all this it will be his.” Swetkowitz hurried back to Vienna with the English reply, and to explain to his master the only method by which success was possible. Lutheran as he was, he would have given way upon the vital point of religion, although he confessed his fear that the Emperor would not do so; “but,” said he, “you must put up with a good deal to gain such a kingdom as this.” To have given up on the point of religion, however, would have made the match useless to Philip, and there was never any chance of the marriage being effected on such terms. Leicester, of course, did not know how pliable the Emperor might prove, but Swetkowitz’s hopefulness and conciliatory attitude seems in August to have alarmed both him and the French ambassador into the belief that perhaps, after all, the marriage would be effected. At all events, Leicester and the French again began to push his suit warmly, as soon as Swetkowitz left, and the Queen, with just an occasional smile to Heneage, was kinder to him than ever. Philip II., who knew Elizabeth as well as any one, thus writes in October to his ambassador: “The Archduke’s suit is now quite at an end, as I am informed by the Emperor that he is undeceived, and withdraws altogether from the business. You will, therefore, say no more about it unless he writes to the contrary, which I do not think he will.... Let me know the result of the Swedish negotiations, although no doubt they will end like the rest; and, after all, she will either not marry or else marry Robert, to whom she has always been so much attached. You did well in writing to me fully about the quarrel with Heneage, because the whole affair and its sequel clearly show that the Queen is in love with Robert, and for this reason, and in case at last that she may take him for her husband, it will be very expedient to keep him in hand.”[45] Maximilian, however, was not playing quite fairly with Philip when he told him he had abandoned the idea of marrying his brother to the Queen of England. The interference of the Spanish king in the affair was, in fact, a great hindrance to its success, as, dependent as the Emperor partly was upon the German Protestant princes, he could not bind himself hard and fast to the extreme Catholic militant party; and to saddle an Austrian match with impracticable Spanish conditions, was to make it impossible. Early in 1566, therefore, the Emperor sent back a temporising reply to England, saying that the wording of the clause about religion appeared somewhat harsh, and begging that it might be modified. The Emperor’s tone was so conciliatory, as a result of Swetkowitz’s representations, that the hopes of Suffolk and Norfolk again rose high for a time. But as the Emperor advanced the Queen receded. She complained to the Spanish ambassador of the delay in the sending of the reply, and was petulant about the Emperor’s objections. “How could she marry,” she asked, “a man whom she had