The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth: A history of the various negotiations for her marriage
David Hume · en
Things were thus getting to a deadlock again. The King of France wrote
to the Queen saying that under no circumstances, whether his brother
married or not, would he help him against Spain in the Netherlands, and
the Queen-mother began pressing her son with all sorts of promises,
to return and abandon his hopeless quest before he became the
laughing-stock of the world. This of course made the Queen warmer in
her protestations, and by the third week in November she had contrived
to convince Alençon again of her sincerity. He at once wrote off to
his brother, requesting that commissioners might be sent to settle the
conditions of the treaty which had been discussed with Walsingham when
he was in France. The Queen encouraged him to do this, knowing full
well that Henry III. would refuse to take his brother’s unsupported
word as to her _bona fides_, and send another embassy, whilst his
refusal to do so would furnish her if necessary with an excuse for
proceeding no further in the matter.
On November 21, 1581, the Queen and Court moved to Whitehall, where
Alençon was lodged in the garden-house, and on the following morning
--coronation day--he and the Queen were walking in the gallery,
Walsingham and Leicester being present, when Castelnau, the French
ambassador, entered, and said that he had been commanded by his master
to learn from her own lips what her intentions were with regard to
her marrying the King’s brother. Either because she was driven into
a corner from which there was no other escape, or because once more
her passions overcame her, she unhesitatingly replied to Castelnau,
“You may write this to the King: that the Duke of Alençon shall be my
husband, and at the same moment she turned to Alençon and kissed him
on the mouth, drawing a ring from her own hand and giving it to him
as a pledge. Alençon gave her a ring of his in return, and shortly
afterwards the Queen summoned the ladies and gentlemen from the
presence-chamber to the gallery, repeating to them in a loud voice in
Alençon’s presence what she had previously said.”[145]