Having thus gained the good-will of the Spaniard, Cecil was soon able to persuade him that the Queen would never really marry Leicester, and the relations between the latter and the Spaniards became cooler. The Queen herself could not do enough to show her kindness to Guzman, and at joust, tournament, and ball, chatted with him in preference to the French Ambassador. By January 1565, Leicester, seeing that Cecil’s diplomacy had gained the good-will of Spain, and that the Catholics were turning to the side of the Archduke, unblushingly veered round to the French interest.
Guzman was obliged then to write that he was not at all satisfied with him. He wished, he said, to please everybody; but was getting very friendly with the French, who were making much of him. But there was more even than this. The Queen and Cecil were trying their best to please the Catholics. The Queen openly and rudely rebuked Dean Nowell at his sermon on Ash Wednesday for attacking Catholic practices; whilst Cecil was pushing the Vestments Order to the very verge of safety. Some of the bishops invited him to a conference, and remonstrated with him on the severity of the new regulations, which they openly stigmatised as papistical. He told them sternly that the Queen’s order must be obeyed, or worse would befall them. The churchmen of the Geneva school railed and resisted, as far as they might,[210] what they called the Secretary’s backsliding; whilst Leicester, ever willing to change sides, if he could only checkmate Cecil, vigorously took the part of the Puritans, and did his best to hamper the execution of the Vestments Order, and to prevent the use of the cross on the altars.[211]
In February 1565, De Foix, the French Ambassador, shot the bolt that had long been forging. He saw Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, and, after much exaggerated compliment, read a letter of Catharine de Medici, saying she would be the happiest of mothers if her dearly beloved sister Queen Elizabeth would marry her son, and become a daughter to her. “She would find in the young King,” she said, “both bodily and mentally, that which would please her.” This was very sweet incense to Elizabeth, and she sentimentally deplored that she was not ten years younger. De Foix flattered her, and tranquillised her fears that she would be neglected or abandoned, and the Queen agreed with him to keep the matter secret for the present, and promised him a speedy reply.[212] As usual, Cecil drew up for the Queen’s guidance a judicial examination of the advantages and disadvantages which might be expected from the marriage. He is careful in this lucid document not to commit himself to an individual opinion,[213] but the formidable list of objections far outweigh the advantages; and when the Queen the next day repeated Cecil’s arguments as her own, De Foix lost patience, hinted that his mistress had been deceived, and would withdraw the offer.[214] Elizabeth petted the ruffled diplomatist into a good humour again, and said she would send Cecil to talk the matter over with him.