is important position had been for two centuries an English
stronghold. The defeat of the Spanish husband of an English queen had
torn from England the last trophies of the Black Prince, and now the
prize had again fallen into the hands of Spain; but of Spain no longer in
alliance, but at war, with England. Obviously it was most dangerous to
the interests and to the safety of the English realm, that this
threatening position, so near the gates of London, should be in the hands
of the most powerful potentate in the world and the dire enemy of
England. In response to Henry's appeal, the Earl of Essex was despatched
with a force of six thousand men--raised by express command of the queen
on Sunday when the people were all at church--to Dover, where shipping
was in readiness to transport the troops at once across the Channel. At
the same time, the politic queen and some of her counsellors thought the
opening a good one to profit by the calamity of their dear ally,
Certainly it was desirable to prevent Calais from falling into the grasp
of Philip. But it was perhaps equally desirable, now that the place
without the assistance of Elizabeth could no longer be preserved by
Henry, that Elizabeth, and not Henry, should henceforth be its possessor.
To make this proposition as clear to the French king as it seemed to the
English queen, Sir Robert Sidney was despatched in all haste to Boulogne,
even while the guns of De Rosne were pointed at Calais citadel, and while
Maurice's fleet, baffled by the cowardly surrender of the Risban, was on
its retreat from the harbour.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st of April, Sidney landed at
Boulogne. Henry, who had been intensely impatient to hear from England,
and who suspected that the delay was boding no good to his cause, went
down to the strand to meet the envoy, with whom then and there he engaged
instantly in the most animated discourse.

As there was little time to be lost, and as Sidney on getting out of the
vessel found himself thus confronted with the soldier-king in person, he
at once made the demand which he had been sent across 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 subje