Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/190

 REIGN OP ELIZABETH. [CH. Pope's blessing, the glory, and the prize. The argu- ments were well calculated to work on the King of Spain ; but, unfortunately, the Duke of Alva's views of the situation were totally different. In the first place, he disbelieved in the completeness of the Catholic revolu- tion in France. He knew that the Queen-mother was working day and night to recover Elizabeth's confidence. When a French Princess was born in October, she soli- cited her so earnestly to fulfil her promise to be the child's godmother, that Elizabeth had at last consented ; and the Earl of Worcester went to represent her at the 7 ceremony. That an English nobleman one too of notoriously Catholic tendencies should go in state to Paris so soon after the massacre, was considered by the Protestants a hideous scandal so hideous indeed that the Earl was attacked by a privateer midway between Dover and Calais. Four of his men were killed, and seven others wounded. 1 But to Alva the continuance of any kind of friendly relations was alarming. He was not satisfied that the projects of France on Flanders might not still be revived. Even the Alencon marriage did not yet seem wholly impossible. Elizabeth still talked of it, and Burghley still wished it ; 2 while, so far from - 1 The attack was believed in London to have been instigated by some of the English bishops. A Spanish agent writes : ' Creese que fue por trato de los Obispos de Ing- laterra que deseaban que la Reyna no enviase personage al dicho bau- tismo.' Relacion de las Cartas de Antonio Fogac,a a Cayas, Enero, 1573: MSS. Simancas. 2 Wherever documents survive, which reveal what was passing under the surface, we find everywhere in Europe organizations of complex treachery. At the end of 1572 a person appeared in London profess- ing to come from the Due d' Alencon, with a private message that the Duke