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  with the courtship, from its beginning in June 1572 till November 1579. We have less cause to regret that he did not continue the narrative; for in the archives of Hatfield there are still preserved more than one hundred love-letters that passed between the two, as amorous as were ever read at a trial for breach of promise. When the negotiations first began Elizabeth was in her fortieth year; when the prince died she was close upon fifty-two. Was it all mere acting? Was it a case of absolute infatuation? This only is certain that Elizabeth was never so near marrying any one as she was to marrying this persistent suitor, and that if she was playing a part throughout, she overacted that part till she had wellnigh overreached herself. And all this while Leicester, whom men believed she loved, and Hatton, who pretended towards her a fervent passion, were daily at her side, and receiving substantial proofs of her power. They, too, were offering to her the incense of their coarsest flattery, deceiving or being deceived. It is not the least curious feature in her dealings with Alençon that only in his favour did she ever exhibit any generosity as far as money was concerned.

While amusing herself with this extraordinary lover, Elizabeth had no opportunity to idle languishing. In Scotland matters came to a crisis when Edinburgh Castle was surrendered to Sir William Drury in June 1573, with a force which Elizabeth tried hard but vainly to induce the regent Morton [see, d. 1581] to pay for. From this day the cause of Mary Stuart in Scotland was utterly hopeless. She was safer in her English captivity than she could ever again hope to be on the other side of the border. A month after the fall of Edinburgh the luckless Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, set sail for Ireland on that wild expedition which proved his ruin. The cost was to be borne partly by the earl, partly by the queen; but he mortgaged his estates heavily to Elizabeth before he started,and when he died he was a broken man. It was, however, in her conduct towards the protestant insurgents in the Netherlands, who had now begun their heroic struggle with the king of Spain, that Elizabeth's dealings were most tortuous. Burghley and the rest of the council were unanimous in desiring that the States should be strenuously supported as the champions of the protestant cause. Burghley had a foreign policy clear and defined. That policy was to weaken the power of Spain and France abroad, and to crush the hopes of the catholics at home by decidedly and consistently taking the side of those who were fighting for liberty of conscience, and were staking their all in a determined struggle with the pope and the Inquisition. Elizabeth herself had no policy; she was absolutely destitute of ambition; she clung to all she had; she never wished for more. War she hated primarily because of the cost, and that meant an application to parliament for supplies. A war of conquest for the sake of annexing a province or extending her dominions nothing on earth would have induced her to engage in. Leadership had no attraction for her. She put away from her mind all thoughts about the future. She would live and die an island queen. The children of Henry VIII were the only sovereigns of England since the Conquest who had never crossed the Channel. Elizabeth never saw Scotland, Ireland, or Wales; indeed her yearly progresses were as a rule mere visits to the houses of the nobility in the home counties and the midlands. When she reached Bristol in 1574 she offered up special thanks to God for her preservation in that long and dangerous journey (Lansdowne MSS. cxv. 45). A detailed itinerary of her movements, such as exists for the reigns of Henry II and King John, would amuse the reader by showing the smallness of the area in which she lived during her seventy years. All this tended to make her narrow in her views of what was going on in the great world outside her. Intensely self-involved she looked at everything as it might affect her own purse and her own convenience, while her magnificent fearlessness kept away all anxieties about the future. But as to committing herself to a great cause she was incapable of understanding what it meant. From Burghley's point ot view the revolted provinces were the battleground between protestantism and papistry. Elizabeth regarded the Flemings as mere rebels, whom she would have left to settle their own affairs with their sovereign if her council had allowed her. As for the pope or the king of Spain, it would be time enough to trouble herself about them when the one should dare to invade her dominions with his secret emissaries, or the other should try conclusions with her on the coast or in the Channel. From the moment that William of Nassau was elected stadtholder of the United Provinces in 1572 Elizabeths feeling towards him was not friendly. In England generally there was profound and enthusiastic sympathy with him in the struggle on which he had embarked. Immense sums were subscribed for his support; he was regarded as the hero on whose success the cause of protestantism depended. Elizabeth regarded him and his Flemings as being engaged in a gpreat rebellion against their lawful sovereign. There