REIGN OF ELIZABETH. . 64. quarrelling with every one about her, and angry, above all, with the Earl of Leicester. She had herself sent him to the Low Countries ; but rehearsing, as it were, her subsequent resentment with him for the same cause, she suspected that he was using her name to obtain the Low Countries for himself. She blamed him for having been present when Alencon was installed, as implicating her with the Spanish King. She charged him with conspiring with the Prince of Orange. She called Leicester traitor. She beknaved Walsingham for hav- ing carried off her Prince to a place where he could gain nothing but dishonour. 1 She sent for Burghley. He was again confined with gout, but she would admit no excuses. Her relations with France were grown precarious, she said. The Spaniards were ready to make up their quarrel with her, and she had resolved to re- turn to her old friends. Burghley raised no objection : he reminded her however that there was such a thing as honour : she must not desert the Low Countries, which had struggled so long and so bravely, after using them for her own convenience. She must make con- ditions for them as well as for herself, and must secure 1 Some scandalous secret con- nected with the AleiNjon business had a narrow escape of falling into wrong hands, as appears from u curious note. I do not find what the secret was, but on the nth of February Burghley wrote to "Walsingham : ' Of late M. Marchmont's lodging in Cannon Row was robbed, and in a trunk his writings also were em- bezzled, and the trunk conveyed intc a garden, where the persons that found it, perceiving French writings, brought to me the very papers be- tween D. and you, written in your name, the discovery whereof made me ready to blush to see by that ac- cident such secrets made common.' MSS. Domestic.
