Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/403

 EXPULSION OF MENDOZA. 387 Meanwhile another overture of no less consequence had been made to Elizabeth from France. Mendoza had said that she meditated rekindling the civil war there as a counterpoise to the change in Scotland. It was at all times an easy process, but if the war would kindle without her assistance, she naturally preferred to be a spectator. The French King, lying between the two factions of Catholics and Huguenots, was neither able nor particularly anxious to keep the peace between them ; and the King of Navarre and the Duke of Guise raised armies, occupied towns, and enforced or sup- pressed the edicts of toleration where each happened to be strongest. As Alencon's health failed, and the ac- cession of the house of Bourbon to the crown became more probable, the bitterness between them became naturally aggravated. The Duke of Guise, to spare France from being the battle-field of the rival creeds, became more impatient every day to be moving, know- ing that to overthrow Protestantism in England and Scotland was to overthrow it everywhere. The King of Navarre was equally aware that the liberator of Mary Stuart and the conqueror of England would be a rival, whose power and popularity it would be idle for him to attempt to resist. In September therefore, while Walsingham was in Scotland, Navarre sent his secretary, M. Segur, to Lon- don, to lay before the Queen once more the scheme for a Protestant alliance which waited only for her consent to organize itself. M. Segur pointed out to her, what her own ministers were weary of repeating, that the