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sword, but all by the extremity of famine which they themselves had wrought."1

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CHAPTER XLIII.

THE EMBASSY OF DE SILVA.

THE policy of Elizabeth towards the French Protest

ants had not been successful. Had her assistance

been moderately disinterested she would have secured their friendship, and at the close of the eight years, fixed by the Treaty of Cambray for the restoration of Calais, she would have experienced the effects of their gratitude. By the forcible retention of Havre after the civil war was ended she had rekindled hereditary animosities; she had thrown additional doubt on her sincerity as a friend of the Reformation; she had sacrificed an English army, while she had provided the French Government with a fair pretext for disowning its obligations, and was left with a war upon her hands from which she could hardly extricate herself with honour. A fortnight before Havre surrendered, the Prince of Condé had offered, if she would withdraw from it, that the clause in the Treaty of Cambray affecting Calais should be reaccepted by the King of France, the Queenmother, the Council, the Noblesse, and the Parliament.

She had angrily and contemptuously refused; and now with crippled finances, with trade ruined, with the necessity growing upon her, as it had grown upon her sister, of contracting loans at Antwerp, her utmost hope was to extort the terms which she had then rejected.

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1

Unable to maintain a regular fleet at sea she had let loose the privateers, whose exploits hereafter will be more particularly related. In this place it is enough to say that they had found in the ships of Spain, Flanders, or even of their own country, more tempting booty than in the coasting traders of Brittany. English merchants and sailors were arrested in Spanish harbours and imprisoned in Spanish dungeons in retaliation for depredations committed by the adventurers;' while a bill was presented by the Madrid Government of two million ducats for injuries inflicted by them on Spanish subjects. In vain Philip struggled to avoid a quarrel with Elizabeth; in vain Elizabeth refused to be the champion of the Reformation: the animosities of their subjects and the necessity of things were driving them forward towards the eventually inevitable breach. Mary Stuart was looking to the King of Spain and the King of Spain to Mary Stuart, each as the ally designed by Providence for the other; and the English Government in this unlucky war with France was quarrelling with the only European power which, since the breach of Henry the Eighth with the Papacy, had been cordially its friend. The House of Guise was

1 Reasons for a peace with France, March 10, 1564: French MSS. Rolls House.

under eclipse. The Queen of Scots' ambitions were no objects of interest to the Queen-mother. The policy of France was again ready to be moderate, national, anti-Spanish, and anti-Papal, to be all which England would most desire to see it. It was imperatively necessary that Elizabeth should make peace, that she should endure as she best might the supposed ingratitude of Condé, and accept the easiest terms to which Catherine de Medici would now consent.1

1 A letter of Sir John Mason to Cecil expresses the sense entertained by English statesmen of the necessity of peace:- My health, I thank God, I have recovered, nothing remaining but an ill cough, which will needs accompany senectutem meam to the journey's end; whereof my care is much lessened by the great care of the many sicknesses that I see in our commonwealth, which is to me more dear than is either health or life to be assaulted with; which would God were but infirmities as you do term them, ac non potius κακοήθειαι, seu quod genus morbi iis sit magis immorigerum et ad sanandum rebellius; and that worse is, cum universæ corporis partes nobis doleant a vertice capitis usque ad plantam pedis, dolorem tamen (for any care that is seen to be had thereof) sentire non videmur, quod mentis ægrotantis est indicium. A great argument whereof is that in tot Reipublicæ difficultatibus editur bibitur luditur altum dormitur privata curantur publica negliguntur

ceu riderent omnia et pax rebus esset altissima. The fear of God, whereby all things were wont to be kept in indifferent order, is in effect gone, and he seemeth to weigh us and to conduct our doings thereafter. The fear of the Prince goeth apace after, whereof we see daily proof both by sea and land. It is high time therefore for her Highness to take some good way with her enemy, and to grow with him to some reasonable end, yielding to necessity cui ne Dii quidem resistunt, et non ponere rumores ante salutem; and to answer our friends in reason, so as rebus foris constitutis, she may wholly attend to see things in better order at home; the looseness whereof is so great, as being not remedied in time, the tempest is not a little to be feared cum tot coacta nubes nobis minantur, which God of his mercy, by the prayer of decem justi, a nobis longissime avertat.

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The Queen is expected to go north on progress, whereunto no good man will counsel her. There

January.

The diplomatic correspondence which had continued since the summer had so far been unproductive of result. The French pretended that the Treaty of Cambray had been broken by the English in the seizure of Havre, and that Elizabeth's claims on Calais, and on the half million crowns which were to be paid if Calais was not restored, were alike forfeited. They demanded therefore the release of the hostages which they had given in as their security; and they detained Sir Nicholas Throgmorton on his parole until their countrymen were returned into their hands.

The English maintained on the other side that they had acted only in self-defence, that the treaty had been first violated by the French when Francis and Mary assumed Elizabeth's arms and style, that the House of Guise had notoriously conspired against her throne, and that Calais therefore had been already forfeited to themselves.

Between these two positions Paul de Foix, the French ambassador in London, Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris, and Throgmorton with a special and separate commission, were endeavouring to discover some middle ground of agreement.

The French hostages individually had proved them

be in this city and about it numbers | good means kept in awe, I fear there of men in much necessity, some for will be ill dwelling near unto Lonlack of work and some for lack don by such as have anything to of will to work. If these, with take to.'-Mason to Cecil, March 8: others that have possessed the high- Lansdowne MSS. 7. ways round about, be not by some

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