How purely political as an issue religion had become by this time in Europe is made almost cynically manifest in the conferences between the advocates of the French-English match for the purpose of overcoming the religious disparities represented by the principals in the proposed match. From the beginning of the negotiations it was evident that every compromise made in religion would have to be made by France. The incongruities of age and religion and the complications of politics were great. The hardest thing, perhaps, to estimate, is the influence of Elizabeth’s vacillation. Catherine de Medici, on the whole, seems to have been anxious for the match. So protracted and so intricate were the negotiations that the duke of Anjou, with mingled prejudice and despair, declared that “all was but dalliance.”[1474] It was speciously urged upon the duke that no attempt was being made to effect his sudden conversion to the Anglican religion, but that he should forego the use of private mass, and “examine whether he might not with good devotion use the forms of prayers appointed throughout her realm, the same being in effect nothing but that which the Church of Rome uses, saving that it is in the English tongue, which, if he pleased, might be translated into French; and further, that the usage of the divine service in England did not properly compel any man to alter his opinion in the great matters being now in controversy in the church.”[1475] To this it was rejoined that “religion was a constant persuasion confirmed by time” and that “relenting in religion, being a matter of conscience, was an inconvenience of more weight than any that might happen to the queen.”[1476] For a while Anjou, although after the Edict of St. Germain he had staunchly protested that no preaching be allowed anywhere in his territories—which the King granted—wavered between policy and conscience. One day while visiting Madame Carnevalet, the wife of his tutor, he said with affected gaiety: “Carnevalet, thou and I were once Huguenots, and now again are become good Catholics.” “Aye,” she said, “we were so, and if you proceed in the matter you wot of, you will then return to be a Huguenot.”[1477]
Spain did everything possible to thwart the negotiation. Her ambassador in the presence of the King’s council inveighed against the plan, asserting that the kingdom of France was going to ruin, but he was cautious not to allege any ground but that of religion.[1478] Finally the counter-practices of the Guises and the Spanish ambassador, partly by appeals to religious scruples and partly by the means of lavish promises, overcame Anjou’s hesitation and he flatly refused to consider the marriage.[1479] The King was furious. “Brother,” he said, “you should have used some plainness with me in this matter and not leave me to wade so far to abuse a prince I so much esteem and honour. You allege conscience to be the cause but I know it is a late pension offered unto you by the clergy, who would have you still remain here for a champion of the Catholic faith. I tell you plainly, I will have no other champion here but myself, and seeing you have such a desire to remain here on such respects, it behooves me the more narrowly to look to you; and as for the clergy, seeing they have so great superfluity, and I so great necessity, the benefices being at my disposition, I will take a new order; and as for those who make the offer, I will make some of them shorter by the head.”[1480]
Nevertheless, despite the fact that the cause was a lost one, the matter was protracted so long that the negotiators of the affair themselves perceived the humor in it. Elizabeth protested that “of herself she had no mind thereto, yet the continual crying unto her of her Privy Council, the necessity of the time, and the love of her subjects, had turned her mind to marriage,” while the duke of Anjou reasserted his belief in his future damnation if he yielded anything in the matter of religion. Smith, the English envoy, solemnly averred that “the matter of religion would be the most honourable to break off with,” both for his mistress and the duke, and in the same breath asked whether it would suffice if the duke were suffered for a time to have his mass private in some little oratory or chapel—this so that there should be no scandal to any of the Queen’s subjects. The queen mother replied that the duke must have the exercise of his religion open, lest he should seem to be ashamed of it, and that he was now of late so devout that he heard two or three masses every day, and fasted the Lent and vigils so precisely “that he began to be lean and evil-coloured,” so that she was angry with him and told him that she “had rather he were an Huguenot than be so foolishly precise to hurt his health.” She told the English ambassador that he would not be content to have his mass in a corner, but insisted upon “high mass and all the ceremonies thereof according to the time, and in song after all solemn fashion of the Roman church, and a church or chapel appointed where he might openly have his priests and singers and use all their ceremonies.”
“Why, Madame,” ejaculated Smith, “then he may require also the four orders of friars, monks, canons, pilgrimages, pardons, oil and cream, relics, and all such trumperies. The queen of England will never agree to any mass, let alone great high mass, with all the ceremonies of Rome according to the season, priest, deacon, subdeacon, chalice, altar, bells, candlesticks, paten, singing men, ‘les quatre mendiants et tous les mille diables’”—at which tirade all but Anjou laughed.[1481]
It is at this moment that the duke of Alençon comes forward into the light around the throne. Since the duke of Anjou was “so extraordinarily, papistically superstitious”[1482] both sides turned toward him, notwithstanding the absurd disparity between his age and that of Queen Elizabeth. Even Elizabeth’s hardy modesty blushed at the thought of such a match,[1483] and the objection of inequality in their ages was backed up by guarded expressions of repugnance on account of the disfigurement the young duke had suffered from smallpox.[1484]
The Huguenot pressure eagerly supported the proposed marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the duke of Alençon, for the duke was as easy in religion as his brother was straight.[1485] The admiral Coligny urged it upon Lord Burghley, pointing out that it would strengthen the treaty of Blois,[1486] while others urged that England would have a practical advantage from the fact that Alençon was as rich in lands as his brother, and that the duchy of Alençon adjoined Normandy, where the whole of the nobility was devoted to the duke, and hoped by his means to be restored to their ancient privileges and liberties, and that then England could make “a bulwark and defense” out of Normandy for her own protection.[1487]
It is a difficult story to take seriously, for each one of the actors felt its hollowness and unreality. One feels that it was a gigantic bubble produced by English and French councilors of state to amuse and occupy each other by its brilliancy and wavering instability. Yet the greatest statesmen in England were driven nearly to distraction by their endeavors to keep it in the air. At first this diplomatic affair assumes an almost farcical comedy aspect: then it darkens into tragedy. It is a game of chess in which the players are grave and reverend statesmen and the pieces queens and princes, with this distinction, that the pieces are always likely to move of themselves and create unexpected combinations. Yet, for all its hollowness, the story deserves attention, for as long as it lasted it absorbed the attention of the persons concerned, and it illustrates most admirably Elizabeth’s and Catherine’s tortuous methods of diplomacy.
When the negotiations began, Elizabeth was already thirty-eight years old and of vast experience in promoting and then avoiding marriages. As a coy and bashful damsel, she could always plead her repugnance to the marriage state, and as the head of a Protestant nation, religion was another rock of refuge when anxious or angry suitors pressed her too closely. She had fooled Philip and she had kept the poor Austrian archduke gamboling before her. What could the pockmarked François d’Alençon expect but disaster? Yet it was he who came the nearest to pinning her down to a state of matrimonial stability.