e Orient pearls. Poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had a
wonderful lot of pearls among her jewels; and the sneaking manner in
which Elizabeth got possession of them we will leave Miss Strickland,
the biographer of Queens, to relate.

"If anything farther than the letters of Drury and Throgmorton be
required to prove the confederacy between the English Government and the
Earl of Moray, it will only be necessary to expose the disgraceful
fact of the traffic of Queen Mary's costly _parure_ of pearls, her own
personal property, which she had brought with her from France. A few
days before she effected her escape from Lochleven Castle, the righteous
Regent sent these, with a choice collection of her jewels, very secretly
to London, by his trusty agent, Sir Nicholas Elphinstone, who undertook
to negotiate their sale, with the assistance of Throgmorton, to whom he
was directed for that purpose. As these pearls were considered the most
magnificent in Europe, Queen Elizabeth was complimented with the first
offer of them. 'She saw them yesterday, May 2nd,' writes Bodutel La
Forrest, the French ambassador at the Court of England, 'in the presence
of the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, and pronounced them to be of
unparalleled beauty.' He thus describes them: 'There are six cordons
of large pearls, strung as paternosters; but there are five-and-twenty
separate from the rest, much finer and larger than those which are
strung; these are for the most part like black _muscades_. They had not
been here more than three days, when they were appraised by various
merchants; this Queen wishing to have them at the sum named by the
jeweller, who could have made his profit by selling them again. They
were at first shown to three or four working jewellers and lapidaries,
by whom they were estimated at three thousand pounds sterling, (about
ten thousand crowns,) and who offered to give that sum for them. Several
Italian merchants came after them, who valued them at twelve thousand
crowns, which is the price, as I am told, this Queen Elizabeth will take
them at. There is a Genoese who saw them after the others, and said they
were worth sixteen thousand crowns; but I think they will allow her to
have them for twelve thousand.' 'In the mean time,' continues he, in his
letter to Catherine of Medicis, 'I have not delayed giving your Majesty
timely notice of what was going on, though I doubt she will not allow
them to escape her. The rest of the jewels are no