Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/174

 154 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.58. mother would have cared little for the world's reception of it ; but as the thing itself had been sudden, so it found her unprepared, and left her uncertain what to do. She had wished merely to avoid a war with Spain, in which she feared Elizabeth would forsake her, and to give the heads of the two factions a chance of destroying each other ; but she was no more willing to throw her- self into a Catholic crusade than into a Protestant war of liberty. The crown of Poland was likely to be vacant, and she was looking to the German Princes to elect the Duke of Anjou. She showed no resentment therefore either at Elizabeth's language or at Walsing- ham's ; she took no advantage of the Pope's appro- bation ; she endeavoured to divest the massacre of all religious character, and to represent it as a political misfortune ; and she seemed to expect that the Alencon negotiation might go on as if nothing had happened. But Walsingham's confidence in her or Charles w T as shaken to the ground. The King told him that he could justify himself; Walsingham answered that, under every conceivable aspect, his conduct was without ex- cuse. If the Huguenots had committed ofiences, they should have been punished with justice, and not with ' the bloody sword of murderers.' ' The King's con- science,' he wrote to England, 'made him repute all those of the religion at home and abroad his enemies, and wish none of them alive ; and, if he might him- self give his opinion without presumption, he thought it less peril to live with them as foes than as friends/ 1 "Walsingham to the Council, September 24 : DIGGES.