The violence and cruelty of the Spaniards in the Low Countries was another branch of the same conspiracy; and as Charles and Philip, two princes nearly allied in perfidy and barbarity, as well as in bigotry, had now laid aside their pretended quarrel, and had avowed the most entire friendship,[*] she had reason, as soon as they had appeased their domestic commotions, to dread the effects of their united counsels.

The duke of Guise also, and his family, whom Charles, in order to deceive the admiral, had hitherto kept at a distance, had now acquired an open and entire ascendant in the court of France; and she was sensible that these princes, from personal as well as political reasons, were her declared and implacable enemies.
The queen of Scots, their near relation and close confederate, was the pretender to her throne; and though detained in custody, was actuated by a restless spirit, and, besides her foreign allies, possessed numerous and zealous partisans in the heart of the kingdom.

For these reasons Elizabeth thought it more prudent not to reject all commerce with the French monarch, but still to listen to the professions of friendship which he made her.

She allowed even the negotiations to be renewed for her marriage with the duke of Alencon, Charles's third brother:[**] those with the duke of Anjou had already been broken off.

She sent the earl of Worcester to assist in her name at the baptism of a young princess, born to Charles; but before she agreed to give him this last mark of condescension, she thought it becoming her dignity to renew her expressions of blame, and even of detestation, against the cruelties exercised on his Protestant subjects.[***] Meanwhile, she prepared herself for that attack which seemed to threaten her from the combined power and violence of the Romanists: she fortified Portsmouth, put her fleet in order, exercised her militia, cultivated popularity with her subjects, acted with vigor for the further reduction of Scotland under obedience to the young king, and renewed her alliance with the German princes, who were no less alarmed than herself at these treacherous and sanguinary measures, so universally embraced by the Catholics.
* Digges, p.