the young Duke of Finland, had come over to press his brother’s suit. When he arrived with vast sums of money for gifts, as before, he preferred rather to become a suitor himself, but with little success. When he begged for a serious audience he was kept so long outside in an antechamber alone that he went away in a huff. The Venetian Tiepolo writes on December 15th, giving an account of Arran’s defeat in Scotland by the French, which, with his growing dementia, spoilt him as a suitor; and Tiepolo goes on to say: “The Queen is still undecided about her marriage, though amongst all the competitors she showed most inclination for the Archduke Charles. The Duke of Finland, second son of the King of Sweden, is with her. He came to favour the suit of his elder brother, and then proposed himself, but the man’s manners did not please the Queen. The second son also of the late John Frederick of Saxony, who heretofore was proposed to the Queen by the French, but was afterwards deserted by them because they wished her to marry an Englishman ... has not relinquished his pretensions, and has sent Count Mansfeldt to propose to the Queen. The King of Denmark, in like manner, has not failed to exert himself, although the general opinion is that if the affairs of the Earl of Arran prosper he will prevail over all competitors.”[25] All through the winter of 1559-60 matters thus lingered on. The Bishop plotting and planning for the invasion of England from Flanders, and completely undeceived with regard to the Queen’s matrimonial intentions, whilst the English still desired to keep up an appearance of cordial friendship with the Spanish party, as a counterpoise to the King of France, with whom they were at war in Scotland. The Bishop gives an account of an interview which he and Helfenstein, the new imperial ambassador had with the Queen in February, and it is clear that at this time she was again very anxious to beguile the Emperor into sending his son on chance. But Helfenstein was a very different sort of ambassador from Ravenstein, and she could not do much with him; his idea being to hold her at arm’s length until she was forced to write to the Emperor herself, as she promised to do, in which case it would not, he thought, be difficult to construe something she might say into a pledge which she could be forced to fulfil. “I do not,” says the Bishop, “treat this matter with her as I formerly did, as I want her to understand that I am not deceived by her.” Nor was he for a time deceived by Dudley. “The fellow is ruining the country with his vanity.” “If he lived for another year he” (Dudley) said “he would be in a very different position,” and so forth. During the summer an envoy named Florent (Ajacet) was sent by Catharine de Medici and her son to propose as a husband for Elizabeth a son of the Duke de Nevers. As may be supposed, such a match--or indeed any match recommended by the consort of her enemy Mary Stuart, with whom her war was hardly