and dangerous
intimacy between the two rivals, Henry was secretly hinting to both
that the death of his Queen had left him free to contract a marriage
which might bind him for ever to one or the other.[1024] To Francis he
sent a request for the hand of Mary of Guise, who had already been
promised to James V. of Scotland. He refused to believe that the Scots
negotiations had proceeded so far that they could not be set aside for
so great a king as himself, and he succeeded in convincing the lady's
relatives that the position of a Queen of England provided greater
attractions than any James could hold out.[1025] Francis, however,
took matters into his own hands, and compelled the Guises to fulfil
their compact with the Scottish King. Nothing daunted, Henry asked for
a list of other French ladies eligible for the matrimonial prize. (p. 370)
He even suggested that the handsomest of them might be sent, in the
train of Margaret of Navarre, to Calais, where he could inspect them
in person.[1026] "I trust to no one," he told Castillon, the French
ambassador, "but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see
them and know them some time before deciding."[1027] This idea of
"trotting out the young ladies like hackneys"[1028] was not much
relished at the French Court; and Castillon, to shame Henry out of the
indelicacy of his proposal, made an ironical suggestion for testing
the ladies' charms, the grossness of which brought the only recorded
blush to Henry's cheeks.[1029] No more was said of the beauty-show;
and Henry declared that he did not intend to marry in France or in
Spain at all, unless his marriage brought him a closer alliance with
Francis or Charles than the rivals had formed with each other.

[Footnote 1023: Vols. xii. and xiii. of the _L. and
P._ are full of these attempts.]

[Footnote 1024: For the negotiations with France
from 1537 onwards see Kaulek, _Corresp. de MM.
Castillon et Marillac_, Paris, 1885.]

[Footnote 1025: _L. and P._, XIII., i., 165, 273.]

[Footnote 1026: Is this another trace of
"Byzantinism"? It was a regular custom at the
Byzantine and other Oriental Courts to have a
"concourse of beauty" for the Emperor's benefit
when he wished to choose a wife (_Histoire
Ge