Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never concede the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months the Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to reconcile the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured hard in the same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving, and sometimes even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept the English crown matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it was necessary to keep up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards were plotting her murder; and to split the Catholic party whilst secretly aiding the rebel Netherlanders seemed her only chance of safety. On one occasion, when Spain and France drew together, Elizabeth professed to be willing to marry Anjou on his own terms; but the prince grew ever more opposed to the match, and in January 1572, Catherine suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted on religion, her youngest son, Alençon, might marry Elizabeth on any conditions she liked.
The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her. She was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship or neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith, and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alençon's manly charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by which the Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly with the marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the king's sister. Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the Channel now, and the Huguenot leaders urged the Alençon match with Elizabeth with all their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth replied that, though the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet the pock-marks on the suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet if he would let her see him, without a pledge, she might like him. She would never, she said, marry a man she had not seen.