Great French embassy to England to settle the AlenÇon match—Elizabeth’s efforts to gain her objects without marriage—AlenÇon’s determination to relieve Cambrai—Henry III. strenuously opposes his brother’s plans in Flanders—Alleged flying visit of AlenÇon to England—Catharine’s efforts to divert AlenÇon from his plans in Flanders—Elizabeth attempts to draw France into war with Spain without her marriage with AlenÇon.

At length, after endless bickering about the rank of the proposed ambassadors and the Queen’s assent had been received by AlenÇon, the envoys were ordered to rendezvous at Calais. There they were delayed for some weeks, first for the young Prince Dauphin, of Montpensier, whom the King had added to the list of ambassadors to please the Queen at AlenÇon’s request, and then by the illness of other members of the embassy. Early in April, 1581, however, all was ready for their crossing, and then the English Council began to get alarmed at the number of their following and the sumptuous nature of the embassy, which most of the councillors knew was destined to return with the marriage still undecided. At last, however, a general passport was granted at the instance of the Queen, who said she could not afford to offend AlenÇon at this juncture. Workmen were set on in furious haste to build a grand-stand in the palace at Westminster, wherein to entertain the visitors. Ten thousand pounds’ worth of plate was ordered for presents, and jousts, banquets, and balls were hastily organised. “The Queen went to the length of issuing an order in Council that shopkeepers were to sell their cloth of gold, velvets, silks, and other such stuffs at a reduction of one quarter from the price per yard, as she says she wishes them to do her this service in order that the ladies and gentlemen may be the better able to bedizen themselves. “This seems an evident sign that her only object is to satisfy her own vanity and keep AlenÇon in hand.”125 The writer goes on to say that the Queen is paying no heed to the weighty questions which will have to be settled by the embassy, but is entirely absorbed by the consideration of new devices for jousts, where a ball is to be held, what beautiful women are to be at Court, and such-like trifles. On the 14th of April the glittering embassy embarked at Calais. It consisted of nearly five hundred persons in all, and included Francis de Bourbon, Dauphin of Auvergne, the son of the Duke of Montpensier; Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons, the youngest of the CondÉ family; Marshal de CossÉ; the Counts of Sancerre and Carrouges; Lansac, BarnabÉ Brisson, the famous president of the parliament of Paris; La Mothe FÉnÉlon; Pinart, Catharine’s Secretary of State; de Vray; Jean Bodin, and others of high rank. Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque ports, the Earl of Pembroke, and others, received them at Dover with a great train of the Queen’s carriages, in which they were conveyed to Gravesend, where a great number of the nobility met them with the Queen’s barges to carry them to Somerset House. London itself was crowded with the nobility and Parliament-men, who had been specially ordered to remain in town with their families. “They are also collecting,” says Mendoza, “all their servants and trains, both for the sake of ostentation and because, being a suspicious folk, they fear some disturbance, particularly Leicester, who is making greater efforts than any one to collect a large company of kinsmen and servants.” London itself was gloomy and discontented at the coming of the embassy, but withal was kept from open disturbance by the underlying belief, now pretty general, that State alliance rather than marriage would be the ultimate result of it all. A salute of two hundred guns greeted the envoys as they passed under London Bridge in their barges on the 21st of April. Saturday, the 24th, was St. George’s Day, and the ambassadors were taken in great state by water to visit the Queen at Whitehall. A vast banqueting-hall, says Hollingshead, had been erected on the south side of the palace covered with painted canvas and decorated in a style of most fantastic splendour. Pendants of fruits, and even vegetables, were hung from festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and flowers, the whole lavishly sprinkled with spangles. The ceiling was painted like a sky, with stars and sunbeams intermixed with escutcheons of the royal arms, and a profusion of glass lustres illuminated the whole. The envoys themselves, giving an account of their reception,126 say that the walls of the chamber were hung entirely with cloth of gold and silver; the throne, raised on a dais, being surmounted by a silken canopy covered with roses embroidered in pearls. The Queen herself was dressed in cloth of gold spangled with diamonds and rubies, and smilingly inclined her head as the less important members of the embassy passed before her. When the young Dauphin, a prince of the blood and the representative of the King, approached, however, she stepped down from the dais and in English fashion kissed him on the lips, and said a few gracious words to Marshal de CossÉ, Brisson, Carrouges, and La Mothe FÉnÉlon, who followed him. Again and again she besought the young Prince to don his plumed bonnet, and the crowd being dense and the heat great, instead of again mounting her dais she retired to an open window overlooking the Thames. Lansac seized the opportunity of presenting to her a French painter who had been commissioned by Catharine de Medici to paint her portrait, whereupon the Queen, ever avid for compliments, said he must represent her with a veil over her face, so that they might not think her too old. That day and the next passed in almost interminable