ss the Channel to
make. He requested the king to deliver up the town and citadel of Calais
to the Queen of England as soon as, with her assistance, he should
succeed in recovering the place. He assigned as her Majesty's reasons for
this peremptory summons that she would on no other terms find it in her
power to furnish the required succour. Her subjects, she said, would
never consent to it except on these conditions. It was perhaps not very
common with the queen to exhibit so much deference to the popular will,
but on this occasion the supposed inclinations of the nation furnished
her with an excellent pretext for carrying out her own. Sidney urged
moreover that her Majesty felt certain of being obliged--in case she did
not take Calais into her own safe-keeping and protection--to come to the
rescue again within four or six months to prevent it once more from being
besieged, conquered, and sacked by the enemy.

The king had feared some such proposition as this, and had intimated as
much to the States' envoy, Calvaert, who had walked with him down to the
strand, and had left him when the conference began. Henry was not easily
thrown from his equanimity nor wont to exhibit passion on any occasion,
least of all in his discussions with the ambassadors of England, but the
cool and insolent egotism of this communication was too much for him.

He could never have believed, he said in reply, that after the repeated
assurances of her Majesty's affection for him which he had received from
the late Sir Henry Umton in their recent negotiations, her Majesty would
now so discourteously seek to make her profit out of his misery. He had
come to Boulogne, he continued, on the pledge given by the Earl of Essex
to assist him with seven or eight thousand men in the recovery of Calais.
If this after all should fail him--although his own reputation would be
more injured by the capture of the place thus before his eyes than if it
had happened in his absence--he would rather a hundred times endure the
loss of the place than have it succoured with such injurious and
dishonourable conditions. After all, he said, the loss of Calais was
substantially of more importance to the queen than to himself. To him the
chief detriment would be in the breaking up of his easy and regular
communications with his neighbours through this position, and especially
with her Majesty. But as her affection for him was now proved to be so
slender as to allow her to seek