In the meanwhile, in the seas of Flanders, France, and England thousands of acts of piracy were committed, and trade in the Channel was quite interrupted.[730] A partial agreement at last was patched up. On April 11, 1564, the treaty of peace was signed at Troyes,[731] the articles yielding Havre-de-Grace to France, in return for 120,000 gold crowns, a sum which the English grudgingly took, though they had demanded a half million, the terms also providing for property indemnifications and freedom of commerce between the two nations. Nothing was specified as to Calais. After three years of negotiations the question still remained unsettled. In June, 1567, Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabeth’s ambassador, demanded the restitution of Calais. Charles was evasive, saying that the messenger must be content to wait till the King had obtained the consent of his council, before whom the King told Smith openly that he would not restore Calais, but would hold it as the possession of his ancestors, to which the queen of England had no just right. When the ambassador replied, citing the word of the treaty, the chancellor answered that the promise had been given under the express conditions that the English queen should not in any way molest the subjects or territory of France or Scotland, but from what had taken place at Havre-de-Grace it appeared manifest that she had forfeited all claims which she might have had to Calais. The King’s rejoinder was notable in that it is so excellent an example of the French doctrine of “natural frontiers,” Charles IX replying to the effect that the queen ought not to regret the loss of Calais, knowing that of old it was the possession of the crown of France, and that God had willed it to return to its first master, and that the two realms ought to remain content with the frontiers created for them by nature and with a boundary so clearly defined as the sea.[732] CHAPTER IX EARLY LOCAL AND PROVINCIAL CATHOLIC LEAGUES