CHAPTER XI.
THE COMING OF THE KING.
January-July, 1554.
Courtenay was still on the horns of a dilemma, where the weakness and natural timidity of his character kept him irresolute. While he did not hesitate to play with treason, listening to the French ambassador’s flattering suggestions that he should marry Elizabeth, set up his standard in the south-west, and gather round it the disaffected, he hesitated, in the faint hope that the Queen might yet raise him by a safer path to the throne. Never was ambition supported by less courage, moral or physical. De Noailles was in despair as much on account of Courtenay’s want of decision as because of his loose conduct.[378]
It had cost Paget and Renard much trouble to persuade Mary to simulate a belief, which she was now far from entertaining, in Elizabeth’s loyalty. But at last, her sister’s collusion with traitors could no longer be ignored, and remembering all that she had suffered at the hands of Anne Boleyn, the Queen would have been credulous indeed, if she had continued to place confidence in Anne Boleyn’s daughter.[379] The awakening had involved a shock, but Renard and the Spanish party in the Council, consisting of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Arundel and Lord Paget, prevailed on her to control her indignation, in order to pave the way for her marriage; and it is probable that the idea, which now suggested itself to the Queen and Paget, of marrying Elizabeth to Courtenay,[380] originated in the wish to propitiate those who were opposed to the Spanish match. Half the objection to the Queen’s union with a foreigner would, they thought, vanish, if it were clearly understood, that in the event of her death without issue, not Philip of Spain, but the English heirs of Elizabeth and Courtenay would succeed to the throne. It was a strange coincidence that the same idea should have occurred both to the Queen and her friends, and to her bitterest foe the French ambassador. He thought thereby to create a strong party for Elizabeth and Courtenay, while the loyalists hoped to put an end to the discontent. But the Emperor, to whom of course the plan was at once referred, nipped it in the bud. He saw that to promote such a marriage would be suicidal, for it would constitute the contracting parties natural heads of the conspiracy, and furnish them with a strong motive for plotting against the Queen’s life.[381]
Elizabeth, who was now at Hatfield, and eager to prove the sincerity of her conversion, wrote to her sister for copes, chasubles and everything necessary for Catholic worship in her chapel; but it was remarked that she surrounded herself exclusively with those of the new doctrines, and that she was considerably hampered by the constant supervision under which she lived. “Toutefois, je vous laisse à penser Sire,” wrote de Noailles, “si ladite dame Elisabeth est en peyne d’estre si près éclairée (watched) ce qui n’est fait sans quelque raison, car je vous puis asseurer Sire, qu’elle désire fort de se mettre hors de tutelle, et à ce que j’entends, il ne tiendra qu’à lord Courtenay qu’il ne l’espouse, et qu’elle ne le suive jusques au pays de Dampschier (Devonshire) et de Cornouailles, où il se peult croire que s’ils y estoient assemblez, ils seroient pour avoir une bonne part a ceste couronne.... Mais le malheur est tel, que ledit de Courtenay est en si grande craincte, qu’il n’ose rien entreprendre. Je ne vois moyen qui soit pour l’empeschier sinon la faute de cueur.”[382]
On the 2nd January 1554, the imperial envoys, Counts Egmont and Lalain, Jean de Montmorency, Lord of Corrières, and the Sieur de Nigry, Chancellor of the Order of the Golden Fleece, arrived in England, “for the knitting up of the marriage of the Queen to the King of Spain, before whose landing there was let off a great peal of guns in the Tower”. At the Tower wharf they were met by Sir Anthony Browne, “he being clothed in a very gorgeous apparel,” and on Tower Hill, the Earl of Devon, and others received them, “in most honourable and familiar wise”. Courtenay gave his right hand to Count Egmont, “and brought him throughout Cheapside, and so forth to Westminster; the people nothing rejoicing held down their heads sorrowfully. The day before his coming in, as his retinue and harbingers came riding through London, the boys pelted them with snowballs, so hateful was the sight of their coming in to them.”[383]
The Council and the municipality of London did their best to counteract the impression conveyed by the attitude of the people, and the next day, the Lord Mayor and the Lord Chamberlain waited on the envoys, and presented them with various rich gifts. On the 9th, they were invited to a banquet given by the Lords of the Privy Council. On the 10th they went to Hampton Court.[384] In an audience, at which the whole court was present, they formally demanded Mary’s hand for the Prince of Spain. The Queen replied, that it became not a woman to speak in public, on so delicate a matter as her own marriage, but that they might confer with her ministers, who would make known to them her resolution; but, fixing her eyes on the ring that had been placed on her finger at her coronation, she told the envoys to bear in mind that her realm was her first husband, and that no consideration would induce her to violate the faith she had already pledged.[385]