]

The Prince of Conde received more immediate and substantial assistance
from beyond the Channel. When Tavannes undertook to capture Conde and
Coligny at Noyers, it was in contemplation to seize Odet, Cardinal of
Chatillon, the admiral's elder brother,[630] in his episcopal palace at
Beauvais. He received, however, timely warning, and made his escape
through Normandy to England, where Queen Elizabeth received him at her
court with marks of distinguished favor.[631] His efforts to enlist the
sympathies and assistance of the English monarch in behalf of his
persecuted countrymen were seconded by Cavaignes, who soon arrived as an
envoy from Conde. Cavaignes was instructed to ask material aid--money to
meet the engagements made with the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and ships with
their armaments to increase the small flotilla of privateersmen, which the
Protestants had, for the first time, sent out from La Rochelle. Soon after
appeared the vice-admiral, Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, under whose
command the flotilla had been placed, bearing a letter from the Queen of
Navarre to her sister of England, in which she was entreated to espouse a
quarrel that had arisen not from ambition or insubordination, but from the
desire, in the first place, to defend religion, and, next, to rescue a
king who was being hurried on to ruin by treacherous advisers.[632] To
these reiterated appeals, and to the solicitations for aid addressed to
them by other refugees from papal violence who had found their way to the
shores of Great Britain, the subjects of the queen returned a more
gracious answer than the queen herself. The exiled Huguenot ministers were
received with open arms by men who regarded them as champions of a common
Christianity,[633] and some Protestant noblemen had in a few weeks after
their arrival raised for their relief, the sum--considerable for those
days--of one hundred pounds sterling. Not only the laity, but even the
clergy of the Church of England, took a tender pride in receiving the "few
servants of God"--some three or four thousand--whom Providence had thrown
upon their shores. They welcomed them to their cities, and resented the
attempts of Pope and king to secure their extradition. Could the Pope, who
harbored six thousand usurers and twenty thousand courtesans in his own
city of Rome, call upon the Queen of England to deny the right of asylum
to "the poor exiles of Flanders and France, and other countries, who
either lost or