alone, from the hands of their pitiless assassins, arrived on the English coast, imploring the commiseration of their brother-protestants, and relating in accents of despair their tale of horrors. After such a stroke, no one knew what to expect: the German protestants flew to arms; and the subjects of Elizabeth trembled for their countrymen travelling on the Continent, and trembled for themselves in their island-home. The pope applauded openly the savage deed; the court of Spain showed itself united hand and heart with that of France,-to the astonishment of Elizabeth, who had been deceived by their feigned enmity; and it seemed as if the signal had been given of a general crusade against the reformed churches of Europe.

For several days, fears were entertained for the safety of Walsingham himself, who had not dared to transmit any account of the event except one by a servant of his own, whose passage had been accidentally delayed. Even this minister, cautious and crafty and sagacious as he was, assisted by all the spies whom he constantly kept in pay, had been unable to penetrate any part of the bloody secret; he was completely taken by surprise. But of his personal safety the perfidious young king and his detestable mother were careful for their own sakes; and not only were himself and his servants protected from injury, but every Englishman who had the presence of mind to take shelter in his house found it an inviolable sanctuary. Two persons only of this nation fell victims to the fury of that direful night; but the property of many was plundered.

The afflicted remnant of the French protestants prepared to stand upon their defence with all the intrepidity of despair. They closed the gates of Rochelle; their strong-hold, against the king's troops, casting at the same time an imploring eye towards England, where thousands of brave and generous spirits were now burning with impatience to rush to their succour.

No act would have been hailed with such loud and general applause of her people as an instant renunciation by Elizabeth of all friendship and intercourse with the perjured and blood-stained Charles, the midnight assassin of his own subjects; and it is impossible to contemplate without disdain the coldness and littleness of that character which, in such a case, could consent to measure its demonstrations of indignation and abhorrence by the narrow rules of a self-interested caution. But that early experience of peril and adversity which had formed the mind of this princess to penetration, wariness, and passive courage, and given her a perfect command of the whole art of simulation and dissimulation, had at the same time robbed her of some of the noblest impulses of our nature; of generosity, of ardor, of enterprise, of magnanimity. Where more exalted spirits would only have felt, she calculated; where bolder ones would have flown to action, she contented herself with mere words.

276

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CATHERINE DE MEDICI.

Charles and his mother, while still in uncertainty how far their masterstroke of policy,-so they regarded it, would be successful in completely crushing the Hugonots, prudently resolved to spare no efforts to preserve Elizabeth their friend, or at least to prevent her from becoming an open enemy. Instructions had therefore been in the first instance dispatched to La Mothe Fenelon, the French ambassador in England, to communicate such an account of the massacre and its motives as suited these views, and to solicit a confirmation of the late treaty of amity. His reception at court on this occasion was awfully solemn: the courtiers and ladies who lined the rooms leading to the presence-chamber were all habited in deep mourning; and not one of them would vouchsafe a word or a smile to the ambassador, though a man of honor, and one whom they had formerly received on the footing of cordial intimacy. The queen herself, in listening to his message, assumed an aspect more composed indeed than her attendants, but extremely cold and serious. She expressed her horror at the idea that a sovereign could imagine himself under a necessity of taking such vengeance on his own subjects; represented the practicability of proceeding with them according to law; and desired to be better informed of the reality of the treasonable designs imputed to the Hugonots. She also declared, that it would be difficult for her to place reliance hereafter on the friendship of a prince who had shown himself so deadly a foe to those who professed her religion; but, at the suit of the ambassador, she consented to suspend in some degree her judgment of the deed till further information reached her.

