Free Heretic Queen by Susan Ronald

session and, despite all the heartfelt arguments, ended in stalemate.
    Elizabeth’s Bill on Apparel aimed at closing all discussion about church vestments was withdrawn. She had browbeaten the Commons into voting her two-thirds of the subsidy for the good of the realm, without designating her successor in the event of her death. The burning matter of her marriage was declared by Elizabeth as being personal and therefore closed. She fulminated at her privy councillors, including Leicester and Cecil, who had been part of the “godly conspiracy,” and she refused to allow them in her sight. The drama ended with her reassurance to the House on the prickly issue of the succession, with Elizabeth uttering the sour words that she would “deal therein for your safety,” making her anger known in no uncertain terms when she added, “For it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head.” 15
    Elizabeth, disgusted and enraged, dissolved Parliament on January 2, 1567, with a devastating broadside aimed at members and her Privy Council:
    I love so evil counterfeiting and hate so much dissimulation that I may not suffer you depart without that my admonitions may show your harms and cause you shun unseen peril. Two visors have blinded the eyes of the lookers-on in this present session … Under pretense of saving all they have done none good … They have done their lewd endeavor to make all my realm suppose that their care was much when mine was none at all. 16
    From Elizabeth’s perspective, only she could protect her people against the armed insurrections that plagued her neighbors. Her steadfastness against the adversities ahead changed England forever.

 
    FIFTEEN
    Massacre in Paris
    And with this weight I’ll counterpoise a crown,
Or with seditions weary all the world.
    â€” The Massacre at Paris, act 1, scene 2
    by Christopher Marlowe (1592)
    While negotiations were under way for a marital alliance with England, Catherine de’ Medici was also aiming to catch a Protestant bridegroom for her daughter Marguerite. The man in her sights was Henry of Navarre, First Prince of the Blood of France. 1 If only she could manage a Protestant League with Elizabeth in the north, covertly fund William of Orange’s invasion of the Low Countries from Germany in the northeast, and seal a wedding to the southwest with Navarre, Catherine would, at a stroke, neutralize the Huguenot and ultra-Catholic Guise factions in France and secure her borders against the pope and Philip.
    The plan had already been partially implemented. Catherine had succeeded in winning Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of Maximilian II, for her son Charles IX to protect her eastern flank. With Charles increasingly unpredictable in his behavior, Catherine was determined to take control of her own and France’s destiny. Seemingly, she chose to side with the Protestants in the religious wars rumbling through Europe without openly breaking with either Spain or Rome.
    Yet to win over Henry, Prince of Navarre—the tall and handsome but as yet uninspiring leader of the Huguenots—Catherine needed to persuade his mother, Jeanne, queen of Navarre, that she was sincere in her support and that the Huguenot population of France would be protected. Coaxing Jeanne out of her fortress stronghold at La Rochelle (which had its own government and laws) needed to be done subtly, with just a soupçon of menace, particularly as Jeanne had been unwell. France remained a Catholic country and, in matters of religion, loyal to Rome. Naturally, Pius V opposed any marriage linking Navarre and France and would require little persuasion to declare the queen of Navarre’s son Henry illegitimate, since he was the child of Jeanne’s second marriage “of questionable validity.” 2
    Like so many menaces made in the French court, it was whispered to Jeanne with a velvet voice. The attraction to such a political marriage from