."[826] Lord Burleigh, in perplexity on
account of Elizabeth's conduct, exclaimed that "he was not able to discern
what was best;" but added: "Surely I see no continuance of her quietness
without a marriage, and therefore I remit the success to Almighty
God."[827] The situation of Elizabeth's servants was, indeed, extremely
embarrassing. Their mistress had laid an insuperable obstacle in the way.
She did not, indeed, require Anjou to abjure his faith, but her demands
virtually involved this. Not only did she refuse to grant the duke, by the
articles of marriage, public or even private worship for himself and his
attendants, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, but she
wished to bind him to make no request to that effect after marriage.[828]
In vain did Catharine protest that this was to require him to become an
atheist, and her own advisers solemnly warn her that this could but lead
to an entire rupture of the negotiations. Under the pretence of excluding
all exercise of Popery from England, the queen disappointed the ardent
hopes of thousands of sincere and thorough Protestants in France and of
many more in England, who viewed the marriage as by far the most advisable
cure--far better than a simple treaty of peace--for the ills of both
kingdoms. "If you find not in her Majesty," wrote Walsingham to Leicester,
"a resolute determination to marry--a thing most necessary for our
staggering state--then were it expedient to take hold of amity, which may
serve to ease us for a time, though our disease requireth another remedy;"
and again, a few days later (on the third of August, 1571): "My lord, if
neither marriage nor amity may take place, the poor Protestants here do
think then their case desperate. They tell me so with tears, and therefore
I do believe them. And surely, if they say nothing, beholding the present
state here, I could not but see it most apparent."[829]

[Sidenote: Papal and Spanish efforts.]

The fears of the Protestants were not baseless. As the marriage, and the
consequent close friendship with England, seemed to insure the growth and
spread of the reformed faith,[830] the failure of both was an almost
unmistakable portent of the triumph of the opposite party and of the
renewal of persecution and bloodshed. And so also the fanatical Roman
Catholics read the signs of the times, and again they plied Anjou with
their seductions. "Great practices are here for the impeachment of this
match," wr