Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/239

 coloured his interpretation of the future, he was no perfunctory observer of events passing before his eyes. He sent home minute reports of the French duke's personal appearance and way of life, and chronicled in detail views of the projected match held by Frenchmen of various ranks and influence. But all his efforts were hampered by the queen's vacillation. He was soon led by her vague and shiftless communications to doubt whether she intended to marry or no. He was building, he feared, on foundations of sand.

After a short leave of absence at the end of 1571, owing to failing health, he resumed his post early in 1572 in the hope of giving more practical expression to that sentiment of amity with France which he deemed it of advantage to his country and religion to cherish. On 2 Feb. 1571–2 a commission was issued to him, Sir Thomas Smith, and Henry Killigrew, who had temporarily filled Walsingham's place at Paris during his recent absence, to conclude a defensive alliance between France and England. The preliminary discussions disclosed profound differences between the contracting parties, and Walsingham's anticipations of a satisfactory accommodation were not realised. The idiosyncrasies of his own sovereign again proved one of the chief stumbling-blocks. Elizabeth showed no greater anxiety than the French diplomatists to commit herself to any well-defined action in regard to the burning question of the future of Scotland and the fate of her prisoner, Queen Mary; nor was she prepared to spend men and money in protecting protestantism from its assailants on the continent. In the result Walsingham was forced to assent to a vague and ambiguous wording of the treaty which left the genuine points of controversy untouched. The unsatisfactory instrument, which amounted to little more than a hollow interchange of friendly greetings, was signed at Blois by Walsingham and Sir Thomas Smith on the queen's behalf on 19 April 1572.

In the months that followed Walsingham spent all his energies in seeking to stiffen the backs of Queen Elizabeth and her ministers at home. England, as the chief protestant power of Europe, could not, he declared, permanently avoid active interference in the affairs of Europe. The maintenance of her prestige, he now pointed out, obliged her to intervene in behalf of the prince of Orange in the civil war that he was waging in the Low Countries against Spain. He repeated his belief that the French king was not unwilling to join England in an armed intervention if Elizabeth openly declared her resolve to support the Flemish protestants effectively. But Walsingham's hopes were temporarily frustrated by the massacre of protestants in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day (24 Aug.), which the French king's profligate mother, Catharine de Medicis, secretly devised. Walsingham was completely taken by surprise, but by order of the French government the English embassy was afforded special protection. Many English protestant visitors took refuge under Walsingham's roof and escaped unharmed (, Annals, i. 225 seq.). Among his guests at the time was the youthful Philip Sidney, with whom he thenceforth maintained a close intimacy. At the instant the wicked massacre strained to the uttermost the relations of the two governments. But the Duc d'Anjou, who was nominally suing for Elizabeth's hand in marriage, protested to Walsingham his disgust at his brother's and mother's crime, and the situation underwent no permanent change. Walsingham was as confident as ever that the clouds that darkened the protestant horizon in France, as in the rest of Europe, would disperse if the prince of Orange were powerfully supported by Elizabeth in the Low Countries. The rebellion was spreading rapidly. Spain's difficulties were growing. But Elizabeth remained unconvinced, and Walsingham, distrustful of his ability to drive her into decisive action from so distant a vantage-ground as Paris, sued for his recall. On 20 April 1573—some eight months after the St. Bartholomew's massacre—he presented to the French king his successor, Valentine Dale [q. v.], and three days later returned to England. When he had audience of Elizabeth, he spoke with elation of the embarrassments that his recent encouragement of the prince of Orange was likely to cause Spain. ‘She had no reason,’ he told her by way of spur, ‘to fear the king of Spain, for although he had a strong appetite and a good digestion,’ yet he—her envoy—claimed to have ‘given him such a bone to pick as would take him up twenty years at least and break his teeth at last, so that her majesty had no more to do but to throw into the fire he had kindled some English fuel from time to time to keep it burning’ (cf. Epistolæ Ho-elianæ, ed. Jacobs, i. 120).

Walsingham's frankness often stirred the queen to abusive wrath. But she recognised from first to last his abilities and patriotism, and he was not many months in England before she took him permanently into her service. On 20 Dec. 1573 she signed a warrant appointing him to the responsible