Stafford found Alençon no more yielding than his brother, and for a time matters looked unpromising, the “monkey” continuing to write gushing letters to the Queen, begging her not to be influenced by the “mile faulx bruis” of Walsingham and others, who are trying to render the affair abortive. At this juncture, doubtless, the Queen wrote the long letter without date to the Duke,[115] pointing out to him the unpopularity of the match and the many difficulties of carrying it through, unless the terms taken by Simier, particularly with regard to religion and the pension, were relaxed. If this is impossible, she says, and the affair falls through, let us not worry any more about it, but remain faithful friends for ever. This did not at all please the Prince, who plainly told her (January 28, 1580, Hatfield Papers) that some people believed that she was only making use of the religious question as an excuse to break off the match, and that he is not at all astonished that she has requested that the departure of commissioners for the ratification should be stayed. He was probably right in his conjecture, for only a few days before (January 17, 1580, Hatfield Papers) the Queen tried to pick a quarrel about the rank of the ambassadors to be sent. She had roundly told the King, she said, that she did not think France was so short of princes that he must needs send her a child or a low-born person. A person of the very highest lineage must come or none at all: she would never have the chronicles record that any slight was offered to her honour on so great an occasion. The poor “monkey” might write his inflated letters to the Queen, deploring, and denouncing the enemies who were impeding the match, and pleading in heartbroken accents the cause of his lovelorn “frog”; but there can be no doubt that at the end of January, 1580, in London, the affair was looked upon as at an end. A long and instructive State paper exists at Hatfield in the writing of Sir Thomas Cecil, dated the 28th of January, addressed to the Queen, and setting forth that the Alençon marriage, having fallen through, the Prince would probably seek revenge for his disappointment, and ally himself to the King of Spain, with the object of aiding a general Catholic assault on England and Ireland. Sir Thomas then lays down a certain course of action necessary to meet this danger. Alençon is to be encouraged to push his ambitious projects in Flanders in order to keep him at issue with Spain; the Queen’s forces by sea and land are to be put on a war footing, and German mercenaries are to be hired; English trade, as far as possible, is to be carried in foreign bottoms; the Irish are to be conciliated by large concessions to their national traditions; the Queen of Scots is to be more strictly held and her son subsidised; and the Netherlanders and the Huguenots are to be vigorously helped. This was a bold programme indeed, but was fully warranted by the circumstances as we now know them.