it, saying that he is only after money, and that he has already begged the Queen to give him £100,000 and 4,000 men to aid your Majesty’s rebels. The principal Englishmen indeed are saying that if he wanted a regular pension they would grant him £20,000 a year, so there are more indications of money being given him than anything else. It is certain that the Queen will do her best to avoid offending him, and to pledge him in the affairs of the Netherlands, in order to drive his brother into a rupture with your Majesty, which is her great object, whilst she keeps her hands free, and can stand by looking on at the war.” Few men were better informed than Mendoza; part of the Privy Council was in his pay, and the most secret information was conveyed to him at once by his spies, who were everywhere. He was, moreover, one of the most keen-sighted statesmen of his time, and we may accept his opinion therefore, confirmed as it is by much other evidence, that up to this time (November 11th) Elizabeth was once more playing her old trick, and befooling Alençon and the French. When Leicester thought that matters were going a little too far he persuaded the Queen to urge her lover to start at once for Flanders, for which purpose she would give him three ships and £30,000, in order to receive the oath of allegiance which the States were offering him, and then to return and marry her; but Sussex saw through the device, and privately warned Alençon that whatever pledges might be made to him now, he might be convinced that if once he went away without being married the marriage would never take place. He entreated him on no account to be driven out of England, and as Alençon well knew that Sussex at least was honest in his desire to see the Queen married and freed from the baleful influence of Leicester, he put his back to the wall and plainly told the Queen that not only would he refuse to leave England, but he would not ever vacate the rooms in her palace until she had given him a definite answer as to whether she would marry him or not. Crofts, the privy councillor in Philip’s pay, told Mendoza that “when the Queen and Alençon were alone together she pledges herself to him to his heart’s content, and as much as any woman could to a man, but she will not have anything said publicly.”