the war. The timid and procrastinating policy of Philip the Second had already let slip the opportunities afforded by that battle, as his blind bigotry afterwards doomed to death the gallant Egmont, whose prowess had carried the day. The French king had been allowed not only to rally his forces, but once more to cross the frontiers of Flanders. The duke of Nevers retook Ham: Genlis put twelve hundred Spaniards to the sword at Chaulny. Guise, burning to wipe away his disgraces in the Abruzzi and the Roman plains, suddenly appeared before Calais on the first night of the new year. Trusting to the strength of the fortifications, and to the surrounding marshes, which made the place almost an island in winter, the English government had for some years past, in a spirit of fatal economy, withdrawn great part of the garrison at that season. The only approaches by land were guarded by the forts of Risbank and Newnham-bridge. These Guise attacked at night, and was master of in the morning. The roar of his artillery was heard at Dover; but a storm dispersed the squadron which put out with relief. After some days of desultory and desperate fighting, lord Wentworth struck his flag; the English troops filed off under a guard of Scottish archers; and the key of France, which, two centuries before had resisted, for eleven months, Edward the Third, fresh from Cressy, was restored in one week to the house of Valois. The honour of having first conceived and planned the enterprise belonged to the admiral Coligny, still a prisoner of war in the hands of the duke of Savoy. But Guise had nobly retrieved his laurels ; and it would have been sufficient for his military glory, had he been victor only in his two sieges-the most remarkable of the age-the heroic defence of Metz, and the dashing capture of Calais. France was in an uproar of exultation; St. Quentin was forgotten; and loud and

long were the pæans of the Parisian wits, 'replenished with scoffs and unmeasured terms against the English,' who, in falling victims to a daring stratagem, gave, as it seemed to these poetasters, a signal proof of the immemorial' perfidy' of Albion.'

The news of the loss of Calais reached Valladolid at the end of January, and Yuste on the second of February. In both places they were received with little less sorrow and alarm that they had caused in London. In the exploit of Guise the emperor lamented not only a loss and an affront suffered by the nation of which his son was king, but an important accession to the strength of the most formidable neighbour of the Spanish Netherlands. The word Calais, which Mary Tudor dolefully declared to be written on her heart, was also ever on the tongue of her kinsman Charles. For days he spoke of nothing else, recurring perpetually to the sore subject, and saying that now there was nothing but the castle of Ghent between the French and Bruxelles. To his secretary Gaztelu he confessed that he had never in his life received so painful a blow; and he wrote in the most urgent terms to the princess-regent, telling her that every nerve must now be strained to raise money to repair the loss, and reinforce the king's army. The chamberlain shared his master's feelings; and in his letter on the occasion to Vazquez, severely criticised the Castillian leaders for their remissness, and prophesied that Gravelines, Nieuport, and Dunkirk, would likewise soon fall into the hands of the enemy.

As a slight consolation for the loss of Calais, came a promise of a new heir to the kingdom in the shape of a report of the pregnancy of the queen,-a pregnancy in which, however, few people believed except poor Mary her

'Hollinshed Chronicles, 6 vols. 4to. London: 1808, iv. 93.

self, and which was in truth nothing more than the crisis of the dropsy, which in a few months gave her crown to Elizabeth, released her people from the hateful yoke of Philip, and enabled the mind of England once more to march on the noble path of civil and religious freedom.

In this gloomy time of disaster, the emperor continued to suffer from gout, which sometimes so completely disabled his fingers, that instead of signing the necessary despatches, he was obliged to seal them with a small private signet. In spite of his eider-down robes and quilts, he lay in bed shivering, and complaining of cold in his bones. His appetite was beginning to fail him, but his repasts, though diminished in quantity, were still of a quality to perplex the doctor, consisting principally of the rich fish which he would not forego and could not digest. His favourite beverage at this time was vino bastardo, a sweet wine made from raisins, and brought from Seville, and long popular in England.' When he got a little better, he ate, in spite of all remonstrances, some raw oysters, a rash act upon which Quixada remarked despairingly to the secretary of state, 'Surely kings imagine that their stomachs are not made like other men's.'