entertainments, which, as they are described in the pages of Hollingshead, and by the ambassadors themselves, appear to us incredibly far-fetched, childish, and absurd; but which doubtless at the time were considered models of poetry and delicate compliment to the Queen and her guests. At length, on taking leave of the Queen after the third day of feasting, the Prince Dauphin asked her when they should get to business, and which councillors she would appoint to negotiate with the embassy. She was of course well prepared for the request, and had planned her course before the envoys had set foot in England. Leicester and Walsingham had done their best to prevent the passport for them from being sent, but had been overborne by Cecil, Sussex, and the Queen herself; and when Leicester, on the day before their crossing, came again to his mistress and pointed out the danger she ran in, carrying the matter so far, she tranquillised him by saying that if the embassy became too pressing she would confuse the negotiations by bringing AlenÇon himself over to England for a few days, whilst the envoys were here. She could, she said, square matters without a marriage and without offence by giving him a money aid to his Netherlands projects. To Sussex, and, above all, to Marchaumont, she artfully told an entirely opposite tale, and led them to believe that if the Duke came suddenly and secretly she would certainly marry him, and, needless to say, “the monk” at once wrote pressing his master to make ready to come over if necessary. But Marchaumont at the same time told the ambassadors that he was of opinion that unless they could get a distinct pledge that the marriage should take place they ought to veto the Duke’s visit. The control of events was thus cunningly centred in the Queen’s hand. As the Spanish ambassador points out to Philip, she had silenced the opposition of Leicester and his friends, had convinced those favourable to the marriage of her sincerity, whilst providing herself with a loophole of escape in any case. If AlenÇon did come she could deal with him over the heads of the embassy, and so confuse matters, whilst if he did not come she could allege that as a reason for not marrying him, and infer that the negotiations had fallen through by no fault of her own.127 When the Prince Dauphin therefore asked her to appoint a committee of the Council she was ready for him, and named Cecil, Bedford, Leicester, Sussex, Hatton, and Walsingham—that is to say, three men who were determined to prevent the marriage if possible, one—Sussex—honestly in favour of it, and the other two—Cecil and Bedford—only concerned in rendering the match innocuous to English interests, if the Queen determined to carry it through, which neither of them believed she would. Business began with a grand banquet at the Lord Treasurer’s new house in the Strand, hard by the lodgings of the embassy. After a verification of powers Cecil made a long speech to the effect that, although he had formerly opposed the marriage, he now considered that it would be conducive to the interests of England, and Brisson replied in a similar strain. Walsingham then launched his thunderbolt. He alleged that since, and as a consequence of, de Bacqueville’s mission eighteen months before, the Pope had flooded England with Jesuit emissaries, and had sent armed forces to Ireland. The projected marriage, he said, had raised the hopes of the Catholics in England, who were already discounting its effects. He dwelt upon the dangers which might attend an accouchement of the Queen at her age, and complained bitterly that AlenÇon, even since the negotiations had been in progress, had entered into dealings with the States-General of Flanders. The marriage might therefore drag England into war, and the Queen had consequently written a letter to the Duke, to which she was now awaiting the reply.128 The envoys replied in astonishment that they had looked upon the principle of the marriage as settled before they came, and could not enter into discussions of that sort, but pointed out that as England had now offended Spain past forgiveness, it was needful for the Queen to gain the friendship of France by means of the marriage. They were told that if the Queen married it would be from no such consideration as this, but out of pure affection, and suggested that if the marriage did not take place an offensive and defensive alliance against Spain might be concluded. But this, although the main object of the Englishmen, did not at all suit the French. They were only authorised, they said, to conclude the marriage, for which purpose they had come, and not to arrange an alliance. Let the Queen marry Monsieur first, and then she might be sure the King of France would help her in the Netherlands and elsewhere. “In the meanwhile,” says Mendoza, “no formal commission has been given to the English ministers, by which it is clear that the Queen is simply procrastinating about the marriage in order to draw the French into an offensive alliance without burdening herself with a husband, whilst the French wish first to make sure of the marriage.129 That the Spanish ambassador was quite right in his reading of events we may now see by the note in Cecil’s hand summarising the arguments pro and con for the Queen’s guidance, and also by the draft of the discourse pronounced by Walsingham to the ambassadors which very plainly show that the Queen at this time, notwithstanding her honeyed words to “the monk” and loving letters to AlenÇon, was not in earnest. Banquet succeeded banquet, but the Frenchmen could get no further. In vain they protested that they had simply come to conclude the draft contract negotiated by Simier, that their mission was limited, and that they had