All this was looked upon with dismay by the Spaniards and the league. Gerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador in England, writes to his master[61] an assurance that the marriage will take place, and that the English are treating him more arrogantly than ever in consequence. “The real remedy,” he says, “is that with which Ridolfi is charged.” Nor were the ultra-Catholics in Paris less desperate. In vain Charles IX. assured Téligny that he would have his brother “away from the superstitious friars, and would in a few days work him, as he will yield to anything that he, the King, might require.” The King said that his brother was every day growing less superstitious, but his Catholic courtiers left no stone unturned to make the match impossible. Soon after Cavalcanti had left London La Mothe went to see the Queen, and instead of smiles was received with frowns. She had just heard that a great gentleman in the French Court had openly stated that she had an incurable malady in one of her legs—this was a sore point with Elizabeth, who really suffered from an issue in the leg—and had said that this would be a good reason for Anjou to give her a “French potion” after he married her, and then marry the Queen of Scots. She was in a great rage, and threatened to make friends with the Spaniards again, but would not mention the name of the peccant courtier, which, indeed, she did not know. She afterwards told La Mothe she was sorry he had not seen her dance at the Marquis of Northampton’s ball, so that he might be able to assure the Duke that he ran no risk of marrying a cripple. Cavalcanti arrived in Paris on the 24th of April, but Walsingham was unable to see the Queen-mother until the 27th, when an interview took place at St. Cloud. Catharine professed to be discontented with the religious conditions proposed by the English, and said that if her son submitted to them the Queen might blame herself for accepting as a husband a man so ready to change his religion as to prove himself without piety or conscience. Walsingham replied that the Queen did not wish him to change his religion suddenly, or that he or his people should be forced to conform to the Anglican Church, but it would be a violation of the laws of her realm to allow him the exercise of his own faith. Troubles such as had recently afflicted France indeed might result therefrom. This did not please Catharine. Her son, she said, could never accept such a condition, which in effect was tantamount to a change of religion. If any troubles arose in England such as those feared, the support of France would be the best safeguard. When she saw that Puritan Walsingham was not to be gained in this way, she hinted that her son might more easily be brought to change his views by the influence of the Queen after his marriage, so that probably the objections they feared would not last long. The Catholics, she said, were afraid of the marriage, which they thought might cause a change of religion throughout Europe. Instructions at the same time were sent to La Mothe, who told Cecil that if the religious conditions were insisted upon the negotiation might be regarded as at an end. But this by no means suited the English Court. Cecil had been assured by the Huguenot partisans of the match that the French would give way on the crucial point of religion if Elizabeth stood firm; but when this appeared doubtful, Cecil himself moderated his tone, and a pretence of great cordiality and agreement between the French and English was carefully assumed in order to deceive the Spaniards. In this they were successful, and Spes writes to his king constantly that the match is practically settled and that Anjou was to turn Protestant. How necessary it was for Elizabeth to foster this belief at the time (May, 1571) is clear when we recollect that Bailly, the Bishop of Ross’ servant, had just confessed under the rack the heads of the Ridolfi plot. Step by step the clue was being followed up, and the vast conspiracy of Norfolk and the Catholic English nobles, with Mary of Scotland, Spain, the Pope, and the league, was being gradually divulged in all its ramifications. There was no room for doubt any longer. Spain and the Catholics were determined to crush Elizabeth, and henceforward it must be war to the knife between them. In such a struggle England, unaided, would have been at the mercy of the Catholic powers, and it was vital both for Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici that they should hold together for mutual support. It was necessary, therefore, that the negotiations should not be ostensibly dropped, and the Queen-mother requested that Elizabeth should submit her amended propositions. La Mothe had assured her that Elizabeth would yield on the point of religion if she only stood firm, and she, knowing the English Queen’s extremity, was evidently determined to extort conditions equally favourable with those formerly granted by Elizabeth in the case of the Archduke Charles. As a somewhat disingenuous device Leicester suggested that the article of religion should be omitted altogether from the draft treaty, and to this Catharine consented. But as a point of honour she insisted that Elizabeth should at once send her counter-propositions as promised, and Walsingham plaintively begs over and over again that she should avoid “jealousy” by sending them without delay.
