Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/490

476  the freedoms used by Leicester as a disgrace to the crown, and that neither the nobles nor the people at large ought to allow of such proceedings. They charged Leicester with using his privilege of entrée into the queen's bed-chamber most disreputably, asserting that he went in and out there before she rose; they also accused him of "kissing Her Majesty when he was not invited thereto."

But whilst Anjou hung back from this great alliance, Elizabeth seemed only the more bent on it. She appeared to forget her pride, and to do all the wooing herself. She sent her portrait to the prince, declared her full determination to have him, and that he should enjoy the private exercise of his religion in England. The ungallant Anjou replied that he would not go there unless he could enjoy it publicly too. That he might no longer believe her lame or invalid, she gave over going to the chase in her coach, but rode upon a tall horse. She shot a large stag with her own hand, and sent it to the French ambassador to show how vigorous and robust she was; and she herself filled her work-basket with fine apricots, and desired Leicester to forward them to the prince, that he might see that England had a climate fine enough to produce beautiful fruit. But all those condescensions failed to move the oblurate Anjou, who, though he sometimes made fair speeches as a matter of courtesy, steadily recoiled from her offered hand, and would not even come over to England to gratify her with a view of him. At length, perceiving that her attentions were wholly thrown away on Anjou, she broke off the negotiation in disgust, declaring that the prince's adherence to his demand for the public exercise of his religion rendered the alliance impossible, and, therefore, the thought of it must be dismissed. The French ambassadors, at the suggestion of Burleigh, hastened to remove her mortification, which was in secret shown to be excessive, by offering the hand of the younger brother, the Duke of Alençon; and Elizabeth, though well aware of his mean person and as mean mind, pretended to listen to it, and, as we shall see, commenced a show of negotiation on that subject which lasted for some years; and, that there might appear no sign of chagrin or resentment on her part, she signed a treaty of perpetual peace and alliance with France on Sunday, the 15th of June, 1572, the Duke de Montmorenci and M. de Foix signing it on the part of Charles IX.

The course of these love affairs Elizabeth had diversified by an execution. In June of the last year she caused one of her most bitter and determined enemies to be executed. This was Dr. Storey, who, during the reign of her sister Mary, had strenuously recommended her being put to death as the great root of all heresies and seditions. On her accession he had prudently left the kingdom, and entered the service of Philip, where he was said to have cursed Elizabeth every day before dinner as the most acceptable part of his grace. He was captured on board an English ship, in which, for some purpose or other, he was making his way to England, and was condemned as guilty of treason and magic. The Spanish ambassador claimed him as a subject of Philip, to which Elizabeth replied that His Majesty was welcome to his head, but that his body should not quit England. A much greater victim was now to suffer the penalty of her resentment. The Duke Of Norfolk, both by his religion and by his earnest attachment to the Queen of Scots, excited her deepest resentment. She had cast him into prison, but even there he was a terror to her. The whole body of the Roman Catholics, indeed, was in a state of irritation and disaffection. They were excluded from all places of honour or profit, from the Court down to the City corporation, and even to the constable of the most remote and obscure village. This expulsion of them from patronage, at the same time that they were persecuted otherwise for the retention of their faith, was most impolitic. It converted them into one great mass of enemies; and as they had little to do, and were many of them at once men of family, of education, and of narrow means, they were anxious for some revolutionary demonstration, because they could lose little in it, and might chance to gain everything: they might avenge their injuries, and achieve liberty and government employment. If Elizabeth had studied how best she might add to this spirit of restless fermentation, she could not have hit on a more successful plan than that of introducing the beautiful Queen of Scots into the midst of them as an object of admiration for her person and accomplishments, and of deep sympathy on account of her sufferings, her unjust thraldom, and her oppressed religion. She was the very apple of discord which the most calculating enemy would have thrown into the centre of the teeming mass of resentments, wounded conscience, crushed hopes, and political abasement. Elizabeth had fixed her there herself by her perfidious and relentless detention, and she now reaped the punishment in perpetual plots and alarms of treason amid her very Court. All the disaffected looked still to the Duke of Norfolk as worthy, by his rank—being nearly connected in blood with the crown—by his sufferings and affection for the Queen of Scots, to be their head.

In the month of April, 1571, Charles Bailly, a servant of the Queen of Scots, who was coming from Brussels to Dover, was arrested at the latter place, and upon him was discovered a packet of letters which, being written in cipher, created suspicion. The Bishop of Ross, Mary's staunch and vigilant friend, who knew very well whence they came, on the first rumour of their seizure, contrived to obtain them from Lord Cobham, in whose hands they were, from a pretended curiosity to read them before they were sent to the Council. Having obtained his desire, he dexterously substituted others, and very innocent ones, in their place, in a like cipher: but Bailly, being sent to the Tower and placed on the rack, at length confessed that he had written the letters from the dictation of Rudolfi, of Brussels, formerly an Italian banker in London, and then had been commissioned by him to convey them to England. He further confessed that they contained assurances from the Duke of Alva of his warm sympathy with the cause of the captive queen, and approved of the plan of a foreign invasion of England; that if his master the King of Spain authorised him, he should be ready to co-operate with 30 and 40. Who these 30 and 40 were Bailly said he did not know, but that all that was explained by a letter enclosed to the Bishop of Ross, who was requested to deliver them to the right persons.

One of these persons was immediately believed to be the Duke of Norfolk. When he had been ten months a prisoner without any matter having been brought against