FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY] Elizabeth, indeed, was seriously alarmed at the impending Catholic League, and in addition to redressing the Spanish trade grievances and lavishing endless blandishments upon Guzman, she made a desperate bid to draw Catharine de Medici to her side by opening negotiations for her own marriage with the boy King of France—negotiations as insincere, doubtless, as the rest, but directed to the same end, namely, the diversion of France and Spain from their threatening friendship, as were also the attempts to revive the now almost outworn subject of the Queens match with the Austrian Archduke. The constant changes perfectly bewildered Guzman, who found Dudley (now created Earl of Leicester) blowing hot and cold. The Catholics, on the one hand, were smiled upon by the Queen, and on the other strong measures were being proposed by Cecil and his friends to stay the growth of “papistry.” But though Philip wrote on behalf of the Catholic English bishops in prison, and Guzman urged for the toleration of Catholic worship, no practical concessions could be obtained from Elizabeth, much as she might smile and suggest to Guzman, with whom she had grown personally very intimate. In the meanwhile the elaborate preparations for the settlement of the Catholic League by the meeting of the Queens of France and Spain at Bayonne went on, and rumours came to England which caused Elizabeth additional alarm late in 1564, that Philip himself was coming to Flanders in the following year to bring his Flemish subjects into due subjection. Elizabeth’s amiability then grew more intense than ever. “How much she wished her dear brother could stay in one of her ports, that she might regale him!” and Guzman was the object of her constant affectionate solicitude at the numerous balls, feasts, and tourneys to which she invited him, often deploring that his master was not there, too, to enjoy the fun. It must be confessed that, to judge by the relations between Guzman and the French ambassador in England (de Foix), the coming national alliance between their respective countries did not look promising. De Foix had Huguenot leanings, and Guzman always resented his presence at Court at the same time as himself, Elizabeth on several occasions having the greatest difficulty in keeping the peace between them, when by some inadvertence they met in her presence. Indeed, as was soon afterwards proved, the national jealousy of France and Spain and the personal interests of Catharine overrode the Catholic religious object of the League so perseveringly promoted by Cardinal Lorraine and Alba.