[378] See letters from Mary, in Labanoff, vol. iv. Elizabeth showed some amount of jealous suspicion at Burghley’s interview with Mary, of which Leicester and the Treasurer’s enemies made the most during his absence.
[379] Burghley, as Lord Treasurer, seems to have been seriously concerned at the heavy cost of these progresses. In the Lansdowne MSS., 16, there is a document, altered and corrected by Lord Burghley himself, of this date (1573), showing how the royal household expenses had been increased by this particular progress. It is to be deduced from the document that extra expenditure entailed was £1034, 0s. 6d.
[380] See a curious letter from Lord Windsor to Burghley, 10th January 1574, exculpating himself for this letter (Hatfield Papers, part ii., No. 181).
[381] Hatfield Papers; in extenso in Murdin.
[382] As a matter of fact he was straining every nerve at the time to hold back his half-brother, Don John of Austria, who, with papal support, was full of all manner of grand plans for the founding of a great Christian Empire in Africa or the East, with himself as Emperor; or else for invading England from Flanders, marrying Mary Stuart, and reigning over a Catholic Great Britain. Don John and Gregory XIII. were very serious in their plans; but Philip was determined that nothing of the sort should be done with Spanish forces. He was absolutely bankrupt at the time, and had recently been obliged to repudiate the interest upon the vast sums he had borrowed. This had caused wholesale financial disaster in Italy and Flanders, and Philip’s credit was at its lowest ebb.
[383] Mary’s own hopes were high for a short time after the accession of her favourite brother-in-law. But she soon found out her mistake. Catharine’s aim was not to benefit Mary Stuart, but to prevent the extinction of French influence in Scotland. Her first act after Henry III. ascended the throne was to project an embassy to Scotland, accredited, not as all previous French embassies had been, to Mary Stuart’s party alone, but to both parties. Mary indignantly protested at this proposed recognition of the “usurpers,” and the embassy was abandoned. La Chatre was sent to London in March 1575, to confirm the treaty of Blois (in which Elizabeth and the Huguenots were comprised), but he did not say a word in favour of the liberation of the Queen of Scots. The withdrawal soon afterwards of the Guisan La Mothe Fénélon from England, and the appointment, as Ambassador, of Castelnau, a great friend of the English alliance, quite convinced Mary that she had nothing to hope for from Henry III., who, sunk in sloth and vice, left everything to his mother.
[384] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth.
[385] 16th April 1575 (Hatfield Papers).
[386] Woodshaw’s interesting letters of this period to Burghley are in Hatfield Papers. See also “Copley’s Correspondence,” Roxburghe Club.
[387] Hatfield Papers, part ii.