Cecil—­now Lord Burleigh—­would have used the occasion for the destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably by handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated—­though Elizabeth concurred—­by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was assigned to them.  The Alencon affair was soon in full swing again, the young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.

III.—­The Hour of Mary’s Doom

Elizabeth’s fondness for pageantry—­partly out of a personal delight in it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her popular—­especially pageantry at some one else’s expense, was illustrated in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry anachronisms) in Scott’s novel.

These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of England to assume sovereignty over them—­an offer which she was too acute to accept.

Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident.  When the queen’s majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole council failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till the Bishop of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her presence, with satisfactory results.  We must also record how the ugly little Alencon, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to woo her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so, and won from her the appropriate name of “Little Frog.”

Whether she really wished to marry her “frog” is extremely doubtful.  She made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her a retreat to the last.  The expectation of the marriage caused the Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected; with the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France.  But when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French league, with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course, could not be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou found himself obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor rejected.  His subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial comedy.

At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders, under the command of Leicester.  His conduct there led to his recall.  Another favourite stood high in the queen’s good graces—­Walter Raleigh.  Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought his stepson Essex into the queen’s notice.