h she made upon him had been by no means
unfavourable.

Instantly on his return from Spain Buckingham opened communications
with Mary de' Medici, Queen of France, and that through means of a
Franciscan monk, who could not be suspected, and who presented himself
to her while she was at dinner. Buckingham made secret overtures to
her, intimating that he wished to resume the old negotiations for an
alliance between the royal families of England and France, for that he
was a Frenchman at heart.[433] As the Queen expressed herself
favourably inclined, Henry Rich, who then bore the title of Lord
Kensington, and afterwards that of Lord Holland, was sent before the
end of the year 1623 on a secret mission to France in order to set the
affair in motion. Rich was one of the most intimate friends of
Buckingham, and to a certain extent resembled him in character.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1624.]

In this affair Buckingham had two circumstances in his favour. It was
the main ambition of the Queen-mother to see her daughter on the
throne of the neighbouring kingdom. The preference accorded by the
English court to an Infanta of Spain over a daughter of France had
had a painful effect upon her: she was the more gratified when that
court now resumed the negotiations which had been broken off.
Nevertheless she did not embark on so delicate an affair, the failure
of which was still possible, without the necessary reserve. The French
court could not but ask for religious concessions in favour of the
Princess, as Spain had for the Infanta: but on the very first approach
to the subject it hinted that it would not urge the King to such
strict pledges as had been demanded on the side of the Spaniards.[434]
The second influence in Buckingham's favour was the political. The
advance of the alliance, and of the power of the Spaniards, especially
their establishment in the Palatinate, aroused the jealousy of the
French. The opinion, which Cardinal Richelieu so often emphatically
expressed, that France, everywhere enclosed by the power of the
Spaniards, might some day be prostrated by it, was generally held. The
interests of his country seemed to be deeply interested when England,
from whose close connexion with Spain the greatest danger was to be
apprehended, separated herself from that power, and showed a
disposition to adopt a policy in harmony with that of France. Henry
Rich assures us that so universal an agreement had never been known
among Frenchm