Through all the negotiation Cecil’s management was most masterly. He had taken Philip’s measure now, and knew the powerless position in which English diplomacy, aided by circumstances, had placed him. The Guises had taken his measure too. As week followed week, and hope of help from him disappeared, they saw that they must make such terms as they might with Elizabeth. The French in Leith were heroically holding out, though starving and hopeless; no reinforcements could be sent from France, for England held the sea, and the Queen-mother and the reform party would give no help to purely Guisan objects. So at last, in May, Monluc, the Bishop of Valence, came humbly to London and sued Elizabeth for peace, and Cecil and Wotton, with Sir Henry Percy, Sir Ralph Sadler, and Peter Carew, travelled to Scotland to meet the French commissioners and settle the terms. Cecil started on the 30th May, and at the different stages of his journey he wrote letters to Sir William Petre.[126] On the 31st he writes from Royston: “in no apparent doubt of health, yet by foulness of weather afraid to ride to Huntingdon till to-morrow.” On the 2nd June his letter comes from his own house at Burghley, “rubbing on between health and sickness, yet my heart serveth me to get the mastery.” His energy, his command of detail, and his foresight are remarkably shown in these letters. He spurs Petre to do as evidently he himself would have done—to expedite everything necessary for the prosecution of the war, though peace was in prospect; “to quicken the Lord Treasurer for money,” and so forth. From Stamford he went to Doncaster, Boroughbridge, Northallerton, Newcastle, and so to Scotland, always vigilant, observant, suggestive; but in nearly every letter expressing deep distrust of the French, whom he suspected of treachery at every point. When they met in Edinburgh his complaints are constant of their “cavilations” and hairsplitting. “They may contend, however, about a word,” he says, “but I mean to have the victory.” Before the negotiations commenced, the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, died (11th June), and this, by perplexing the French, somewhat facilitated an arrangement. The most difficult point was the use of the English arms by Mary Stuart, and, on the 1st July, Cecil wrote to the Queen that the negotiations had been broken off on that point alone. After this was written, but before it was despatched, Cecil proposed a “device,”[127] by the insertion of a “few fair words”; and an arrangement was the result, which stands a triumphant vindication of Cecil’s policy.