Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/463

 1578.] THE ALENCON MARRTA GE. 443 Walsingham' s mission condemned to certain failure. A 11 was to no purpose. The Queen ridiculed their precise- ness, and refused to hear their remonstrance. She said privately to young Edmund Tremayne, that ' the States ought already to have yielded to Don John.' Their attitude ' was altogether unbecoming from subjects to their sovereign/ Walsingham should have told them that if they persisted in such ' absurd ' conduct, ' she would leave them in all their enterprises.' They would then have been frightened into their senses, ' and would have been driven by way of caution to submit/ 1 Even this was not all, and there was yet one more strange shift behind. ' The subtle malice of the time obliged her to fence too much rather than too little.' 2 She wished the States to be weak ; yet a power of some kind was needed in the field, to keep Don John in check ; and therefore, while she had sent Walsingham expressly to prevent the admission of the French, she contrived privately to communicate to Alencon, ' that she would in a sort consent to his enterprise and con- cur in it,' if he would act with herself and under her direction. She consulted no one. She did not even share her thoughts with Burghley : but with the intricate practice in which she so delighted, she invited the Duke to advance at the very time when she was forbidding Orange to treat with him. 3 It was like dancing on a tight 1 Edmund Tremayne to Walsiug- ham, July 20 : MSS. Holland. 2 Paulet to "Walsingham, June 1 6 : MSS. France. 3 ' Monsieur saith that he hath warrant from her Majesty, though to me unknoicn, to come thus hastily into the Low Countries as a thing