no more time to waste in merrymaking. Let us get to business first, they said, and feast afterwards. On the 7th of May they were invited to a ball at Whitehall, after which the Queen again pressed upon them the necessity for an alliance between England and France, but said she could not go any further with the marriage until she heard again from AlenÇon. In vain her plaintive “monkey,” from his abbey of Bourgueil, wrote praying her to make her lovelorn “frog” happy without further delay, in vain Marchaumont pressed in his master’s name that she would not shame him by throwing him over after all that had passed between them. Smiles, sweet words, and vague protestations were all they could get; and Secretary Pinart wrote on the 21st of May to Catharine: “The Queen makes all sorts of demonstrations to us, but we can get no further. At a supper given by Sussex the Queen expressed her satisfaction to La Mothe FÉnÉlon at the approaches the French had made to Leicester, who, she said, had done his best to forward their views and to maintain a friendly understanding between the two countries. La Mothe drily replied that such an understanding would be easy when the marriage was concluded. Oh! said the Queen, as for the marriage, that is in the hands of God, and she could say nothing more about that until she received a reply from AlenÇon. La Mothe thereupon declined to discuss any other question and the Queen closed the colloquy in a huff. Two days after this, when the envoys had become quite disheartened and perplexed at Marchaumont’s secret dealings with the Queen and Sussex over their heads, Elizabeth suddenly sent de Vray to AlenÇon with a private autograph letter,130 in the sealing-wax of which she embedded a diamond; and at the same time Marchaumont wrote urging his master to come over and gain the prize by a coup-de-main, on the strength of a document which he had obtained from the committee of the Council containing some favourable expressions towards the match. At the same time Marchaumont was brought to a lodging in the gardens of Whitehall and an elaborate pretence of keeping some important personage concealed there was made, partly to prepare the public mind for the coming of the Duke and partly to still further mystify the envoys. In this the Queen and Marchaumont were entirely successful, and the Queen was looking almost hourly for the arrival of her suitor, with whom she could make her own terms and force France into an alliance. AlenÇon himself was all eagerness to come, but he had pledged himself solemnly to the States to relieve Cambrai which was beleaguered by Parma, and he dared not abandon his task. Simier, moreover, was away from him, and his sister Margaret’s friend, Fervaques, was ever at his ear urging him to wrath against poor “monkey” and the Queen of England. Fervaques, writing to Marchaumont, says that if Elizabeth succeeds in getting Simier reinstated, “the very day he comes back I will quit the service; car s’il me donnait tout son bien par la teste de Dieu je ne serverais pas une heure. Send us some money or we shall starve. Our master will make peace (i.e., in France) for he rules the King of Navarre, and they say that after that we are going to England. Je donne aux mille diables le voyage et le premier qui mit les james en avant. Tell my secretary if he comes not back soon by God I will cut his throat.”131

AlenÇon accordingly wrote to Marchaumont on the 20th of May saying that he could not come until he had arranged for the relief of Cambrai at any cost. He was, he said, like a bird on a branch and might be able to fly off at any moment, and in the meanwhile sent the clothes he would need on his arrival. But events forced his hands. On the 17th of May the King issued a decree in Paris ordering the dispersion by force of arms of all the levies of Frenchmen being raised for the service of his brother in Flanders. Great pressure, bribes, persuasions and threats, were brought to bear upon AlenÇon by his mother, to prevent him from again entering Flanders to relieve Cambrai, and so, perhaps, embroil France with Spain; but he plainly saw now that his ambition would never be served by the Catholic party and that he must frankly depend upon the Protestants and Elizabeth, so he hurriedly made preparations for a flying visit to England. When the Queen was satisfied that he was coming and that the King of France was quite determined not to offend Spain as a preliminary of the marriage, her tone towards the ambassadors immediately changed, and the clause in the draft treaty giving the bridegroom the right of exercising his religion in England was struck out. The envoys were naturally indignant, refused to accept the alteration, and said that as, under the circumstances, the marriage was an impossibility, they would depart at once. To preserve appearances it was decided that some sort of draft agreement, based on the marriage contract of Philip and Mary, should be agreed to, and after long bickering as to which party should sign first, the Queen insisted that the draft should be accompanied by a letter from her to the effect that the conditions did not bind her to marry at all, but should be adopted if at any future time she decided to do so. This appeared absurd to the envoys, and, whilst the subject was being discussed, the Queen learnt that AlenÇon was on his way and would submit to her will in all things. She then turned round and said there was no need for any capitulations at all. She and AlenÇon were the persons to be married and they understood each other perfectly well, so that his brother’s intervention was unnecessary. This change of front completely puzzled the ambassadors, but they were not long in the dark as to the reason of it, for three days afterwards Leicester told them that an English merchant had just arrived in London who had seen AlenÇon embark from Dieppe for England two days before, namely on the 28th of May. The envoys and the ambassador Castelnau were chagrined beyond measure at this new escapade of the King’s brother, and obstinately shut themselves up to avoid seeing him. Such rigorous silence did they maintain as to this visit in their correspondence that even the most recent and best-informed French historian of the events does not credit its having taken place. The correspondence of Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, which has passed through my hands, leaves me, however, little doubt upon the subject132; although Philip, writing to his ambassador, says that the news he receives from France is incompatible with AlenÇon’s visit to England on this occasion.