Even these feeble demonstrations of sensibility to a crime so enormous, she speedily laid aside. In spite of Walsingham's declared opinion, that the professions of the French court towards her were so evidently treacherous that its open enmity was less to be dreaded than its feigned friendship, Elizabeth suffered her indignation to evaporate in a few severe speeches; restrained her subjects from carrying such aid to the defenders of Rochelle as could be made a ground of serious quarrel; and even permitted a renewal of the shocking and monstrous proposal of marriage between herself and the youngest son of Catherine. By this shameless woman various proposals were also made for bringing about a personal interview between herself and Elizabeth. She first named England as the place of meeting, then the sea between Dover and Calais, and afterwards the isle of Jersey; but from the first plan she herself departed; and the others were rejected in anger by the English council, who remarked, with proper spirit, that they who had ventured to make such propositions must imagine them strangely careless of the personal safety of their sovereign.

Charles IX. was particularly anxious that Elizabeth, as a pledge of friendship, should consent to stand sponsor to his new-born daughter; and with this request, after some difficulties and a few declarations of

horror at his conduct, she had the baseness to comply. She refused, however, to indulge that king in his further desire, that she would appoint either the earl of Leicester or lord Burleigh as her proxy :not choosing, apparently, to trust these pillars of state and of the protestant cause within his reach; and she sent instead her cousin, the earl of Worcester, 'a good simple gentlemen,' as Leicester called him, and a zealous catholic.

All this time Elizabeth was in her heart as hostile to the court of France as the most zealous of her protestant subjects; for she well knew that it was and ever must be essentially hostile to her and her government; and in the midst of her civilities to the king she took care to supply the Hugonots with such secret aids as should enable them still to persevere in a formidable resistance.

It is worth recording, on the subject of these negotiations between Elizabeth and the royal family of France, that Burleigh seems to have been encouraged to expect a successful issue by a calculation of the queen's nativity, seen by Strype in his own handwriting, from which it was foretold that she should marry, in middle life, a foreign prince younger than herself; and probably be the mother of a son, who should be prosperous in his middle age. Catherine de' Medici also, to whom some female fortune-teller had predicted that all her sons should be kings, hoped, after the election of her second son to the throne of Poland, to find the full accomplishment of the prophecy in the advancement of Alancon, the youngest, to the matrimonial crown of England. So serious was the belief of that age in the lying oracles of judicial astrology!

Among the English travellers doomed to be eyewitnesses of the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew was the celebrated Philip Sidney, then a youth of eighteen. He was the eldest son of sir Henry Sidney, lord-deputy of Ireland; and from this excellent man and parent he had received, amongst his earliest and strongest impressions, those elevated principles of honor, veracity, and moral purity, which regulated and adorned the whole tenor of his after-life. An extraordinary solidity of character, with great vivacity of parts, had distinguished him from a child, and fortune conspired with genius to bring him early before the public eye.

He was nephew and presumptive heir to the earl of Leicester, by whom he was in a manner adopted; and thus patronized, his rapid advancement was anticipated as a matter of course.

It was the practice of that day for parents in higher life to dispose of their children in marriage at an age now justly accounted immature *: and no sooner had young Sidney completed his fourteenth

* Thus we find sir George Manners, ancestor of the dukes of Rutland, who died in 1513, bequeathing to each of his unmarried daughters a portion of three hundred marks to be paid at the time of their marriage, or within four years after, if the husband be not twenty-one years of age; or at such time as the husband came of age. Collins's Peerage, sir E. Brydges.

278

THE EARLY HISTORY OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

year, than arrangements were made for his union with Anne Cecil, daughter of the secretary. Why the connexion never took place we do not learn: sir Henry Sidney in a letter to Cecil says, with reference to this affair, 'I am sorry that you find coldness any where in proceeding, where such good liking appeared in the beginning: but, for my part, I was never more ready to perfect that affair than presently I am,' &c. Shortly after, the lady, unfortunately for herself, became the wife of the earl of Oxford; and Sidney, still unfettered by matrimonial engagements, obtained licence to travel, and reached Paris in May 1572. Charles IX., in consideration, no doubt, of the influence of his uncle at the English court, gave him the appointment of a gentleman of his bed-chamber, a fortnight only before the massacre. On that dreadful night Sidney took shelter in the house of Walsingham, and thus escaped all personal danger; but his after-conduct fully proved how indelible was the impression left upon his mind of the monstrous wickedness of the French royal family, and of the disgrace and misery which an alliance with it must entail on his queen and country.

