CHAPTER LXVI. EXPULSION OF MENDOZA. THE visit of the Duke of Alencon to England proved an expensive one. The Queen had hoped to escape her suitor and to save her money. She had flung him off to croak, as she said, in the Dutch canals, but she had been compelled to gild his departure. She had prevented his return upon her hands by subsidies, which were almost as much wasted as if they had been buried in the sand-banks of the Scheldt; and those subsidies were so large that if expended on the objects which the most eminent of her council had so often pressed upon her, they would have given order and good government to Ireland, and secured Scotland ten times over to the friends of England and the Reforma- tion. The kiss bestowed at Greenwich with so much precipitancy cost at once sixty thousand pounds. Be- fore six months was over the sixty thousand had grown into three hundred thousand, and in the year 1582-3 three hundred and fifty thousand in addition were VOL. xi. 22
