He arrived in London on the 27th August on his way to France; and on the same day there landed at Rye two couriers from Paris, one with letters from Walsingham to the Queen, the other with official despatches to the French ambassador. The latter were seized by the port authorities and sent in haste to the Queen at Kenilworth; but secret though they were kept, ill tidings fly fast, and soon there sped through England, none knew how or whence, the dread news that the Papists had banded together to slaughter Protestants throughout the world. On the fated day of Navarre’s wedding in Paris—the day of Saint Bartholomew—the storm had burst. Hounded on by the King himself and by his mother, slaughter unchecked had swept across the capital. The noble Coligny had fallen first, and then every citizen but those who wore the badge of Guise was hounded to his death. Through France the tale of horror ran, across the Channel to Protestant England fled thousands of Huguenots, dreading the general massacre that portended; and when Elizabeth suspended her pastime at Kenilworth to read the despatch that brought the news, her brow clouded and her heart sank; for it seemed now that, at last, all her clever tricks had failed and catastrophe loomed over her and England. For the league of Bayonne had produced its baleful fruit at last.[208] The alliance and friendship just so ostentatiously concluded with France was but a fraud and a blind, the marriage talk with Alençon was all a lie: Catharine and her son, after all, had made common cause with Philip and the Guises, and England stood alone opposed to united Catholicism pledged to wholesale massacre.