The courtships of Queen Elizabeth; a history of the various negotiations for her marriage

Preface

It has been my pleasant duty to consider carefully in chronological order a great mass of diplomatic documents of the time of Elizabeth, in which are reflected, almost from day to day, the continually shifting aspects of political affairs, and the varying attitudes of the Queen and her ministers in dealing therewith. I have been struck with the failure of most historians of the time, who have painted their pictures with a large brush, to explain or adequately account for what is so often looked upon as the perverse fickleness of perhaps the greatest sovereign that ever occupied the English throne ; and I have come to the conclusion that the best way in which a just appreciation can be formed of the fixity of purpose and consummate statecraft which underlay her apparent levity, is to follow in close detail the varying circumstances and combinations which prompted the bewildering mutability of her policy. To do this through the whole of the events of a long and important reign would be beyond the powers of an ordinary student, and the attempt would probably end in confusion. I have therefore considered it best to limit myself in this book to one set of neeotiations. those which relate to the Queen's vi PREFACE.

proposed marriage, running" through many years of her reign : and I trust that, however imperfectly my task may have been effected, the facts set forth may enable the reader to perceive more clearly than hitherto, that capricious, even frivolous, as the Queen's methods appear to be, her main object was rarely neglected or lost sight of during the long continuance of these negotiations.

That a strono- modern Engfland was rendered possible mainly by the boldness, astuteness, and activity of Elizabeth at the critical turning-point of European history is generally admitted ; but how masterly her policy was, and how entirely personal to herself, is even yet perhaps not fully understood. I have therefore endeavoured in this book to follow closely from end to end one strand only of the complicated texture, in the hope that I may succeed by this means in exhibiting the general process by which E no-land, under the Guidance of the ereat

c? o o

Tudor Queen, was able to emerge regenerated and triumphant from the struggle which was to settle the fate of the world for centuries to come.

MARTIN A. S. HUME.

LoxDOX, Fcbniniy, 1896.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

QUEEN ELIZABETH Frontispiece

THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDELEY Facing page lO

ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER „ „ 64 HENRY DE VALOIS, DUKE OF ANJOU

(HENRY III.) „ „ 128

FRANCOIS DE VALOIS DUKE OF

ALENCON „ „ 272

Chapter 1

Character of Elizabeth and her contemporaries — ]\Iain object of her pohcy — Youth of EHzabeth — The Duke of Angouleme — Phihp of Spain — Seymour and Catharine Parr — Mrs. Ashley's and Parry's confessions — Execution of Seymour — Proposed marriage of Elizabeth with a son of the Duke of Ferrara — With a son of Hans Frederick of Saxony — Courtney — Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy — Prince Eric of Sweden — Death of Queen Mar}- — The Earl of Arundel.

Thp: greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was that consummate succession of intrigues which for nearly half a century was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of r^ngland and Protestantism, with which the interests of the Queen herself were indissolubly bound up. Those who were in the midst of the strife were for the most part working for immediate aims, and probably understood or cared but little about the ultimate result of their efforts ; but we, looking back as over a plain that has been traversed, can see that, from the tangle of duplicity which obscured the issue to the actors, there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of young, new, vigorous thoughts of which we still feel the impetus. We perceive now that modern ideas of libertv and enliohtenment are the natural outcome of the victory of England in that devious and tortuous struggle, which engaged for so long some of the keenest intellects, masculine and feminine, which have ever existed in Europe. It seems impossible that the result could have been attained excepting under the very peculiar combination of circumstances and persons then existing in England. Elizabeth triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength ; her bad qualities were as valuable to her as her good ones. Strong and steadfast Cecil would never have held the helm so long if he had not constantly been contrasted with the shifty, greedy, treacherous crew of councillors who were for ever ravening after foreign bribes as payment for their honour and their loyalty. Without Leicester as a permanent matrimonial possibility to fall back upon, the endless negotiations for marriage with foreign princes would soon have become pointless and ineffectual, and the balance would have been lost. But for the follies of Mary Stuart, which led to her downfall and lifelong imprisonment, the Catholic party in England could never have been subjected so easily as it was. Elizabeth, with little fixed religious conviction, would, with her characteristic instability, almost certainly at one difficult juncture or another have been drawn into a recognition of the papal power, and so would have destroyed the nice counterpoise, but for the unexampled fact that such recognition would have upset her own legitimacy and right to reign. The combination of circumstances on the Continent also seems to have been exactly that necessary to aid the result most favourable to English interests ; and the special personal qualities gUKKN ICLlZAHiyni. 3

