The Duke of Alencon throws his ring.

The French monarch gave repeatedly the same answer to the English envoys: that he was ready to sign a league offensive and defensive against Spain, whenever Elizabeth should fulfil her promise of marriage to his brother. That prince, having placed is army in winter quarters, hastened, at her request, to England. She received him with every demonstration of the most ardent attachment. She gave him a promise, written with her own hand, (exacting at the same time a similar promise from him) to look upon his enemies as her own; to assist him in all cases in which he should require it, and not to treat with the king of Spain without his consent. Soon after she had celebrated the anniversary of her accession, in the presence of the foreign ambassadors, and of the English nobility, she placed a ring on his finger, saying, that by that ceremony she pledged herself to become his wife; and commanded the bishop of Lincoln, the earls of Sussex, Bedford, and Leicester, and Hatton and Walsingham, to subscribe a written paper, regulating the rites to be observed, and the form of contract to be pronounced by both parties at the celebration of the marriage. Every doubt was expelled from the minds of the spectators: Castelnau hastened to inform the king of France; St. Aldegond sent an express with the intelligence to the states; and the union of the queen and the duke, as if it had already been solemnized, was celebrated at Brussels with fire-works, discharges of artillery, and the usual demonstrations of joy.

·         The duke, in the morning, received a message from the queen, and hastened to pay his respects to his supposed bride. He found her pale, and in tears. Two more such nights as the last, she told him, would consign her to the grave. She had passed it in the deepest anguish of mind; in a constant conflict between her inclination and her duty. He must not think that her affection for him was diminished. He still possessed her heart: but the prejudices of her people opposed an insuperable bar to their union. She had, after a long struggle, determined to sacrifice her own happiness to the tranquility and the welfare of the kingdom.

When Anjou would have replied, Hatton, who was present, came to the aid of his mistress. He enumerated the common objections to the marriage; but insisted chiefly on the disparity of age. The queen was in her forty-ninth year. What probability was there that she should have issue: and without the prospect of issue, what reasonable object could she have in marriage? Besides, the contract was conditional: it remained to be seen whether the king of France would ratify the terms on which it had been concluded. With the answer of the duke we are not acquainted: but he returned to his apartment pensive and irritated, and throwing from him the ring, exclaimed, that the women of England were as changeable and capricious as the waves which encircled their island.

The History of England… 355, 356-7. John Lingard

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