On the 20th of May Walsingham saw the Queen-mother at Gaillon and laid before her the strong arguments which Elizabeth had for insisting upon the law of England being respected in the matter of the celebration of the Catholic religion. Catharine was forced to admit their weight, and said that she must consult the King and Anjou about them. Walsingham then went to see the Duke himself. He exerted on the young prince all his powers of persuasion; palliating and minimising points of difference, and suggesting compromise, but all to no purpose. “The Queen,” said Anjou, “is, I am told, the rarest creature that was in Europe these 500 years.” But this was a matter that touched his soul and conscience, and he could not forsake his faith even for such a prize.[62]
The next day Walsingham saw the King and his mother to beg them to exert pressure on Anjou. Let the Queen of England send her amended demands as promised, said they, and all reasonable concessions shall be made. De Foix and Montmorenci should be sent to England to conclude the treaty when the heads were agreed upon, and in the meanwhile efforts should be made to win over Anjou somewhat. De Foix himself was hardly so hopeful. He had done, he said, all that mortal man could do to persuade the Duke; but the constant influence of the Guises and their friends rendered the matter more and more difficult: “Monsieur being by them persuaded that it would be his hap to march with the forsaken.” If, said de Foix, the Queen persisted in forbidding her husband the exercise of his faith the matter was at an end. But withal Walsingham thought this was simply bluff, and was assured by some great Huguenot noble whom he does not name, but who was probably Coligny, that if the Queen stood firm she would have her way.
Some days afterwards Walsingham was still further encouraged by learning that Anjou was seeking advice and guidance about English affairs, and how to become popular with the people. At the beginning of June Anjou was ill in bed, and Cavalcanti went to visit him. He found the Duke in appearance almost eager for the match; but always on condition that his honour should be regarded in religion; and the King and Queen-mother were most enthusiastic and hopeful. This change of feeling was brought about by the receipt, after long delay, of the propositions from Elizabeth dated June 4, 1571, which will be found printed entire in the Hatfield State Papers, part 2. MSS. Com. The articles are mainly identical with the marriage treaty of Philip and Mary, and not a word is mentioned about religion at all. Cavalcanti was sent off post-haste to England almost as soon as the paper was received, to express the King’s thanks to Elizabeth for her moderation. He would never forget her friendship, he said, and would also send at once M. L’Archant, the captain of Anjou’s guard to England to formally announce the coming of de Foix and Montmorenci as plenipotentiaries to complete the contract. Still Catharine knew Elizabeth of old, and sent word privately to Cecil beseeching him not to let de Foix and Montmorenci come unless the Queen really meant business.[63] What Cavalcanti, or rather his mistress, thought is reflected in a remark he made to the Venetian ambassador in Paris a day or two before he left for England. The match, he said, would create a weight to balance the great power of the King of Spain, by uniting England and France in one interest, and he had now great hopes that it would take place.[64] Whilst Cavalcanti and L’Archant were awaiting the finishing of some portraits of Anjou they were to take with them, Catharine again saw Walsingham. She begged him as a private gentleman to tell her the best way to bring about the match. He said there were two things he wished—first, that they (the French) would not stand out stiffly about religion, and next “that there should be a more honourable sort of wooing.” Her reply with regard to religion discloses a curious and artful intrigue by which Cardinal Lorraine, through Throgmorton, sought to catch Elizabeth. A form of English prayer, she said, had been handed to de Foix, which the Pope offered to authorise if the Queen would acknowledge to have received it from him, and this would obviate all difficulty. With regard to a “more honourable wooing,” she must think, she said, of her son’s dignity if the match were broken off. This distrust, Walsingham thought, arose from La Mothe’s report of the Queen’s indignant outburst about her rumoured lameness. De Foix sought to reassure Walsingham by telling him that Anjou would within a year be as forward in religion as any man in England, and related a story of the Duke’s visit to Madame Carnavalet. Turning to her husband he said, “Carnavalet, thou and I were once Huguenots, and are now again become good Catholics.” “Aye,” says she, “and if you proceed in the matter you wot of you will be so again.” Anjou put his finger on his lips and replied, “Not a word of that, good Carnavalet.”[65] The lady herself told Walsingham that Anjou was not really against the reformed religion, but Sir Francis seems to have had as poor an opinion of his consistency, as of his mother’s sincerity. He tells Cecil, June 20, 1571, that Anjou’s religion depends entirely on his mother. It was she, he says, that made him so superstitious last Lent, so as not to lose her hold on the Catholics if this falls through. “What her religion is your lordship can partly guess.”