both of Philip II. and Catharine de Medici were as if expressly moulded to contribute to the same end. But propitious, almost providential, as the circumstances were, the makino- of England and the establishment of Protestantism as a permanent power in Europe could never have been effected without the supreme and sustained statecraft of the Queen and her o-reat minister. The nimble shifting from side to side, the encouragement or discouragement of the French and Flemish Protestants as the policy of the moment dictated, the alternate flouting and Battering of the rival powers, and the agile utilisation of the Queen's sex and feminine love of admiration to provoke competing offers for her hand, all exhibit statesnianship as keen as it was unscrupulous. The political methods adopted were perhaps those which met with general acceptance at the time, but the dexterous juggling through a long course of years with regard to Elizabeth's marriage is unexampled in the history of government. Not a point was missed. Full advantao-e was taken of the Queen's maiden state, of her feminine fickleness, of her solitary sovereignty, of her assumed religious uncertainty, of her accepted beauty, and of the keen competition for her hand. In very many cases neither the wooer nor the wooed was in earnest, and the courtship was merely a polite fiction to cover other objects ; but at least on two occasions, if not three, the Queen was very nearly forced by circumstances or her own feelings into a position which would have made her marriage inevitable. Her caution, however, on each occasion caused her to withdraw in time without mortal offence to the family of her suitor ; and to the end of her days she was able, painted old

4 Till': couirrsinps of

harridan though she was, to act coquettishh' the part of the peerless beauty whose fair hand niioht possibly reward the devoted admiration paid to her, with their tongues in their cheeks, by the bright young' gallants who sought her smiles. The story of the various negotiations for the Queen's marriage has been told in more or less detail in the histories of the times, but no comprehensive view has yet been given of the marriage negotiations alone : nor has their successive relation to other events been set forth as a connected narrative. Within the last few years i.nuch new material for such a narrative has become available both in England and on the Continent, and it is now possible to see with a certain amount of clearness the hands of the other players besides that of the English Queen. The approaches made to Elizabeth by the brothers de Valois. or rather by their intriguing mother. Catharine de Medici, have been related somewhat fully, mainly from the documents in the National Library in Paris, by the Count de la Ferriere.' and the recent publication of the Spanish State Papers at Simancas of the reign of Elizabeth by the Record Office.' puts us into possession of a vast quantity of hitherto unused material of the highest interest, especially with regard to the matrimonial overtures made by Philip II. and the princes of the house of Austria ; whilst the full text of the extraordinary private letters to and from the Queen in relation to the Alencon match, 1579 82. printed by the His-

' " Projcts dc Alaiiaiic dc la Rciiie Elizabeth." Ferriere. Paris.

"•■ Calendar of Spanish State Papers (Elizabeth). Rolls Series. Pxlited bv Martin A. S. Hume.

lorical MSS. Coininissloii from iht- Halficld l^ipcrs. affords an opportunitx ol the i^TfatC'St value for rriticisiiiL; the by-play in this curious comccK . I'roin these sources, from ihc W'alsiiinham Tajjcrs troin the I'reiich diplomatic corresjjoiideiice, Irom the Foreij^n, Domestic, and Venetian Calendars ol State Papers, and from the various contemporar\' <ukI later chroniclers ot the times, it is j)roposed to construct .i consecutive narrative of most of the important attempts made to persuade the " Virgin Oueen " to abandon her much-boasted celibacy.

In October, 1532, exactly eleven months before the birth of Elizabeth, Henry VIII. paid his pompous visit to the French king", accompanied by his privately married wife, Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke. He had deeply offended the Spanish Emperor by his treatment of Queen Catharine, and felt the need of drawing" closer the bonds of union with PVancis I., which twelve years before had been tied on the F^ield of the Cloth of Gold ; and almost as soon as the little Princess Elizabeth was born, negotiations were opened for her marriage with the child-prince, Duke of Angouleme, third son of I'rancis I. Henry asked for too much, as was his wont. He required the F'rench king and his nobles to make a declaration of approval of the Act of Sue cession which had been passed in England defying the Pope and settling the crown on the issue of Anne Boleyn. Francis was to press the Pope to revoke the anathemas that the Church had hurled upon the schismatic king, and the little prince was to be brought up in England, holding his dukedom as an independent fief of the French crown. The last two demands might have been complied with, as they could subsequently have been revoked, but the eldest son of the Church could never accept the first article, which would have brought him into definite defiance of the papacy ; and the negotiation fell through.

