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 had to be repressed by proclamation. The matter was presently compromised, but it did not fail to leave much bad blood on both sides. Nevertheless, when in 1570 Philip was about to marry his niece, the Archduchess Anne of Austria, Elizabeth very politely sent a sqadron under Charles Howard, afterwards Lord Howard of Effingham, to honourably escort the princess from Zeeland to Spain.

In 1572, there was a new treaty with France; yet Elizabeth was unable to regard the proceedings of her nearest continental neighbour without the gravest anxiety and suspicion. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day served to increase her misgivings; and, as a fourth religious war, which centred about La Roehelle, had broken out, the sympathies of most Englishmen were in an excited condition, which, even taken alone, was a source of difficulty and of danger to peace. Nor was the Protestant struggle going on only in France. The Prince of Orange had entered the Netherlands at the head of an army recruited in Germany.

Elizabeth was as desirous of avoiding formal war as she was of befriending the Protestant cause. She dispatched help to the Prince of Orange, under Thomas Morgan and Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and, at first less openly, she assisted the Protestants of La Rochelle. The celebrated Captain Polain blockaded that port; but he had only five galleys and three ships, besides small craft; and the success of one of the Protestant commanders named Miran, in running the blockade and throwing provisions into the town, seems to have encouraged Gabriel de Montgomeri, a Protestant leader who was at the time a refugee in England, to attempt an enterprise of a similar kind on a larger scale. He fitted out a fleet of fifty-three vessels, not, of course, without the more or less active co-operation of the English Government; and he had as his second in command Jacques Sore, the best naval commander that Protestant France had then produced. Yet, in spite of these advantages, when, in April, 1573, he appeared off the beleaguered town, he effected nothing; nor, although he persisted in his efforts, did he succeed in breaking down Polain's guard before the conclusion of the arrangement in virtue of which the siege was raised on June 25th.

When the French ambassador in London complained of this