He readily obeyed his uncle's directions to quit France without delay; and proceeding to Frankfort, there formed a highly honorable and beneficial friendship with the virtuous Hubert Languet, who opened to him at once his heart and his purse. The remonstrances of this patron, who dreaded for his youthful friend the artifices of the papal court, deterred him from extended his travels to Rome, an omission which he afterwards deeply regretted; but a leisurely survey of the northern cities of Italy, during which he became advantageously known to many eminent characters, occupied him profitably and delightfully till his return to his native country in 1575; after which he will again occur to our notice as the pride and wonder of the English court.

CHAP. XVIII. 1573 TO 1577.

Letters of lord Talbot to his father.-Connexion of Leicester with lady Sheffield.-Anecdote of the queen and Mr. Dyer.-Queen suspicious of Burleigh.-Countesses of Lennox and Shrewsbury imprisoned.— Queen refuses the sovereignty of Holland.-Her remarkable speech to the deputies.-Alchemy.-Notice of Dr. Dee.-Of Frobisher.— Family of Love.-Burning of two Anabaptists.—Entertainment of the queen at Kenilworth.-Notice of Walter earl of Essex.General favor towards his son Robert.-Letter of the queen to the earl of Shrewsbury respecting Leicester.

GREAT as was the injustice committed by Elizabeth in the detention of the queen of Scots, it must be confessed that the offence brought

with it its own sufficient punishment in the fears, jealousies, and disquiets, which it entailed upon her.

Where Mary was concerned, the most approved loyalty, the longest course of faithful service, and the truest attachment to the protestant cause, were insufficient pledges to her oppressor of the fidelity of her nobles or ministers. The earl of Shrewsbury, whom she had deliberately selected from all others to be the keeper of the captive queen; and whose vigilance had now for so long a period baffled all attempts for her deliverance, was, to the last, unable so to establish himself in the confidence of his sovereign as to be exempt from such starts of suspicion and fits of displeasure as kept him in a state of continua{ apprehension. Feeling with acuteness all the difficulties of his situation, this nobleman judged it expedient to cause Gilbert lord Talbot his eldest son, to remain in close attendance on the motions of the queen; charging him to study with unremitting attention all the intrigues of the court, on which in that day so much depended, and to acquaint him with them frequently and minutely. To this precaution of the earl's we owe several extant letters of Lord Talbot, which throw considerable light on the minor incidents of the time. [Illustrations by Lodge, passim.]

In May 1573, this diligent news-gatherer acquaints his father, that the earl of Leicester was much with her majesty; that he was more than formerly solicitous to please her; and that he was as high in favor as ever: but that two sisters, lady Sheffield and lady Francis Howard, were deeply in love with him, and at great variance with each other; that the queen was on this account very angry with them, and not well pleased with him; and that spies were set upon him. To such open demonstrations of feminine jealousy was this great queen not ashamed to descend! Yet she remained all her life in ignorance of the true state of this affair, which, in fact, is not perfectly cleared up at the present day.

It appears, that a criminal intimacy was known to subsist between Leicester and lady Sheffield in the lifetime of her lord; in consequence of which, his death, which was sudden, and preceded, it is said, by violent symptoms, was popularly attributed to the Italian arts of Leicester. Some time afterwards, lady Sheffield bore a son to Leicester, whose birth was carefully concealed for fear of giving offence to the queen, though many believed that a private marriage had taken place. Afterwards, he forsook the mother of his child to marry the countess of Essex, and the deserted lady became the wife of another. In the reign of James I., many years after the death of Leicester, sir Robert Dudley, his son by lady Sheffield, to whom he had left a great part of his fortune, laid claim to the family honors, bringing several witnesses to prove his mother's marriage, and amongst others his mother herself. This lady declared on oath, that Leicester had em