Meanwhile the queens of France and Hungary effected their meeting with their daughter and niece, the infanta Mary of Portugal. Early in January, that princess arrived at Elvas in great state, attended by a gallant following of the Portuguese nobility. After some points of etiquette had been argued and adjusted, she crossed the plains of the Guadiana, and having been received in due form by a party of Spanish nobles at the border rivulet of Caya, she finally reached the longing arms of

'Prince Hal (Henry IV. Act ii. sc. 4), remarks, 'why then your brown bastard is your only drink.'

her mother. Don Antonio Puertocarrero was sent down from Valladolid to offer her the congratulations of the princess-regent, to which were added those of the emperor, the emperor having likewise received as he passed, credentials at Yuste. At Badajoz the infanta remained for twenty days, during which time her mother and aunt exhausted all their arguments and caresses in the attempt to induce her to settle in Spain. Queen Eleanor gave her jewels to the value of fifty thousand ducats, and queen Mary added a quantity of rich dresses and household plenishing. But her heart was sealed against the land of which she had hoped to be queen, and against the nearest and tenderest ties of her Spanish blood. She therefore remained inflexible in her determination to return to Portugal, and bade an eternal farewell to her weeping mother with no visible marks of concern. During her stay at Badajoz, however, she was careful to fulfil the laws of etiquette to the letter, and accordingly despatched Don Emanuel de Melo to present her compliments to the regent and the emperor. Her ambassador travelled with unusual magnificence, and with his cavalcade of fifty horsemen excited great stir in Quacos and at Yuste.

On the eleventh of February the queens set out from Badajoz, and the emperor sent Gaztelu down to Truxillo to meet them on the road. But they had accomplished only three leagues of their journey, when Eleanor, who had been suffering at Badajoz with her usual asthma, and a slight attack of fever, was taken seriously ill at Talaverilla, a small ague-stricken town on a melancholy plain. Dr. Cornelio, who was in attendance, had the worst opinion of her case. Intelligence of her danger was immediately sent off to the infanta, who was still on the frontier of Portugal, but who, nevertheless, refused to set foot again in Spain. A courier was likewise despatched

to Yuste, whence Quixada was ordered instantly to ride post to Talaverilla. Gaztelu, who had probably met the courier on the road, as he was going to Truxillo, arrived first, on the morning of the eighteenth of February. He found the queen sitting in her chair, panting for breath, and suffering much pain; but in full possession of her faculties, and listening with eager interest to some business of her daughter's. At six in the evening, however, he was hastily sent for to take leave of her; her strength was then utterly exhausted, and she was lying in a state of stupor; the bishop of Palencia standing at her side in his robes, ready to administer the last solemn rite of the church. On hearing the secretary announced, she roused herself for a moment, and said, 'Tell my brother, the emperor, that he must take care of my daughter, the infanta.' With her last thoughts thus fixed upon the thankless child who had been the idol of her life, she sank again into unconsciousness; and within an hour, her loving heart had ceased to beat; and the long account of her gentle deeds, her womanly selfsacrifices, and her meekly-borne sorrows, was closed for ever. Luis de Avila, who stood by her dying bed, truly described her as the gentlest and most guileless creature he had ever known, and as one who left no better being in the world.' Quixada galloped into the town just in time to see her before she expired, and immediately, in a few simple lines of honest emotion, communicated the event to his master at Yuste.

The remains of the queen were deposited at Merida, and afterwards gathered to those of her kindred at the Escorial. Her desire was that the interment should be simple and private, and the money which more sumptuous obsequies would have cost should be given to the poor. Under her will, her undutiful daughter became her universal legatee, and inherited a vast quantity of plate,