On the 1st of June, 1581, Marchaumont visited Castelnau, the ambassador, who showed him a letter from a certain Cigogne, one of AlenÇon’s gentlemen, giving him intelligence of his master’s movements. The Duke had embarked at Dieppe at six o’clock on the morning of the 28th of May, and after knocking about in the Channel for five hours very seasick, had to return to land. He had then ridden with all his suite to Evereux whence he had sent Cigogne to inform his brother of his going to England, and had then himself started on horseback with a very small company towards Boulogne. The faithful “monk” at once hastened to the Queen with the news, which she had already heard elsewhere. She appeared overjoyed at the coming of her suitor, and she was for sending Stafford at once to greet him. But de Bex was sent to Dover instead, bearing a written message from the Queen, couched in the most loving terms,133 and rooms were ordered secretly to be prepared for the Prince in Marchaumont’s chambers. On the afternoon of the 2nd of June the visitor came up the Thames with the tide, evading the spies whom the King’s envoys had posted everywhere, and was safely lodged in the apartments destined for him in the Queen’s garden. Immediately afterwards one of his gentlemen entered the presence-chamber as if he had just come from France (as indeed he had) bringing letters from his master to the Queen, and Marchaumont sent to Leicester the agreed token of his coming, namely, a jet ring. This strange prank of the young Prince upset all calculations. He had come without his brother’s prior knowledge or permission and without consultation with the ambassadors, the whole affair having been managed by Marchaumont over their heads. Says Mendoza, writing to Philip a day or two after his arrival: “No man, great or small, can believe that he has come to be married, nor can they imagine that she will marry him because he has come. It may be suspected that her having persuaded him to come with hopes that they two together would settle matters better than could be done by the intervention of his brother’s ministers, had been the motive which brought him.”

The fact is that Henry III. had shown his hand. AlenÇon’s levies had been attacked by the King’s troops, and it was evident that unless he consented to forego his ambition and again become the laughing-stock of the mignons he must cleave to the Queen of England, marriage or no marriage. This she knew better than any one, and it was this for which she had been playing. If the French under AlenÇon went to the Netherlands to weaken Spain, they would go in her interest and at her behest, and not in those of France. No words accordingly could be too sweet for her to greet her lover, no promises too brilliant which could pledge him to go in person to relieve Cambrai, notwithstanding the pressure to the contrary from his mother and brother. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham, who feared their mistress’s impressionable nature, were frightened when AlenÇon appeared, and began as usual to stir up discontent of the match. “If he came to marry the Queen,” said the people, “he ought to have come as the brother of a king should do and with proper means, whereas if he did not come to marry, they needed no poor Frenchmen in this country.” Money and support for Cambrai were liberally promised by the Queen if AlenÇon would only go back again as quickly as he came and undertake the relief in person. So after only two nights’ stay in London he dropped down the river, unseen by any of his countrymen except Marchaumont and de Bex, and went back to France. No sooner was he gone than the envoys came out of their hiding again and boldly averred, with the aid of Leicester and his friends, that he had not been in England at all; and the hollow negotiations to cover their retreat were once more resumed. The capitulations with the nullifying letter were signed, sealed, and delivered,134 and the pompous embassy took its departure on the 12th of June, much less hopeful of the result of the mission than when it started. They were loaded with gifts, cloyed with fine words, and some of them even cajoled into the idea that Elizabeth was a Catholic at heart; but whatever the young figureheads may have thought, statesmen like Pinart, Brisson, and La Mothe, knew full well by this time that the marriage was all moonshine. Sussex of course threw all the blame on Leicester, and tried to arouse the indignation of the French against him, whilst Leicester boldly said the Queen had never intended to marry, and those who said she did only wished to bring about a quarrel between England and France. The Spanish ambassador, too, ever busy at mischief, was trying his best by means of willing tools to embitter French feeling at the way in which a great nation had been flouted, as he said, to magnify the Queen’s importance and feed her insatiable vanity.

