[195] The letter is in the Cotton MSS., Caligula, c. 11, p. 469.

[196] Depositions of Ross and Barker.—State Trials.

[197] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.

[198] Cobham arrived in Madrid in May, when Alba’s memorandum on Ridolfi’s mission was in Philip’s hands. As was usual in English affairs, Feria was one of those asked to report on Cobham’s mission. He and his colleagues recommend that Cobham should be curtly dismissed, and the English again referred to Alba for the discussion of the trade dispute, and this course was taken. An extremely interesting letter was written by Feria to the King’s Secretary, Zayas, which is full of bitterness that his former advice as to England had not been taken. Amongst other things, Feria writes: “I understand that our object is to keep friendly with England because it is not at present possible to undertake the subjection of that country and Ireland. We were lords of it once and left it. The friendship will be difficult to maintain if the Sovereign be not a Catholic and our hold upon the Netherlands less firm. The Queen sees our weakness and assails us with inventions and fears that she will marry in France. She will no more marry Anjou than she will marry me.... If Cobham is not dealt with in dignified fashion I fear that our efforts to avoid war will only bring it upon us, and we shall find suddenly some day that we have lost the Catholics, and even they will take up arms against us. When the Queen once understands that the Catholics depend upon our King she will not dare to break with us. There is no other way out of it. For the last two years we have trodden the path of feebleness; let us now try the other road.”—Feria to Zayas, 10th May, 1571, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.

[199] MSS. Simancas, Estado 823. Portions of the document are reproduced by Mignet.

[200] The whole of the depositions will be found in the Hatfield Papers Historical MSS. Commission, and the circumstances are related in the Spanish Calendar.

[201] Simancas MSS., Minuta de Consejo, Estado 823. It will be seen on a subsequent page that the money, 200,000 crowns, was found.

[202] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. Even after Philip knew that the plot had failed and that Norfolk was in the Tower, he did not abandon his hopes—for he was tenacious when once he had laboriously made up his mind. In the instructions given to the Duke of Medina Celi in November, 1571, when he was going to succeed Alba in the Netherlands, the King writes as follows: “As regards England you will proceed in conformity with what was communicated to you here and the Duke of Alba’s information, although I do not think there will be much to do at present, as the Queen has got scent of the business and has arrested the Duke of Norfolk and the principal people concerned. She has also made the Queen of Scotland’s prison straiter, and de Spes writes to me on the 21st October that they are all in great peril, for which I am very sorry, though I still have confidence that God, whose cause it is, will help us to forward the matter as we wish. You will therefore hold yourself ready, in case the Duke of Alba write to you at sea, to take any step with this end: in accordance with Clause iv. of your instructions. I have thought well to repeat it in this letter, _which for greater security you will burn before you embark_” (the words in italics have been added in the King’s own hand). Medina Celi is told that 200,000 crowns, half in gold, will be handed to him for the English business, and must not on any account be used for any other purpose, “but for this English affair, which I sincerely hope that God will guide in some unexpected way for the good of His cause.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 349.

[203] Scottish State Papers, Mary, vol. vi.

[204] That Elizabeth intended the expulsion of de Spes, and her refusal to continue negotiations about the seizures, to be a political demonstration to show her power and impress her new friends the French, is seen by her conversation at this time (December, 1571) with Cavalcanti, Catharine de Medici’s confidential envoy. The King of Spain, she said, thought that he could separate her from the alliance with France at any time; but however accommodating he might show himself in the negotiations about the seizures, and however ready to agree to terms favourable to the English, she would never trust Spaniards again, seeing the trouble they had prepared for her in Ridolfi’s plots with the Pope. The King of France might see how little she cared for the King of Spain by the way she had ordered his ambassador to be gone without delay. She wished Cavalcanti could have seen him actually on the road, but with some pretext about wanting money he was here for a day or two longer. She could assure him, however, that he should not stay in her country, and she cared not whether another came or not.—Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.

[205] “Recueil des Depeches,” &c., de la Mothe Fénélon, vol i. 375, and Spanish Calendar.

[206] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.

[207] The French Huguenot force that had entered Flanders to aid the rebels had just been utterly routed by Alba’s son, Don Fadrique, and Charles IX. saw that unless he could dissociate himself from the unsuccessful attempt he might be dragged down by the fall of the Huguenot party.

[208] The story of the reception of the news of St. Bartholomew in England may best be followed in the Correspondance Diplomatique de La Mothe Fénélon.

[209] How soon division was introduced is seen by the action of Catharine, who saw only a few weeks after St. Bartholomew the mistake she had made in allowing the Catholic party to go too far, and once more began to court the Huguenots and Elizabeth, and also by the suspicion evinced by La Mothe, the French ambassador in London, of Guaras’ renewed favour at Elizabeth’s Court. Writing on the 9th November, he says that Alba is making all sorts of tempting offers to Elizabeth through Guaras to draw her away from French friendship and send an ambassador to Philip. “Guaras is intriguing for this with such good presents that I am told that he has given more than 10,000 crowns to one personage alone, who has some authority here. He has done so much that the Lords of the Council have been busy for several days trying to come to some arrangement with the King of Spain, and Guaras is often at Court.”—Correspondance Diplomatique, vol. v.

[210] Guaras went to Kenilworth before the reception of the news of St. Bartholomew to carry letters to Elizabeth from King Philip notifying the appointment of Medina Celi to Flanders. Only a few days after the tidings of St. Bartholomew the French ambassador wrote to Charles IX: “It seems to me that these people are bent in any case in hatching some new plan with Antonio de Guaras on the pretext of the letters from the King of Spain and Medina Celi he carried to the Queen at Kenilworth. The purport of the letters was simply to notify the coming of Medina Celi to Flanders; but these people, in consequence of what has happened at Paris, wish to make them serve for a further purpose.”—Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe Fénélon.

[211] Spanish Calendar, vol. ii.

[212] Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe Fénélon.

[213] This was not the first time that the suggestion of a marriage between Mary and Don Juan had been made. A letter written by Lord Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Keeper of the Queen of Scots, written soon after the discovery of the Ridolfi plot, says that Elizabeth does not complain of Mary’s attempts to escape to Spain or elsewhere, nor is she offended by the proposal to marry young James to the Infanta. “Nether that she sought to make the King of Spayne beleve that she wold geve ear to the offer of Don Jon of Austria.” The real cause of Elizabeth’s anger, says Lord Burghley, is Mary’s conspiracy to raise a revolution in England.—Talbot Papers (Lodge).

[214] One of Burghley’s spies, Lane, a Catholic, ventured even to reproach the minister for talking so much to Guaras on foreign policy. It appears that Burghley’s hare-brained son-in-law, Lord Oxford, and another English noble were in secret negotiation with Guaras to do some service to the Spaniards in Flanders, Guaras to find the necessary money on Oxford’s pledge. Lane advises Burghley to put a spoke into the wheel. Lane says that unless Guaras is employed in some way—preferably in Ireland on Government affairs—he may develop pernicious activity elsewhere.—Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., June, 1573.

[215] Hardwick State Papers.

[216] At this time (March, 1575) Orange, despairing of efficient aid from Elizabeth, was wooing the French. His daughter was to marry Alençon, who was to join Condé and a French army to assist the Flemings against Philip. This at once made Elizabeth turn to Spain. Not only was she, as we see, polite to Guaras, but she sent Henry Cobham to Spain as an ambassador in August to assure Philip that on no account would she allow any French domination of Flanders. A fleet of Spanish transports, too, on the way to Flanders were received with effusion now in the English ports by the Government though not by the English sailors.—Spanish Calendar,