[834] "Je suis résolue de faire tous mes efforts pour réheussir pour mon fils d'Alençon, qui ne sera pas si difficile." Ibid., vii. 235.
[835] It must be admitted that some indignation on Queen Elizabeth's part was pardonable, if, as we learn from La Mothe Fénélon (despatch of May 2, 1571), she had heard that a certain person of high rank in the French court had recommended Anjou to marry the English "granny"—"ceste vieille"—and administer to her, under some pretext, a "French potion"—"un breuvage de France"—so as to become a widower within six months of the wedding day. Then he might marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and reign with her peaceably over the whole island! Correspondance diplomatique, iv. 84. However sincere or zealous Elizabeth may have been previously, I doubt whether she ever forgave the suggestion, or the fair princess whose charms were thus exalted above her own.
[836] De Thou, iv. (liv. l.) 492.
[837] "I would your lordship knew the gentleman," enthusiastically writes Walsingham (August 12th, 1571) to the Earl of Leicester. "For courage abroad and counsell at home they give him here the reputation to be another [name in cipher]. He is in speech eloquent and pithy; but which is chiefest, he is in religion, as religious in life as he is sincere in profession. I hope God hath raised him up in these days, to serve for an instrument for the advancement of His glory." Digges, 128. In another letter, without date, the ambassador speaks of him as "surely the rarest gentleman which I have talked withal since I came to France," Ibid., 176.
[838] The substance of Louis of Nassau's secret interviews is best given by Walsingham in a long communication, of August 12, 1571, to Lord Burleigh, Digges, 123-127.
[839] "Contre les deffences et proscriptions de son duc, qui à plat avoit refusé le Roi de souffrir ce mariage, elle s'en vint à la Rochelle pour avoir nom avant de mourir (ainsi qu'elle disoit) la Martia de Caton." Agrippa d'Aubigné, ii. 5.
[840] "A quoi ses ennemis trouvèrent à redire, publiant qu'il n'apartenoit qu'aux princes d'épouser par procurateur. Mais ceux qui parloient des choses sans passion, imputoient ces sortes de discours à médisance, soûtenant de leur côté qu'il ne pouvoit faire autrement, puisqu'il n'y avoit pas de sureté pour lui à l'aller épouser," etc. Vie de Coligny, 386.
[841] A very interesting account of the long imprisonment of Coligny's widow is to be found in Count Jules Delaborde's monograph, "Jacqueline d'Entremont," apud Bulletin de la Société de l'hist. du prot. fr., xvi. (1867) 220-246.
[842] A few months before the admiral's departure from La Rochelle, there had been held in this Huguenot asylum a convocation of historical importance. The sessions of the seventh national synod, lasting from the second to the eleventh of April, 1571, were consumed in important deliberations respecting the doctrines and discipline of the reformed church (see Aymon, Tous les synodes, i. 98-111). The Queen of Navarre, the Princes of Navarre and Condé, Count Louis of Nassau, and Admiral Coligny were present. At the request of the synod, they added their signatures to those of the ministers and elders, upon three copies of the Confession of Faith, engrossed on parchment, which were to be kept at La Rochelle, in Béarn, and at Geneva respectively (see the eighth general article). The moderator on this occasion was Theodore Beza, who had been specially invited to France. The reformer was certainly not destitute of courage, for he could not have forgotten the dangers to which he had been exposed on previous visits to France. They were even greater than Beza himself probably knew. In June, 1563, after the conclusion of the first civil war, there was a rumor at Brussels that Beza could not return to Geneva, because of a quarrel he had had with Calvin. Thereupon, the Duchess of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, suspecting that he might be tempted to come through the Spanish dominions, issued secret orders that the frontiers should be watched, and offered a reward of one thousand florins to any one who should bring him, dead or alive. He was described as "homme de moïenne stature, ayant barbe à demy blanche, et le visage hault et large." Letters of the Duchess of Parma, June 11th and 25th, 1563, apud Charles Paillard, Histoire des troubles religieux de Valenciennes (Paris and Brussels, 1875, 1876), iii. 339, 340, 356.
[843] Walsingham to Burleigh, Aug. 12, 1571, Digges, 122. The ambassador informs Elizabeth, in this letter, of the intense desire of the French Protestants that she should express to the French envoy her approval of the invitation extended to the princes and Coligny, and should say "that so rare a subject as the admiral is was not to be suffered to live in such a corner as Rochelle." It was thought that her commendations would greatly advance his credit with the king.