When Catharine had gone to see her younger son at his town of AlenÇon late in May, she had spent five days in fruitless entreaty to him not to imperil the future of his country by entering Flanders. But she found him obdurate, and returned in despair to Chenonceaux, whilst he took his flying visit to England. But the violent measures adopted by Henry III. against his brother frightened the poor lady, who once more had to journey to St. Germain to endeavour to patch up some sort of peace between the brothers. The King was irreconcilable for a time, but when his mother threatened to abandon him for good and set out for Chenonceaux he soon followed her, and the result of their long private conferences was that Catharine again hurried north to meet AlenÇon and exacted from him a promise that he would go and see his brother at St. Germain before taking any active steps to relieve Cambrai. But AlenÇon distrusted his brother and preferred to stay safely at Chateau-Thierry, awaiting the aid promised to him by the English Queen. Elizabeth, however, was determined if possible to obtain the co-operation of the King of France, or at all events a promise of neutrality before she flew in the face of Spain to the extent of aiding AlenÇon to enter Flanders, and she sent Somers, late in June, to sound Henry III. as to his intentions. He and Cobham, the English ambassador, found the French king and his mother diplomatic and evasive, but they made it clear that the marriage must precede all other negotiations, and that the King would take no steps against Spanish interests unless conjointly with England after the marriage. When AlenÇon learnt this at Mantes he instructed Marchaumont to assure the Queen that he had resolutely refused to delay the relief of Cambrai, and to beg her to urge his brother to help him, at least by sending Marshal de CossÉ to guide him in his military actions. He was more ardent for the conclusion of the marriage than ever, and the moment he could get away he would fly to the Queen’s side. But this did not suit Elizabeth at all. It was clear that it might mean ruin to her if she were driven into open war with Spain whilst France, under the guidance of the Guises, was free to join or make terms with the other side. So she wrote an extremely interesting letter on the 21st of July135 to AlenÇon in which once more her tone is completely changed. The time has come, she says, when she can speak plainly to him. Nothing in the world can bring her so much sorrow as to be unable to pass the few years of life remaining to her in the company of him she loves most in the world, who has sought her in so many honourable ways. She is sure that grief alone will be her future portion in the world, not only by reason of her being deprived of the society of him she most highly esteems, but also because she will be accused of ingratitude, of which she has the greatest horror. It appears, however, by the King’s answers to Somers, that the marriage can only take place in conjunction with a joint war of England and France against Spain in the Netherlands. She has striven all her life, and successfully, to secure peace for her people, and to make her marriage a war-cry would alienate them from her and it, and she cannot do it. But still in order that he may see she has not forsaken him, and to prevent the Spaniards from entirely having their wicked way in the Netherlands, she is sending Walsingham to France to persuade the King how necessary it is for him to help his brother in his noble task. This must have appeared plain enough to the suitor as meaning that France must pull the chestnuts out of the fire for her, and Elizabeth probably thought it was rather too blunt, for she has added in her own hand these words: “Ne pences pas que chose du monde me changera de vous demourer telle que prendra toujours part de vostre fortune, voyr la plus mauvaise; et que si le corps me soit, l’ame vous est toute dÉdiÉ, comme ces tabliers vous tesmoignent.”

When at a subsequent stage the Queen found fault with some of Walsingham’s proceedings, he wrote to her, recapitulating her private instructions to him on his mission, and we are therefore in possession of her real intentions at the time.136 He says: “The principal cause why I was sent over was to procure a straiter degree of amity between the King and you without marriage, and yet to carry myself in the procuring thereof, as might not altogether break off the marriage.”