Elizabeth was only three years old when her mother's fall removed her from the line of the succession, and with the strange vicissitudes of her early girlhood we have nothing here to do. When, however, in 1542, the death of James V. of Scotland and the almost simultaneous birth of his daughter Mary seemed to bring nearer to its consummation Henry's idea of a union of the two crowns, he proposed to marry the baby Queen of Scots to his own infant son and at the same time offered the hand of Elizabeth, who was then nine years old, to the Earl of Arran, head of the house of Hamilton, the next heir to the Scottish crown. The man was nearly an idiot and failed to see the advantasfes of such a connection, the consequence being that French intrigue and French money, backed up by the influence of the Queen Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, were victorious ; and Henry was thwarted of his desire. The fact that he had been checkmated by the French king in this matter rankled in his breast and caused that foolish and profitless war, in alliance with the F^mperor, against France, which is principally remembered for the siege and capture and subsequent loss of Boulogne. Charles V. tried very hard to get his cousin, Mary Tudor, Henry's elder daughter, acknowledged as legitimate, but althouoh this was not done in so manv words, both she and her sister Elizabeth were restored to their respective places in the line of succession; and w^hilst

ULlCliN ELIZABETH. 7

the treaty of alliance between the two sovereigns was under discussion a suggestion was made that Charles' son, Philip of Spain, then a lad of seventeen, should be betrothed to Elizabeth, who was eleven. It was probably never meant to be anything but a compliment, and certainly would not have been serioush" entertained by the Emperor, but in any case the suggestion was quietly dropped and Spanish and English interests rapidly drifted apart again. In January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, leaving the succession to his two daughters in tail after his child-son Edward V^I. and his heirs. The Queen Dowager, Catharine Parr, immediately married Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of the Protector Somerset, and uncle ot the little King. To their care was confided Princess Elizabeth, then a girl of fourteen, who resided principally in the Queen's dower houses at Chelsea and Hanworth, and it was at this critical period of her life that her personal interest in her love affairs may be said to have commenced.

When, subsequent to the death of the Queen Dowager, a short year afterwards, her husband's ambitious schemes had aroused the jealousy of his all-powerful brother, one of the charges made against him was that he had planned to marry the Princess Elizabeth and use her as one of his instruments for obtaining supreme power. The original confessions and declarations of those who were supposed to be concerned with him in the plot, which are still amongst Lord Salisbury's papers at Hatfield, were published in full many years ago by Haynes, and have more recently been calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission. They have been used bv all historians of the times, and there is no intention of repeating here fully the ott-tokl story divulged by these curious declarations. It is needless to say that they disclose scandalous treatment of a young and sensitive girl both by Seymour and Catharine Parr, even after allowino- for the free manners then prevalent. It is difficult to understand, indeed, what can have been Seymour's real intention towards the Princess, unless it was the guilty satisfaction of his own passions. His wife was young and healthy, and in the natural course ol events might have been expected to live long, so that he could hardly have looked forward to his marriage with Elizabeth ; and yet Mrs. Ashley, ^ her governess, confessed in the Tower in February, 1549, that Seymour was in the habit of visiting the girl's bedroom before she was dressed, sometimes by himself and sometimes with his wife, and there indulged in much indelicate and suggestive romping, in which Catharine Parr herself occasionally took part. Thomas Parry,- the cofferer, repeats in his confession a story told him by Mrs. Ashley which carries the matter somewhat further. " She said the Lord Admiral loved the Lady Elizabeth but too well, and had done so for a good while, and this was the cause that the Queen was jealous oi him and Lady Elizabeth. On one occasion the Queen coming suddenly upon them had found him holding the Lady Elizabeth in his arms ; upon which she fell out with them both, and this was the cause why the Queen and Lady Elizabeth parted."

