The Duchess of Parma was received with due honour at Court, and was cordially welcomed by Christina, who had known her as a child. A handsome woman of thirty-five, she resembled her Flemish mother more than her imperial father, and bore few traces of her Habsburg origin. She had none of Christina's distinction and refinement, while her manners were too haughty to please the Flemish nobles. But she had a keen eye to her own interests, and the atmosphere of deception and intrigue in which her married life had been spent had taught her to adapt herself to circumstances. She contrived to make herself agreeable both to Philip and Christina, with whom most of her time was spent. The new Venetian Ambassador, Soranzo, paid his respects to the two ladies on his arrival, and found both of them very friendly and pleasant. The Duchess of Lorraine, as Badoer had frequently remarked, was always particularly cordial to the Venetian Signory, to whom her first husband, the Duke of Milan, owed so much. At the same time the Queen of England, anxious to show civility to her husband's family, sent Sir Richard Shelley to give the Duchess of Parma a sisterly welcome, and invite her to come to London.[520]
In the midst of the Christmas festivities, news reached Brussels of a treacherous attempt of the French, under Coligny, to surprise Douay. Fortunately the plot was discovered in time; but the truce was broken, and every day fresh incursions were made by the French, which naturally produced reprisals. The rupture was complete, and, in his anxiety to secure the help of England in the coming struggle, the King at length crossed the Channel, and joined Mary at Greenwich on the 21st of January, 1557. Political exigencies had done more to hasten his return than all his wife's prayers and tears, but in her joy she recked little of this, and guns were fired and Te Deums chanted throughout the realm. Before leaving Brussels, Philip had made arrangements for the two Duchesses to follow him in a few days. Their society, he felt, would help to dispel the gloom of Mary's Court, and Margaret's coming would allay any jealousy which Christina's visit might excite. Another and more important motive for his cousin's presence in England at this moment was his anxiety to revive the old scheme of a marriage between the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Savoy. Mary's state of health made her sister's marriage a matter of the highest importance, and the new quarrel with France had put an end to the Duke's hopes in that quarter. As both the French and Venetian Ambassadors constantly affirmed, Emanuel Philibert was the only foreign Prince whom the English would tolerate, and Christina herself told Vaudemont that she was going to England, by the King's wish, to bring back Madame Elizabeth as the Duke of Savoy's bride.[521]
PHILIP II. (1554)
By Jacopo da Trezzo (British Museum)
MARY, QUEEN OF ENGLAND (1554)
By Jacopo da Trezzo (British Museum)
