saying that he would do his best to revive the negotiations, but he was not hopeful, and would keep his mistress’s tardy surrender to himself until he “saw a better disposition here.” There is no doubt that Walsingham and Cecil were now thoroughly alarmed. The Queen-mother and the King were almost ostentatiously tending to the side of Spain. The Churchmen were busy promoting a marriage between Anjou and Mary Stuart, whilst the Queen-mother, for her part, was plotting with Cosmo de Medici for the wedding of her favourite son--“_her idol_,” as her daughter called Anjou--to a Polish princess. The full discovery of Norfolk’s plot in England, with its extensive ramifications abroad, the troubles in Scotland and Ireland, and the final rupture of diplomatic relations between England and Spain, were so many more black clouds gathering from all quarters over Elizabeth; and Cecil’s letters to Walsingham at the time were almost despairing. The marriage, he said, was the only chance for the Queen’s safety, and he thought now she was resolved to accept the King of France’s conditions. But the French were now cold. Walsingham did his best to renew the talk of the marriage, but with little success, and earnestly urged upon the Queen to hold firm to the French friendship. But though Coligny was restored to high favour, and the murderers of the Guisan Lignerolles were immediately pardoned and favoured, the murmurs of the coming St. Bartholomew were already in the air, and Cecil was warned long beforehand of Coligny’s danger. In October Walsingham fell ill, and went to England to recruit and discuss the perilous situation, Henry Killigrew being appointed temporarily to replace him. In the middle of December Sir Thomas Smith was despatched on a special mission to revive, at all costs, the talk of the Anjou match, or to negotiate the bases of a treaty. He was well fitted for the task; one of the first scholars in England who had been maintained by Henry VIII. at foreign Courts in order that his experience might afterwards be useful. He had on more than one occasion been instrumental in settling treaties of peace between England and France, his witty, jocose method evidently suiting the temper of the Queen-mother and her advisers. His letters, some printed in the Hatfield Papers and the Foreign Calendar, and some in the “Compleat ambassador,” are extremely graphic and amusing, in contrast with those of Walsingham, in which penetration and perspicuity are the salient characteristics.