Whatever may have been Seymour's intentions

^ Confessions of Mrs. Ashley and Thomas Parry. Hatheld Papers. Historical MSS. Commission. - Ibid.

gu KEN i:lizah1':th. 9

towards Elizabeth during" his wife's life, he left ihem in no doubt as soon as she died. For a conspirator, indeed, he was the most open-mouthed person imaginable. By the confessions, early in 1549, of Wightman. Sharington, Dorset, Harrington, and Parry, it w^ould appear that he had openly expressed his discontent with his brother's supremacy and made no secret of his pretensions to the guardianship of the young King and the hand of Elizabeth. His accomplice, Sharington, master of the Bristol mint, w^as coining testoons out of the national treasure, and hoarding vast sums of coin for his use ; noblemen were advised by him to retire to their estates and raise forces to support him ; and the seizure of himself and his friends was a mere movement of self-defence on the part of the Protector. With regard to the match with Elizabeth. Parry appears to have been the first person approached directly. He was closely attached to the person of the Princess, and had been sent to Seymour ostensibly to ask for the use of Durham Place as a temporary town residence for her. Seymour said this could not be, as the house was to be made into a mint, but she could have his own house to stay in until she could see the King. Parry confesses that Seymour asked him many questions about Elizabeth's pecuniary means ; and when he got back to Hatfield the cofferer asked the young Princess whether she would be willing to accept Seymour for a husband if the Council were agreeable. She asked Parry sharply who told him to put such a question to her, to which he answered that " nobody had done so, but he thought he perceived by Seymour's inquiries that he was given lo THE COURTSHIPS OF

that way." "She said that she could not tell her mind therein." ^

When the Master of the Household and Denny suddenly arrived at Hatfield to interrogate the household as to their communications with Seymour Parry quite lost his head, "went to his own chamber and said to his wife, ' I would I had never been born, for I am undone,' and wrung his hands, cast away his chain from his neck and his rina"s from his fino-ers."

Elizabeth's profound diplomacy and quick intelligence were shown even thus early at this critical juncture. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were sent by the Protector to worm out of her all she knew of the plot. Threats, cajolery, forged letters and invented confessions, were all tried upon her in vain. She would tell nothing of importance. " She hath," says Tyrwhitt. "a very good wit and nothingis gotten of her but by great policy." She bitterly resented the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs. Ashley, and the substitution of Lady Tyrwhitt ; and said that she had not so behaved that they need put more mistresses upon her ; wept all night and sulked all day, but withal was too much for Tyrwhitt, who avowed that " if he had to say his fantasy he thinks it more meet she should have two governesses than one."

The confessions of Parry and Ashley with regard to Elizabeth's conduct, and their own, are bad enough ; but they probably kept back far more than they told, for on Elizabeth's succession, and for the rest of their lives, they were treated with marked

' Tyrwhitt to the Protector, January 2^,, 1549. Hatfield Papers. Historical MSS. Commission.

oSTioma^. £o:c' S>^'i|nioii: o[' 5ii?crci|.

OUKKX i':iJ/.\i^i:rii. n

favour : Parr\^ was knighted and made Treasurer of the Household, and on Mrs. Ashley's death in July, 1565, the Queen visited her in person and mourned her with great L;rief. It is probable that the inexperienced girl was really in love with the handsome, showy Seymour ; but how far their relations went will most likely never now be known. She indignantly wrote to the Protector complaining" of the slanders that were current about her, to the effect that she was with child by the Lord Admiral and demanded to be allowed to come to Court and " show herself as she was " ; but virtuous indignation, real and assumed, was always one of her favourite weapons. Tyrwhitt said he believed a secret compact had been entered into betw^een her and Ashley and Parry never to confess during their lives. "They all sing one song and she hath set the note for them."

