n the middle of December Sir Thomas Smith was despatched on a special mission to revive, at all costs, the talk of the Anjou match, or to negotiate the bases of a treaty. He was well fitted for the task; one of the first scholars in England who had been maintained by Henry VIII. at foreign Courts in order that his experience might145 afterwards be useful. He had on more than one occasion been instrumental in settling treaties of peace between England and France, his witty, jocose method evidently suiting the temper of the Queen-mother and her advisers. His letters, some printed in the Hatfield Papers and the Foreign Calendar, and some in the “Compleat ambassador,” are extremely graphic and amusing, in contrast with those of Walsingham, in which penetration and perspicuity are the salient characteristics.
Sir Thomas Smith and Killigrew arrived at Amboise, where the Court was, on January 1, 1572. His first interview was with de Foix, who assured him that Anjou was still firm on the question of religion. Smith said he did not think the last word had been said on that matter, but refrained from appearing anxious for an a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind audience of the Queen-mother or the King until Coligny and Montmorenci had been sounded as to the best mode of procedure. De Foix went so far as to say that Anjou was religious mad, whereupon Smith replied that if he thought the Duke was really obstinate about it he “would soon turn tail,” and thus save his mistress’s honour. It is very evident that Smith had no belief in Anjou’s devotion, for he tells Cecil that his “religion was really fixed on Mdlle. Chateauneuf, and now in another place.”
Smith had his first audience with the Queen-mother on the 6th of January. The King and the rest of them, he says, were busy dancing, when the Queen-mother took him apart into her chamber and opened the colloquy by saying that the only obstacle to the match was still the question of religion, as Anjou was so bigoted as to think that146 he would be damned if he yielded the point. Smith then asked whether, in the event of Elizabeth giving way on this, the match would be carried through. “Well,” replied Catharine, “that is the principal point, but still there are other questions which will have to be settled touching the honour and dignity of the Prince. Yet she assured the English envoy there was nothing they ever desired so much in their lives as the marriage, and they had not the slightest desire to break off. To this Smith replied that if they did want to break off the religious question would be the most honourable point of difference. Catharine assured him again of their sincerity, but deplored that Anjou was so “assotted.” What more can he desire, asked Smith,
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