In the meanwhile the Guises were moving heaven and earth to stop, or at least delay, the match, and that between Henry of Navarre and the King’s sister Margaret. Better marriages both for brother and sister were promised. Hopes of the crown of Poland were held out to Anjou, detraction of Elizabeth was spread broadcast, plots in favour of Mary Stuart and plans to marry her went on unceasingly. Poor weak Anjou was wafted from side to side like a straw upon the wind. When Cavalcanti took the Duke’s portrait to England he carried with him also that of the Princess of Cleves, to whom it was suggested Leicester might be married as a consolation. Marshal Tavannes thereupon told Anjou that since he was going to marry Leicester’s mistress he had better return the compliment by marrying Leicester to his, Anjou’s, mistress, Mdlle. Chateauneuf.[66]
L’Archant and Cavalcanti arrived in London towards the end of June, but Elizabeth had one of her diplomatic illnesses and they could not see her for a week. Their mission was only to thank her for the moderation of her proposals, and to request passports for the special ambassadors. The Queen evidently thought that matters were looking too much like business to please her. The sincerity of Cecil, and even of Walsingham, now, in their desire to bring about the match is undoubted; but it is equally certain that Elizabeth, as usual, wished to play off France against Spain, Protestant against Catholic, without burdening herself with a husband. So she once more harked back to the religious difficulty, and said it would be useless for the formal embassy to come until that point was settled. She was very amiable and gracious, coyly charmed at Anjou’s portrait, full of protestations of friendship and affection, but on the vital point of allowing her consort the exercise of his faith, even privately, she would not budge an inch. With her own hands she wrote letters by L’Archant to the King, his mother, and Anjou. She had given, as was her wont, she said, a very straightforward answer. She was most anxious to banish all suspicion, and hoped they would take her answer in good part. To Anjou she wrote one of her usual ambiguous love-letters, saying that, although her rank caused her to doubt whether her kingdom is not sought after more than herself, yet she understands that he has found other graces in her. She is sorry she cannot come up to the opinion which L’Archant tells her the Duke has formed of her; but whatever she may lack she will never fail in her fraternal amity towards him.[67] With this cold comfort L’Archant had to go back. The Spanish ambassador in England, detected in his complicity in the Ridolfi plots, was fuming impotently, almost a prisoner in his own house, and in daily fear of expulsion, but he managed to send a courier who passed L’Archant on the road, and arrived in Paris two days before him. The false news he spread, to the delight of the Guises, was that L’Archant had been treated off-handedly, and the match might now be considered at an end. Some one told this to young Charles IX., who burst out that if any one dared to oppose the match in his presence he should forthwith be hanged. L’Archant and Cavalcanti were back in Paris on the 16th of July, and by some mischance saw the Duke first, when the latter was offended at the Queen’s persistence in the matter of religion, and coldly sent the envoys to his mother. It did not suit Catharine to have the negotiations broken off, for she was now really alarmed at Philip’s open support of the Guises and the league in France, and she was determined at all risks to cripple the Catholic power for harm against her. With her full connivance Navarre and Huguenots were arming privateers by the score at Rochelle and elsewhere, to aid the revolted Netherlands and prey on Spanish commerce, and she could not afford to fall away from the English friendship. So, discontented though she was with Elizabeth’s persistence, both she and the King made the best of it, and affected to believe that all was going well. But they reckoned without Anjou. Neither his mother’s tears nor his brother’s threats could move him, for Cardinal Lorraine now had him in the hollow of his hand. The Guises, the Nuncio, and the Spaniards were untiring. They had surrounded Anjou with their friends, who could lead him as they liked, and Catharine said she suspected that “Villequier, Lignerolles, and Sarret were the authors of all these fancies. It we were only certain, I can assure you they should repent it.” One of them, Lignerolles, at all events, was soon after put out of the world by murder. The King came to high words more than once with Anjou himself. He had insulted the Queen of England, he told him, by his foolishness. Conscience, he was sure, had nothing to do with it, and Anjou was only moved by greed through a pension given to him by the Catholic clergy to be their champion. “I will let you know,” cried the young King, “that I will have no champions here but myself.” Anjou shut himself up in his rooms all day bathed in tears, but he would not yield. The Queen-mother herself sometimes pretended to take Anjou’s part, and made a show of standing out about religion, but on this occasion no one was deceived by her, and Walsingham writes to Cecil, July 30, 1571, that she and the King are most anxious to be friendly with Elizabeth, and are sending de Foix to London with all sorts of offers and protestations to secure an alliance, even if the match fall through. They are growing, he says, daily more suspicious of Spain; and the King will not have Anjou here. Even Walsingham pitied poor abject Anjou, torn, as he says, from one side to the other. De Foix left for London on August 1st, but although a pretence of marriage negotiation was still kept up, it was acknowledged by all those who were interested that the affair was at an end, and that de Foix’s real mission was to sound Elizabeth as to a new offensive and defensive alliance against Spain.
The envoy, who was a persona grata in England, where he had long resided as ambassador, was received with marked distinction, and had eight audiences of the Queen. All the old arguments and hair-splittings about the observance of religion were gone over again. Sometimes the Queen appeared to give way, but the next day she would be obdurate again. Cecil himself was puzzled at her nimble gyrations, and wrote to Walsingham that “the conferences have had as many variations as there have been days.” The Queen was withal gracious and full of protestations of friendship, and at the last audience the real hint was given which justified de Foix’s mission. After finally satisfying him that if Anjou came he must conform to the Anglican Church, Cecil asked whether his instructions extended beyond the marriage negotiations. De Foix said they did not, but this was enough, and he posted back to Paris with the hint, leaving Cavalcanti behind him. Before leaving, on September 6th, he suggested to Cecil that it might be well to send Sir Thomas Smith, who was well known in France, or some one else, to discuss the marriage, or a treaty, with the Queen-mother.
