have thought prudent if he had lately designed that she should be Catharine's successor.
The King's sister, Margaret Duchess of Alencon, was richly endowed with talent and beauty, and she became a widow in April 1525, at the moment when England forsook her Burgundian ally. At first it was imagined that she would marry the Emperor ; and she visited Spain, hoping, perhaps, in that way to effect her brother's deliverance. In the year 1526 Margaret was again in France : and a widely spread tradition, doubted but not discussed by Mr. Brewer, points to her as the wife intended for the King. The Venetian Falier, the only diplomatist who showed a disposition to accept the Cardinal's account of the divorce, says that he had made proposals for her hand. The testimony of other writers is vitiated by an anachronism ; for they assign the divorce to the year 1527, when Margaret was already married to a second husband. Guicciardini and Harpsfield speak of Renee, as if either name was a guess suggested by obvious probability. Du Bellay, the shrewdest of courtiers, conjectured that Renée had been thought of. He cannot have heard that it was Margaret. She herself once reminded Henry, in after-years, that she was to have been his wife. This speech, which would have been ungracious if she had refused him, was an allusion to proposals made by Lewis XII., immediately after Prince Arthur's death, and renewed in vain until 1507. Francis I. was willing to encourage a measure which would perpetuate enmity between his powerful neighbours ; but he would have lost his advantage by implicating himself irrevocably on one side of the quarrel. Intermarriage with the House of Tudor was an object of his policy ; but before concluding it he gave his sister in marriage to the King of Navarre, and planned a match between Renee and Hercules, Prince of Este.[1] In the spring of 1527 no princess was left who could have taken the place of
- ↑ Margaret was betrothed to Navarre at Christmas, 1526. The proposed match between Ren£e and the son of the Duke of Ferrara was known 4th April 1527 (Desjardins, Négoc. avec la Toscane, ii. 935).
