he English alliance, the emperor would make over to him the
passionately coveted Duchy of Milan,[414] to be annexed to France on the
death of the reigning Duke. In the meantime he would pay to the French
king, as "tribute for Milan," a hundred thousand crowns a year, as an
acknowledgment of the right of the house of Valois. Offers such as these
might well have tempted the light ambition of Francis. If sincere, they
were equivalent to a surrender of the prize for which the emperor's life
had been spent in contending, and perilous indeed it would have been for
England if this intrigue had been permitted to succeed. But whether it
was that Francis too deeply distrusted Charles, that he preferred the
more hazardous scheme of the German alliance, or that he supposed he
could gain his object more surely with the help of England, the Count de
Nassau left Paris with a decisive rejection of the emperor's advances;
and in the beginning of January, De Bryon, the High Admiral of France,
was sent to England, to inform Henry of what had passed, and to propose
for Elizabeth the marriage which Charles had desired for the Princess
Mary.

[Sidenote: De Bryon sent to England.]

De Bryon's instructions were remarkable. To consolidate the alliance of
the two nations, he was to entreat Henry at length to surrender the
claim to the crown of France, which had been the cause of so many
centuries of war. In return for this concession, Francis would make over
to England, Gravelines, Newport, Dunkirk, a province of Flanders, and
"the title of the Duke of Lorrayne to the town of Antwerp, with
sufficient assistance for the recovery of the same." Henry was not to
press Francis to part from the papacy; and De Bryon seems to have
indicated a hope that the English king might retrace his own steps. The
weight of French influence, meanwhile, was to be pressed, to induce the
pope to revoke and denounce, voyd and frustrate the unjust and
slanderous sentence[415] given by his predecessor; and the terms of
this new league were to be completed by the betrothal of the Princess
Elizabeth to the Duke of Angoulesme.[416]

[Sidenote: Change in Henry's character.]

There had been a time when these proposals would have answered all which
Henry desired. In the early days of his reign he had indulged himself in
visions of empire, and of repeating the old glories of the Plantagenet
kings. But in the peace which was concluded after the defeat of Pavia,
he showed that