HIS CHARACTER AND DESCENDANTS. 19 Norfolk was a man of many amiable and several estimable qualities; and much too good for the faction with which he had been enticed to act and the cause in which he suffered. On the scaffold he acknowledged, with great apparent sincerity, the justice of his sentence, and his peculiar guiltiness in breaking the solemn promise which he had pledged to his sovereign. He declared himself to have been an earnest protestant ever since he had had any taste for religion, and in this faith he died very devoutly. He bequeathed by his will his best George to his kinsman and true friend the earl of Sussex, whose faithful counsels he too late reproached himself with neglecting. By his attainder the dukedom was lost to the family of Howard; but Philip, his eldest son, succeeded his maternal grandfather in the earldom of Arundel ; lord Thomas, his second son, (whose mother was the daughter and heiress of lord Audley,) was created lord Howard of Walden by Elizabeth and earl of Suffolk by James; and lord William, the youngest, who possessed Naworth-castle in right of Elizabeth Dacre his wife, and was known upon the West Border (of which he was warden) by the appellation of "Belted Will," was ancestor to the earls of Carlisle 2. The king of Spain had long been regarded in England as the most implacable and formidable of a "His Bilboa blade, by marchmen felt, Lay of the Last Minstrel. 20 HOSTILITY OF SPAIN. the enemies of Elizabeth; and on good grounds. It was believed to be through his procurement that Sixtus V. had been led to fulminate his anathema against her ;-it was well known that the pope had made a donation to him of the kingdom of Ireland, of which he was anxious to avail himself;-there was strong ground to suspect that he had sent one of his ablest generals in embassy to England with no other view than to have taken the command of the northern rebels, had their enterprise prospered; and the intimate participation of his agents in all the intrigues of the queen of Scots was notorious. Dr. Wylson, a learned civilian, an accomplished scholar, and one of the first refiners of English prose, had published in 1571, with the express view of rousing the spirit of his readers against this formidable tyrant, a version of the Orations of Demosthenes against the king Philip of his day; and he had been at the pains of pointing out in the notes coincidences in the situation of Athens and of England. The author, who was an earnest protestant, had the further motive in this work of paying a tribute to the memory of the learned and unfortunate Cheke; who during his voluntary exile had read gratuitous lectures to his countrymen at Padua on the works of the great Grecian orator, of which Wylson had been an auditor, and had also made a Latin version of them, by which the English translator had largely profited. It was principally her dread of the Spaniards which led Elizabeth into those perpetual reciprocations of deceitful professions and empty nego WALSINGHAM AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE. 21 tiations with the profligate and perfidious court of France, which in the judgement of posterity, have redounded so little to her honor; but which appeared to her of so much importance, that she now thought herself peculiarly fortunate in having discovered an agent capable of conducting them with all the wariness, penetration, and profound address so peculiarly requisite where sincerity and good faith are wanting. This agent was sir Francis Walsingham; whose rare acquisitions of political knowledge, made principally during the period of his voluntary exile for religion, and still rarer talents for public business, had induced lord Burleigh to recommend him to the service and confidence of his mistress. For several years from this time he resided as the queen's ambassador at the court of France, at first as coadjutor to sir Thomas Smith;-a learned and able man, who afterwards became a principal secretary of state ;— the rest of the time alone. There was not in England a man who was regarded as a more sincere and earnest protestant than Walsingham; yet such was at this time his sense of the importance to the country of the French alliance, that he expressed himself strongly in favor of the match between Elizabeth and the duke of Anjou, and as a minister spared no pains to promote it. Similar language was held on this subject both by Leicester and Burleigh; but the former was perhaps no more in earnest on the subject than his mistress; and finally all parties, except the French protestants, who it is remarkable, looked to the conclusion of these nuptials as their best 22 TREATY OF AMITY WITH FRANCE. security, seem to have been not ill pleased when, the marriage treaty being at length laid aside, a strict league of amity between the two countries was agreed upon in its stead. Splendid embassies were reciprocally sent to receive the ratifications of this treaty; and Burleigh writes to a friend, between jest and earnest, that an unexpected delay of the French ambassador was cursed by all the husbands whose ladies had been detained at great expense and inconvenience in London, to contribute to the splendor of the court on his reception. On the 9th of June 1572 the duke de Montmorenci and his suite at length arrived. His entertainment was magnificent; all seemed peace and harmony between the rival nátions; and Elizabeth even instructed her ambassadors to give favourable ear to a hint which the queenmother had dropped of a matrimonial treaty between the queen of England and her youngest son, the duke d'Alençon, who had then scarcely attained the age of seventeen. Lulled by these flattering appearances of tranquillity, her majesty set out on her summer progress; and she was enjoying the festivities prepared by Leicester for her reception at his splendid castle of Kennelworth, when news arrived of the execrable massacre of Paris ;-an atrocity not to be paralleled in history! Troops of affrighted Hugonots, who had escaped through a thousand perils with life, and life 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. MASSACRE OF PARIS. 23 After such a stroke, no one knew what to expect; the German protestants flew to arms; and even the subjects of Elizabeth trembled for their countrymen travelling on the continent, and 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 by some accident 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, for their own sakes, careful; 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 |