the Archduke.” Leicester’s enemies, particularly Sussex, were busy trying to animate Swetkowitz, and persuade Guzman to take a more active share in the negotiations. But the new Emperor’s religious attitude was still undefined, and Guzman at this time believed that the Queen and Leicester were already married.[44] He looked, moreover, upon the promotion of the Archduke’s suit by Sussex as a Court intrigue. “Throgmorton,” he says, “is for ever coming here to ask questions of the Emperor’s envoy, who tells them that the Archduke is coming; and they (Leicester’s friends) have devised some other scheme to stop the business.” What the scheme was soon appeared. A day or two after Guzman’s interview with the Queen, in June, 1565, the French ambassador saw the Council ostensibly to again press the marriage of the Queen with Charles IX. He was once more told that the King’s youth made such a match impossible, and replied that as she refused his master it was evident that she did not intend to marry a foreigner, and warned the Council that the chosen consort must be a person who was well affected towards French interests, or trouble would ensue. He was asked what person would best please his master, and he replied the Earl of Leicester. With the more or less overt support of the ambassadors of the two great powers, Leicester’s chance was now sufficiently good to alarm Cecil and Sussex, who saw the necessity of doing something to better the Archduke’s position. Cecil therefore approached Leicester through his friend Throgmorton, and suggested that if the Queen married the Archduke, Leicester might be provided with a wife and his position secured by his wedding some relative of the Emperor, such as the young Princess of Cleves, who was then fifteen. Throgmorton was quite in love with the idea, and approached the Emperor’s envoy with suggestions of Leicester’s marriage with a sister of the Emperor or some other princess of the house of Austria. The proposal was of course received very coldly. Guzman thought the object of it was perhaps only to couple Leicester’s name with those of great marriageable princesses, in order that the people might gradually be brought to consider him a fit husband for the Queen, who had always told the ambassador that she would marry him (Leicester) if he were a king’s son, but the real purpose was to buy off Leicester’s opposition to the Archduke. The sham proposals for the marriage of the Queen with Charles IX. having served their purpose were now quite at an end, and the Queen of Scots’ determination to take Darnley had further simplified the situation, so that Leicester’s chance was better than ever it had been, supported as he was, for interested reasons, both by France and Spain, the promotion of the Archduke’s suit being mainly pushed in the English Court by those who were Leicester’s declared enemies, whilst the Spanish ambassador was only giving it half-hearted countenance.