In the meanwhile, a somewhat curious change had taken place in Paris. Charles IX. had been informed, probably at the instance of the Catholic party, that the Huguenots, seeing Anjou so bigoted, were now opposing Elizabeth’s marriage with him, and were proposing to her a match with Henry of Navarre, who was engaged to the King’s sister Margaret. There was little or no foundation for this, but it served its purpose and frightened the King into distrust of the Huguenots; and when de Foix arrived in Paris he found Charles IX. coolly acquiescent in the Queen’s refusal, and on the watch for signs of treachery from the Protestant party. Walsingham, in Paris, soon felt the effect; and on the 26th of September he wrote to Cecil that the Anjou marriage was absolutely at an end, and he was in great alarm to see that France and Spain were growing friendly. The smallest demonstration of this was sufficient to bring Elizabeth to her knees, and she at once sent Walsingham instructions to revive the marriage negotiations on any terms. He was even to give way on the crucial point of religion.[68] The very day upon which he received this letter, namely the 8th of October, his great confidant (probably Coligny) had told him how anxious the Queen-mother was for her son, the King, not to break with Elizabeth, and had asked him how she could bring about a match between the English Queen and her youngest son, the Duke of Alençon. Her interlocutor had scouted the idea, he said, but the seed was sown, which was probably all that Catharine wanted. Anjou had now openly stated that under no circumstances would he marry Elizabeth, even if she gave way on all points, so that he was no longer of any use as a piece in the game. Walsingham accordingly wrote back to Elizabeth saying that he would do his best to revive the negotiations, but he was not hopeful, and would keep his mistress’s tardy surrender to himself until he “saw a better disposition here.”
There is no doubt that Walsingham and Cecil were now thoroughly alarmed. The Queen-mother and the King were almost ostentatiously tending to the side of Spain. The Churchmen were busy promoting a marriage between Anjou and Mary Stuart, whilst the Queen-mother, for her part, was plotting with Cosmo de Medici for the wedding of her favourite son—“her idol,” as her daughter called Anjou—to a Polish princess. The full discovery of Norfolk’s plot in England, with its extensive ramifications abroad, the troubles in Scotland and Ireland, and the final rupture of diplomatic relations between England and Spain, were so many more black clouds gathering from all quarters over Elizabeth; and Cecil’s letters to Walsingham at the time were almost despairing. The marriage, he said, was the only chance for the Queen’s safety, and he thought now she was resolved to accept the King of France’s conditions. But the French were now cold. Walsingham did his best to renew the talk of the marriage, but with little success, and earnestly urged upon the Queen to hold firm to the French friendship. But though Coligny was restored to high favour, and the murderers of the Guisan Lignerolles were immediately pardoned and favoured, the murmurs of the coming St. Bartholomew were already in the air, and Cecil was warned long beforehand of Coligny’s danger. In October Walsingham fell ill, and went to England to recruit and discuss the perilous situation, Henry Killigrew being appointed temporarily to replace him. In the middle of December Sir Thomas Smith was despatched on a special mission to revive, at all costs, the talk of the Anjou match, or to negotiate the bases of a treaty. He was well fitted for the task; one of the first scholars in England who had been maintained by Henry VIII. at foreign Courts in order that his experience might afterwards be useful. He had on more than one occasion been instrumental in settling treaties of peace between England and France, his witty, jocose method evidently suiting the temper of the Queen-mother and her advisers. His letters, some printed in the Hatfield Papers and the Foreign Calendar, and some in the “Compleat ambassador,” are extremely graphic and amusing, in contrast with those of Walsingham, in which penetration and perspicuity are the salient characteristics.
Sir Thomas Smith and Killigrew arrived at Amboise, where the Court was, on January 1, 1572. His first interview was with de Foix, who assured him that Anjou was still firm on the question of religion. Smith said he did not think the last word had been said on that matter, but refrained from appearing anxious for an audience of the Queen-mother or the King until Coligny and Montmorenci had been sounded as to the best mode of procedure. De Foix went so far as to say that Anjou was religious mad, whereupon Smith replied that if he thought the Duke was really obstinate about it he “would soon turn tail,” and thus save his mistress’s honour. It is very evident that Smith had no belief in Anjou’s devotion, for he tells Cecil that his “religion was really fixed on Mdlle. Chateauneuf, and now in another place.”