to procure the accomplishment of this
object by measures of perfidy and atrocity from which bigotry itself, in
a mind not totally depraved, must have revolted.

By the secret league of Bayonne, the courts of France and Spain had
pledged themselves to pursue in concert the great work of the
extirpation of heresy; and while Catherine was laying hidden trains for
the destruction of the Hugonots, Philip II., by measures of open force
and relentless cruelty, was striving to annihilate the protestants of
the Low Countries, and to impose upon those devoted provinces the
detested yoke of the inquisition.

Elizabeth was aware of all that was going on; and she well knew that
when once these worthy associates had succeeded in crushing the
reformation in their own dominions, Scotland and England would become
the immediate theatre of their operations. Already were the catholics of
the two countries privately encouraged to rely on them for support, and
incited to aid the common cause by giving all the disturbance in their
power to their respective governments.

Considerations of policy therefore, no less than of religion, moved her
to afford such succours, first to the French protestants and afterwards
to the Flemings, as might enable them to prolong at least the contest;
but her caution and her frugality conspired to restrain her from
involving herself in actual warfare for the defence of either. At the
very time therefore that she was secretly supplying the Hugonots with
money and giving them assurances of her support, she was more than ever
attentive to preserve all the exteriors of friendship with the court of
France.

It suited the views of the queen-mother to receive with complacency and
encouragement the dissembling professions of Elizabeth; by which she was
not herself deceived, but which served to deceive and to alarm her
enemies the protestants, and in some measure to mask her designs against
them. We have seen what high civilities had passed between the courts on
occasion of the admission of the French king into the order of the
garter,--but this is little to what followed.

In 1568, after the remonstrances and intercession of Elizabeth, the
succours lent by the German protestants, and the strenuous resistance
made by the Hugonots themselves, had procured for this persecuted sect a
short and treacherous peace, Catherine, in proof and confirmation of her
entire friendship with the queen of England, began to drop hints