Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/134

 iiS REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 64. more, and he had addressed to his mistress a sad but earnest letter of advice in the isolation to which he be- lieved that she had reduced herself. Alenc,on had come and gone. A provisional treaty had been drawn and signed. M. Simier and his brother commissioners had returned to Paris, and it had been arranged that if after two months the treaty remained unratified, the negotiation should be considered at an end. The two months were over and the Queen had given no sign. She herself, it is possible, then regarded the game as played out ; but she wished to throw, if possible, the blame of the rupture upon France. She wrote herself to Alengon. She sent Sir Edward Stafford to Paris with fresh conditions, and the French Court, to her extreme embarrassment, accepted everything. 1 A special cause had arisen, which made an affront to France at that moment peculiarly dangerous. News had arrived of the performances of Francis Drake in the Pacific, which might render nugatory all Elizabeth's efforts to avoid war with Spain. It is time to return to the history of the extraordinary expedition which laid the foundation of the naval empire of England. It had been undertaken as part of a general policy which had been immediately afterwards abandoned. Spanish in- terference in England was supposed to be imminent, and the Queen, who dreaded the cost of war, yet be- lieved that it was about to be forced upon her, had been 1 ' I find there shall be no show of breach made of their parts. They think they have the Queen at an advantage, and there they will keep her.' Stafford to Walsingham, Jan- uary 28, 1579-80 : MSS. f ranee.