and sovereign of the other provinces was to take place.  No open rupture with Elizabeth occurred.  On the contrary, the Queen accompanied the Duke, with a numerous and stately retinue, as far as Canterbury, and sent a most brilliant train of her greatest nobles and gentlemen to escort him to the Netherlands, communicating at the same time, by special letter, her wishes to the estates-general, that he should be treated with as much honor “as if he were her second self.”

On the 10th of February, fifteen large vessels cast anchor at Flushing.  The Duke of Anjou, attended by the Earl of Leicester, the Lords Hunsdon, Willoughby, Sheffield, Howard, Sir Philip Sidney, and many other personages of high rank and reputation, landed from this fleet.  He was greeted on his arrival by the Prince of Orange, who, with the Prince of Espinoy and a large deputation of the states-general, had been for some days waiting to welcome him.  The man whom the Netherlands had chosen for their new master stood on the shores of Zealand.  Francis Hercules, Son of France, Duke of Alencon and Anjou, was at that time just twenty-eight years of age; yet not even his flatterers, or his “minions,” of whom he had as regular a train as his royal brother, could claim for him the external graces of youth or of princely dignity.  He was below the middle height, puny and ill-shaped.  His hair and eyes were brown, his face was seamed with the small-pox, his skin covered with blotches, his nose so swollen and distorted that it seemed to be double.  This prominent feature did not escape the sarcasms of his countrymen, who, among other gibes, were wont to observe that the man who always wore two faces, might be expected to have two noses also.  It was thought that his revolting appearance was the principal reason for the rupture of the English marriage, and it was in vain that his supporters maintained that if he could forgive her age, she might, in return, excuse his ugliness.  It seemed that there was a point of hideousness beyond which even royal princes could not descend with impunity, and the only wonder seemed that Elizabeth, with the handsome Robert Dudley ever at her feet, could even tolerate the addresses of Francis Valois.

His intellect was by no means contemptible.  He was not without a certain quickness of apprehension and vivacity of expression which passed current, among his admirers for wit and wisdom.  Even the experienced.  Saint Aldegonde was deceived in his character, and described him after an hour and half’s interview, as a Prince overflowing with bounty, intelligence, and sincerity.  That such men as Saint Aldegonde and the Prince of Orange should be at fault in their judgment, is evidence not so much of their want of discernment, as of the difference between the general reputation of the Duke at that period, and that which has been eventually established for him in history.  Moreover, subsequent events were to exhibit the utter baseness of his character more signally than it had