Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/404

 388 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 66 Protestants in France and the Low Countries had so far saved England from a joint invasion by the Catholic powers. The Prince of Orange and the King of Navarre had been fighting her battle as well as their own, and the assistance which they had received from her had so far been almost nothing. She imagined that she had done wonders for them. In the last thirteen years, her solitary contribution to the Huguenot cause had been a loan of sixty thousand crowns, for which the King had given her jewels of five times the value as a security. He hoped that now, with the Low Countries almost at the last gasp and the Catholics everywhere recovering the ascendancy, she would see her way to a more liberal co-operation with those who were her best if not her only friends. Nothing, he was convinced, but inability would hold her back at such a time. If it could not be, M. Segur was instructed to request the restoration of the jewels on payment of the sum for which they were pledged. 1 Some intention of encouraging Navarre may have passed over her mind among her shifts of purpose ; but, as the reader has seen, she had fallen off like a vessel unable to contend against the wind. Her thoughts were once more of compromise, and Captain Bingham was waiting for his final orders to make an end of the com- merce of the Hollanders. ' Such,' wrote "Wai- October. singham on his return from Scotland, ' as are at Court for the King of Navarre, to solicit an associ- 1 Memorial of M. Segur, 1583 : M8S. France.