money should be voted until a satisfactory reply was given to them. Philip fell ill with rage, but money he must have; and at last he promised that a regular inspection and inquiry should be instituted into the powers of the Aragonese Inquisition. With this the Cortes voted him 1,350,000 ducats. They then took the oath of allegiance to Carlos, and were promptly dismissed. Philip did not forget his grudge against them, and it went hard with Aragon and its liberties when they gave him a chance for revenge. France had been engaged in the first war of religion, and the Catholic party had been hardly pressed. The Duke of Guise had recently been killed (February 24, 1563), the peace of Amboise had been patched up, and toleration had been established. Anthony de Bourbon, who had married Jeanne d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, had also been killed, and his widow and ten-year-old son, Henry, had retired to her castle at Pau to mourn their loss. For many years the rights of the royal house of Navarre to the kingdom which had been dishonestly filched from them by Ferdinand the Catholic had been a thorn in the side of Spanish sovereigns, for the Navarres were still powerful French tributary princes across the Pyrenees. After Philip’s own projected marriage with the heiress of the house in his boyhood had fallen through, she had married Anthony de Bourbon, Duc de Vendôme, a prince of the blood royal of France, and this had made the claim more dangerous for Philip. But worst of all, Jeanne was a strong Calvinist, and only three lives stood between her little son and the crown of France. The Guises and their Catholic followers saw that if he came to the throne their day was gone, and cast about for means to avert such a catastrophe. Pau was near the Spanish frontier. Why not seize the queen and two children and hand them over to the tender mercies of Philip? If they were out of the way, Navarre could cause no more anxiety, and the stronghold of Protestantism in France would be empty. So a certain Captain Dimanche was sent by the Guises secretly to Monzon to broach the matter to Philip. He was raising a large force at Barcelona to fight the Turks in the Mediterranean. What would be easier than to send 10,000 of them secretly to creep along the Pyrenees, make a dash to Pau, and capture Jeanne d’Albret and her children? What indeed? This was exactly the enterprise to suit Philip, and Captain Dimanche saw him more than once at dead of night, and the whole plot was settled. The Guisan Monlucs and their Catholic friends were to hold the Protestants in check, whilst Philip’s men kidnapped their quarry. But Dimanche fell ill. He was a Frenchman, and sought aid of a countryman who lodged in the same house, an underling in the household of Philip’s French wife. Dimanche let out his secret to his countryman, who conveyed it to the queen. She was loyal to her husband’s country, but she was a Frenchwoman, a dear friend of Jeanne d’Albret,