que de la religion, sous le règne de François II., commonly attributed to Louis Regnier de la Planche (pp. 415-418)—a work whose trustworthiness and accuracy are above reproach, and respecting which my only regret is that its valuable assistance deserts me at this point of the history.
[966] Ibid., 413.
[967] The words in the text are those of Calvin, in a letter to Sturm, written Dec. 16, 1560, not many days after the receipt of the astonishing intelligence. "Did you ever read or hear," he says, "of anything more opportune than the death of the king? The evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God shows himself from heaven! He who pierced the eye of the father has now stricken the ear of the son." Bonnet, Calvin's Letters, Am. ed., iv. 152.
[968] Evidently the Guises had acquiesced with so much alacrity in the convocation of the States General only because of their confidence in their power to intimidate any party that should undertake to oppose them. Chantonnay, the Spanish ambassador, informed Philip of this before Francis's death, and gave the Cardinal of Lorraine as his authority for the statement: "Le ha dicho el cardenal de Lorrena que para aquel tiempo avria aqui tanta gente de guerra y se daria tal órden que a qualquiera que quiziesse hablar se le cerrasse la boca, y assi ne se hiziesse mas dello que ellos quiziessen." Simancas MSS., apud Mignet, Journal des savants, 1859, p. 40.