After this dangerous escapade and the execution of Seymour, Elizabeth became almost ostentatiously saintly and straitlaced, until the accession of her sister made her the heiress presumptive to the crown and the hope of the Protestant party, now that Northumberland's nominees had been disposed of. Even before this event, the reforming part)' in England were anxious to further strengthen themselves by allying her to a foreign prince ol Protestant leanings, not powerful enough to force her claims to the crown upon them, but of sufficient weight to give them moral support, whilst removing her from the way in England. As early as August, 1 55 1, Northumberland (or, as he was then, the Earl of Warwick) had put his agents upon the alert on the Continent to find a suitable match for her, and

•one of them, Sir Anthony Guidotti/ says that the Duke of Guise had sug-o-ested the Duke of P^errara's

y son, "who was one of the goodhest young" men of all Italy." The youth was a son of that Ren^e of France, Duchess of Ferrara, who vied with her kinswoman, Jeanne d'Albret, in her attachment to the reformed faith, but Northumberland would hardly accept the recommendation of the Guises as disinterested ; and the matter w^ent no further. The same accent suo'ofests that the son of the Duke of Florence (Medici) who was then only eleven years old might do, and " if this party were liked it were an easy matter to be concluded without any excessive dote." This was less likely to please even than the previous proposal, and nothing was clone ; but the Ferrara family were apparently anxious for the connection, and early in 1553 Sir Richard Morysine,^

n/ the English envoy in Antwerp, wrote to the Council reporting that Francesco d'Este, the brother of the Duke of Ferrara, had approached him on the matter and had asked for a description of the Princess. Morysine replied that "If God had made her Grace a poor man's daughter he did not know of a prince that might not think himself happy to be the husband of such a lady," and added that d'Este was of the same opinion " at present." A much more likely match had been privately suggested to Cecil by Morysine shortly before this. 3 " Hans Frederick's (of Saxony) second son, who is the goodlier gentleman, would, if he durst, bear a great affection towards the Lady Elizabeth's grace. The land in Germany is divided, and as much comes to

^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign). ^ Ibid. 3 Ibid.

the secoiul son as to the eldest, which eldest is thought to be of no long life. Were Dukes Maurice and Frederick to die their lands <^o to Hans Frederick's sons. ' But the collapse of Northumberland and the accession of Mary entirely changed Elizabeth's prospects, so that her marriage had to be considered in conjunction with Mary's own, and the capture of the Queen by the Spanish interest made it desirable to secure her sister if possible for the same side. In the autumn of 1553, Simon Renard had suggested to Mary a marriage between herself and Prince Philip. She herself was in grave doubt at that time and afterwards as to its wisdom or practicability. Young Courtney had been designated by the public voice as the most fitting consort for her; and although the romantic theories of many historians as to her supposed attachment to him are unsupported by a single shred of evidence, it is. certain that for a' time she seriously contemplated the wisdom of conciliating English feeling by marrying the man who was one of her first competitors for the possession of the throne. Gradually, however, Renard, with his logical persuasiveness, convinced her that she would acquire more strength by an alliance with the only son of the Emperor than b)- a marriagey' with one of her own vassals, without credit, po\\\sr, or assistance, who has seen and knows nothing of the world, having been reared in servitude and never left P^ngland." '

Renard presented the Emperor's formal of^'er of

his son's hand to the Queen on the 6th of October,

and after some hesitation she asked him to put upon

paper his arguments in favour of the match. He

' Renard Correspondence, Transcripts, IMSS. Record Oiiice.

H THE COURTSHIPS OF

did so in a long paper dated the i ith, which will be found in the Renard Correspondence transcripts in the Record Office. In it he tells her that she is surrounded by dangers against which only a powerful marriage can protect her. She has, he says, four sets of enemies : namely, the heretics and schismatics, the rebels and friends of Northumberland, the powers of France and Scotland, and Madam Elizabeth, who would never cease to trouble and threaten her. ]slary replied that she knew all about the French intrigues, and was certain to be kept well informed of approaches made by the French ambassador Noailles to Elizabeth and Courtney. In conversation with Renard afterw^ards she told hint, and he faithfully transmitted the conversation to his master,^ that she had had a longtalk with Courtney three days before at the instance of his mother, and he had told her in all simplicity that an English lord had suggested to him that he should marry Elizabeth, since he could not now hope to obtain the Queen. If he took the Princess either he or his heirs might hope to succeed to the throne as the Queen was getting old. The idea seems to have originated with Lord Paget, who was doubtless the lord referred to by Courtney, and who thought to stand well with all parties in future by the device. As he was the principal supporter in the Privy Council of the Spanish match, Renard could not at first openly veto the suggestion. Mary consulted Renard upon the subject, and told him that Courtney had said that his own thought w^as only to ''marry a simple lady rather than Elizabeth who

' Renard to Charles \"., October 12, 1553. Renard transcripts. Record Office.

