Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/531

] to no other place than the French embassy. The ministers pretended to exonerate Chasteauneuf himself from any share in or knowledge of the crime, but they seized and imprisoned his secretary, examined evidence, and produced documents in proof of the plot.

Portrait of Dudley, Earl of Leicester. From the original Painting in the Marquis of Salisbury's Collection.

This violation of the sanctity of an embassage, especially from a great nation, was too flagrant for toleration. Chasteauneuf expressed his indignation in the most unsparing terms, and broke off all communication with the English Court; but this did not save him from further insult. Five of his despatches were intercepted and examined in the Council. The King of France was enraged to the highest degree by this insolent treatment of his ambassador, laid an embargo on English shipping, and refused all communication with the English Court. On being made, however, to perceive that it was a mere trick to prevent his interference in behalf of the Queen of Scots, he sacrificed his own feelings of honour to his desire to save Mary, and again dispatched a fresh envoy, but with no better success. Not till Mary was beyond the power of any earthly monarch would Elizabeth admit him, when she freely acknowledged the innocence of Chasteauneuf, made ample apologies, and endeavoured to efface the memory of these insults by adulation and empty compliments. The French Government, however, did not forget the facts, and Villeroy has recorded in his register the estimate of Burleigh, Walsingham, and their companions, in these words:—"These five councillors of England falsified, forged, and invented all such documents as they thought necessary to bear on their object. They never produced the original articles of procedure, but only copies, which they added to, or diminished, as they pleased." The revelations of the State Paper Office in our time have only too truly confirmed these assertions.

Henry of France not only thus honourably exerted himself to save the unfortunate Queen of Scots, though a