But it was not a very easy task to settle with the King of France the preliminaries of the embassy, the extent of its powers, and the choice of its members. Cobham, in Paris, tried to pledge Henry III. to break first with Spain on account of his mother’s claim to the Portuguese crown, which Philip had usurped, but the King said he would make no move until Elizabeth did so. Whilst these discussions were going on in Paris, Alençon sent an embassy of his own to London (in February, 1581) to pave the way, in his interest, for the coming of the commissioners. The principal envoy was Clausse de Marchaumont, Count de Beaumont, who was accompanied by Jean Bodin, the famous writer, and others; and his principal task for many months to come was to beg for money aid for his master’s enterprise. He was received with apparent cordiality by the Queen, who was closeted with him for hours every day, and especially recommended him to the French ambassador as a great favourite of Alençon; but withal she must have watched him closely at first, for in one of his most secret letters her “faithful monkey” assures her that Marchaumont was entirely dependent upon the Guises, and recommends her to have a little secretary of his named Obterre “untrussed,” when she will find some news about Scotland. The Duke of Guise, it seems, had dropped a hint about it in the hearing of one of Simier’s friends. Whatever was the result of the Queen’s secret conferences with Marchaumont, not even her own councillors knew it, and she wrote a private letter, which no one saw, for one of the envoys, a cousin of Marchaumont’s, M. de Mery, to take to the Duke, and with it she sent a wedding-ring as a token. Mendoza says that “she also said publicly that she was now so anxious for the commissioners to come that every hour’s delay seemed like a thousand years to her, with other tender speeches of the same sort, which make most people who hear them believe that the marriage will take place. The three ministers (_i.e._, Sussex, Cecil, and Crofts) for whom Marchaumont brought letters only replied to him that they could say nothing further, but that the Queen seemed very desirous that the wedding should be effected.” The tone of this last remark is sufficient to prove that the Queen, at this time, was not in earnest, and that her real design, as I have already pointed out, was to compass her ends without burdening herself with a husband. At a subsequent stage, as we shall see, her passion once more, and for the last time, nearly swept away her judgment, and drove her into a position from which it was difficult to extricate herself without matrimony or loss of prestige. Marchaumont brought with him a secretary of Alençon’s named de Bex, who kept up an extremely active correspondence during the whole of his stay in England, with a large circle of friends in France (Hatfield Papers), letters which are full of curious sidelights on the manners of the times, but which do not