7uas too proud a heretic and of a doubtful race on her mother's side.'' The imperial ambassador replied that such a marriage would have to be very deeplyweighed and discussed/ and so politely shelved the question. On the other hand, the idea was zealously promoted by Noailles, who, Courtney asserted some months afterwards, pressed him warmly to niarry Elizabeth,- and it was considered even by the strongest Spanish partisans in the Council to be a happy combination which would conjure away all dangers. How far Elizabeth herself was a consenting party it is difficult to say, but Noailles, who was in the heart of the intrigue, writes to his king on the 14th of December that it depends entirely on Courtney whether she married him and joined him in Devonshire to raise the flag of revolt. "But the trouble," he says, "is that Courtney is so alarmed and timid that he dares nothing." So Courtney disappears promptly from the scene where soon such rough work was to be undertaken. Even before the arrival of Egmont in the winter of 1553 to offer formally Philip's hand to Mary, the Council was mainly opposed to the match. Paget was first bought over with a large sum of money, then Gardiner, Courtney's greatest friend, was reluctantly won with the promise of a cardinal's hat, and (jthers by similar means ; but the self-seeking t^arl of Arundel immediately saw how his own interests might be benefited by the Spanish match. De Noailles says that he knew that at the Queen's age, and with her health, every month's delay decreased the probability of her having issue ; and he, therefore.

' Renard to Charles V., October 31, 1553. Record Office. ^ " Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle," vol. i\\ p. 256, warmly supported the marriage with Philip, which could not be rapidly effected, in order to marry his young son to Elizabeth, and so, practically, get the reversion to the crown. The matter never seems to have got beyond a suggestion ; and the youth soon after dying, Arundel, as will be told, subsequently became a suitor himself. But whilst these nebulous speculations with regard to Elizabeth's hand were going on, Renard had been arranging a clever scheme by which the Spanish party should ensure to themselves the control of England not only during the Queen's life but after her death. W^hen Egmont and his splendid embassy arrived all England was in a whirlwind of panic and indignation at the idea of a Spanish match. Elizabeth had retired to Woodstock, ostensibly on friendly terms with the Queen, but deeply wounded at her contemptuous treatment, and at the equivocal position she occupied, now that the divorce pronounced by Cranmer of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Aragon had been quashed, and Elizabeth consequently bastardised. Egmont was instructed to point out to the Queen that all might be pleasantly settled by marrying her sister to the gallant young Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, the son of the Emperor's sister, and consequently first cousin to Philip. His patrimonial states, all but a mere shred of them in the valley of Aosta, had been occupied by the French in the course of the war, and the prince was fighting like a heroin the P^mperor's army.

But his blood was the bluest of any in Europe, and before he could marry Elizabeth she must be legitimised and placed in the order of the succession, without which the throne would probabh" pass on Mary's death to the French candidate, Mary of Scotland. This was oall and wormwood to Mary Tudor. They could not both be legitimate, if the grounds for the divorce of Oueen Catharine were good she was never Henry's lawful wife, and her daughter had no right to the crown. If they were bad, then Elizabeth was necessarily the bastard that the law oi England inferentially had just declared her to be. The King of France, foiled in his attempts to prevent the Queen's Spanish marriage, instructed de Noailles ' to use every possible means to hinder a malch between Elizabeth and Savoy, " poor and dispossessed as he is " ; and. alert as the ambassador was, no great effort on his part was needed. The Oueen, bitterly jealous of her sister, who she knew was more or less openly working with the Carews. the Courtnex's, the Wyatts and others to undermine her throne, peremptorily refused to rehabilitate Elizabeth's birth. Then came the Wyatt rebellion and Elizabeth's imprisonment. In after years both Philip and Elizabeth often referred to the fact that at one juncture he had saved her life, and it is highl)- probable that the Princess was released from the Tower in Ma)-, 1554 on the recommendation of Renard, made in the name of the coming bridegroom of the Oueen. De Noailles writes that she was to go to Richmond from the Tower, and was there to receive two gentlemen from the iMnperor who were to sound her as to a marriage with Emmanuel of .Savoy. If she refused the match shewas to be taken to Woodstock under guard, again a prisoner. De Noailles knew that the best way ot l)reventing such a niatch was to arouse the Queen s ' Correspondence' de Xoailles.