Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

by Lucy Aikin

By the secret league of Bayonne, the courts of France and Spain had pledged themselves to pursue in concert the great work of the extirpation of heresy; and while Catherine was laying hidden trains for the destruction of the Hugonots, Philip II., by measures of open force and relentless cruelty, was striving to annihilate the protestants of the Low Countries, and to impose upon those devoted provinces the detested yoke of the inquisition.

Elizabeth was aware of all that was going on; and she well knew that when once these worthy associates had succeeded in crushing the reformation in their own dominions, Scotland and England would become the immediate theatre of their operations. Already were the catholics of the two countries privately encouraged to rely on them for support, and incited to aid the common cause by giving all the disturbance in their power to their respective governments.

Considerations of policy therefore, no less than of religion, moved her to afford such succours, first to the French protestants and afterwards to the Flemings, as might enable them to prolong at least the contest; but her caution and her frugality conspired to restrain her from involving herself in actual warfare for the defence of either. At the very time therefore that she was secretly supplying the Hugonots with money and giving them assurances of her support, she was more than ever attentive to preserve all the exteriors of friendship with the court of France.

It suited the views of the queen-mother to receive with complacency and encouragement the dissembling professions of Elizabeth; by which she was not herself deceived, but which served to deceive and to alarm her enemies the protestants, and in some measure to mask her designs against them. We have seen what high civilities had passed between the courts on occasion of the admission of the French king into the order of the garter,—but this is little to what followed.

In 1568, after the remonstrances and intercession of Elizabeth, the succours lent by the German protestants, and the strenuous resistance made by the Hugonots themselves, had procured for this persecuted sect a short and treacherous peace, Catherine, in proof and confirmation of her entire friendship with the queen of England, began to drop hints to her ambassador of a marriage between his mistress and her third son the duke of Anjou, then only seventeen years of age. Elizabeth was assuredly not so much of a dupe as to believe the queen-mother sincere in this strange proposal; yet it was entertained by her with the utmost apparent seriousness. She even thought proper to give it a certain degree of cautious encouragement, which Catherine was doubtless well able rightly to interpret; and with this extraordinary kind of mutual understanding, these two ingenious females continued for months, nay years, to amuse themselves and one another with the representation of carrying on of negotiations for a treaty of marriage. Elizabeth, with the most candid and natural air in the world, remarked that difference of religion would present the most serious obstacle to so desirable an union: Catherine, with equal plausibility, hoped that on this point terms of agreement might be found satisfactory to both parties; and warming as they proceeded, one began to imagine the conditions to which a catholic prince could with honor accede, and the other to invent the objections which ought to be made to them by a protestant princess.

The philosophical inquirer, who has learned from the study of history how much more the high destinies of nations are governed by the permanent circumstances of geographical position and relative force, and the great moral causes which act upon whole ages and peoples, than by negotiations, intrigues, schemes of politicians and tricks of state, will be apt to regard as equally futile and base the petty manœuvres of dissimulation and artifice employed by each queen to incline in her own favor the political balance. But in justice to the memories of Catherine and Elizabeth,—women whom neither their own nor any after-times have taxed with folly,—it ought at least to be observed, that in mistaking the excess of falsehood for the perfection of address, the triumphs of cunning for the masterpieces of public wisdom, they did but partake the error of the ablest male politicians of that age of statesmen. The same narrow views of the interest of princes and of states governed them all: they seem to have believed that the right and the expedient were constantly opposed to each other; in the intercourses of public men they thought that nothing was more carefully to be shunned than plain speaking and direct dealings, and in these functionaries they regarded the use of every kind of "indirection" as allowable, because absolutely essential to the great end of serving their country.

Amongst the wiser and better part of Elizabeth's council however, such a profound abhorrence of the measures of the French court at this time prevailed, and such an honest eagerness to join heart and hand with the oppressed Hugonots for the redress of their intolerable grievances, that it required all her vigilance and address to keep them within the limits of that temporizing moderation which she herself was bent on preserving.

In the correspondence of Cecil with sir Henry Norris, then ambassador in France, the bitterness of his feelings is perpetually breaking out, and he cannot refrain from relating with extreme complacency such words of displeasure as her majesty was at any time moved to let fall against her high allies. In November 1567, when civil war had again broken out in France, he acquaints the ambassador that the queen dislikes to give assistance to Condé and his party against their sovereign, but recommends it to him to do it occasionally notwithstanding, as the council are their friends.

In September 1568 he writes thus: "The French ambassador has sent his nephew to require audience, and that it might be ordered to have her majesty's council present at the bishop's missado. Her majesty's answer was, that they forgot themselves, in coming from a king that was but young, to think her not able to conceive an answer without her council: and although she could use the advice of her council, as was meet, yet she saw no cause why they should thus deal with her, being of full years, and governing her realm in better sort than France was. So the audience, being demanded on Saturday, was put off till Tuesday, wherewith I think they are not contented." Again: "Monsieur de Montausier... was brought to the queen's presence to report the victory which God had given the French king by a battle, as he termed it, wherein was slain the prince of Condé; whereunto, as I could conceive, her majesty answered, that of any good fortune happening to the king she was glad; but that she thought it also to be condoled with the king, that it should be counted a victory to have a prince of his blood slain; and so with like speech, not fully to their contentation[67]."