Nevertheless the decoy did its work, The envoys returned to France, and it was not until three months later that the Duke of Bouillon again made his appearance in England, bringing the treaty duly ratified by Henry.  The league was then solemnized, on, the 26th August, by the queen with much pomp and ceremony.  Three peers of the realm waited upon the French ambassador at his lodgings, and escorted him and his suite in seventeen royal coaches to the Tower.  Seven splendid barges then conveyed them along the Thames to Greenwich.  On the pier the ambassador was received by the Earl of Derby at the head of a great suite of nobles and high functionaries, and conducted to the palace of Nonesuch.

There was a religious ceremony in the royal chapel, where a special pavilion had been constructed.  Standing, within this sanctuary, the queen; with her hand on her breast, swore faithfully to maintain the league just concluded.  She then gave her hand to the Duke of Bouillon, who held it in both his own, while psalms were sung and the organ resounded through the chapel.  Afterwards there was a splendid banquet in the palace, the duke sitting in solitary grandeur at the royal table, being placed at a respectful distance from her Majesty, and the dishes being placed on the board by the highest nobles of the realm, who, upon their knees, served the queen with wine.  No one save the ambassador sat at Elizabeth’s table, but in the same hall was spread another, at which the Earl of Essex entertained many distinguished guests, young Count Lewis Gunther of Nassau among the number.

In the midsummer twilight the brilliantly decorated barges were again floating on the historic river, the gaily-coloured lanterns lighting the sweep of the oars, and the sound of lute and viol floating merrily across the water.  As the ambassador came into the courtyard of his house, he found a crowd of several thousand people assembled, who shouted welcome to the representative of Henry, and invoked blessings on the head of Queen Elizabeth and of her royal brother of France.  Meanwhile all the bells of London were ringing, artillery was thundering, and bonfires were blazing, until the night was half spent.

Such was the holiday-making by which the league between the great Protestant queen and the ex-chief of the Huguenots of France was celebrated within a year after the pope had received him, a repentant sinner, into the fold of the Church.  Truly it might be said that religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation among the nations, as had been the case for the two last generations of mankind.