Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/370

 356 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 55. t o Sir Henry Norris that if he were the Queen of Eng- land, and had the Queen of Scots in his hands, he knew what he would do with her. 1 A far different project for the Duke of Anjou, if the Duke could be brought to consent to it, was shaping itself in the minds of the Huguenot statesmen. Elizabeth again and again, in conversations with La Mothe Fenelon, had reverted to her own marriage. She regretted to him that she had let so much time go by. She was afraid to face the Parliament which her necessi- ties would soon oblige her to call, with her promises still unfulfilled, the succession still uncertain, and the means of settling it farther off than ever. Sir Henry Cobham had been sent to Maximilian to tempt the Archduke to renew his suit, but he had received a cold answer ; the game at trifling at Vienna had been played out and lost. 2 Already however another proposal had been submitted to the Queen's consideration. The Yisdame of Chartres and the Cardinal of Chatillon suggested that she should cut the knot of her diffi- culties, secure France, and snatch at least one dangerous lover from her rival by taking Anjou for herself. The Duke, it was true, was but twenty, while she was thirty- seven, but she might still hope for children, and the political advantages to the Protestant cause in Europe might compensate for greater incongruities. How Eliza- 1 ' Si je la tenois prisonniere, oil que je fusse en lieu de la Royne d' Angleterre, je sais bien ce que je t'erais.' Norris to Cecil, October 29: MSS. France. 2 La Mothe, October 30 : Depe- ches, vol. iii.