on’s visit to England on this occasion.
On the 1st of June, 1581
graduate employment, Marchaumont visited Castelnau, the ambassador, who showed him a letter from a certain Cigogne, one of Alen?on’s gentlemen, giving him intelligence of his master’s movements. The Duke had embarked at Dieppe at six o’clock on the morning of the 28th of May, and after knocking about in the Channel for five hours very seasick, had to return to land. He had then ridden with all his suite to Evereux whence he had sent Cigogne to inform his brother of his going to England, and had then himself started on horseback with a very small company towards Boulogne. The faithful “monk” at once hastened to the Queen with the news, which she had already heard249 elsewhere. She appeared overjoyed at the coming of her suitor, and she was for sending Stafford at once to greet him. But de Bex was sent to Dover instead, bearing a written message from the Queen, couched in the most loving terms,133 and rooms were ordered secretly to be prepared for the Prince in Marchaumont’s chambers. On the afternoon of the 2nd of June the visitor came up the Thames with the tide, evading the spies whom the King’s envoys had posted everywhere, and was safely lodged in the apartments destined for him in the Queen’s garden. Immediately afterwards one of his chamber as if he had just come from France (as indeed he had) bringing letters from his master to the Queen, and Marchaumont sent to Leicester the agreed token of his coming, namely, a jet ring. This strange prank of the young Prince upset all calculations. He had come without his brother’s prior knowledge or permission and without consultation with the ambassadors, the whole affair having been managed by Marchaumont over their heads. Says Mendoza, writing to Philip a day or two after his arrival: “No man , great or small, can believe that he has come to be married, nor can they imagine that she will marry him because he has come. It may be suspected that her having persuaded him to come with hopes that they two together would settle matters better than could be done by the intervention of his brother’s ministers, had been the motive which brought him.”
The fact is that Henry III. had shown his hand.250 Alen?on’s levies had been attacked by the King’s troops, and it was evident that unless he consented to forego his ambition and again become the laughing-stock of the mignons he must cleave to the Queen of England, marriage or no marriage. This she knew better than any one, and it was this for which she had been playing. If the French under Alen?on went to the Netherlands to weaken Spain, they would go in her interest and at her behest, and not in those of France. No words accordingly could be too sweet for her to greet her lover, no promises too brilliant which could pledge him to go in person to relieve Cambrai, notwithstanding the pressure to the contrary from his mother and brother. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham, who feared their mistress’s impressionable nature, were frightened when Alen?on appeared, and began as usual to stir up discontent of the match. “If he came to marry the Queen,” said
HKUE amec the people, “he ought to have come as the brother of a king should do and with proper means, whereas if he did not come to marry, they needed no poor Frenchmen in this country.”
