Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/524

504 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 61. ported till the irritation had subsided. Attached to the treaty was a note by Siraier agreeing to allow two months' delay ' to allow time to her Majesty to persuade her' subjects ' to conformity. Parliament was put off till January. The Queen promised to write to France when the time was come for the final ratification, and if the letter was not sent within the two months pre- scribed, the treaty, with all that had been done, was to be considered ' null and void/ l Those who hold the traditionary belief in Elizabeth's profound ability and equally profound insincerity, will consider that this was a loophole deliberately contrived for her escape. Her deception, if such it was, imposed on her ministers, and probably imposed on herself. Par- liament did not meet after all. She found or affected to find it necessary to yield to the continued aversion of j.go her subjects. The two months passed and she January. ]^ a ^ no wr ftten, and the negotiation so strangely followed up was as strangely supposed to be at an end. The natural interpretation must be that her ministers were her accomplices, that she had again entan- gled herself deeper than she intended, and that the objec- tion of the country was an excuse of which they enabled her to avail herself. If this was the truth, and possibly it was the truth, she had allowed two honourable men to be mutilated to blind the eyes of the French Court to her own deliberate fickleness. But if there were members of her Government who, careless of what happened to her- self, were betraying her into rash and dangerous courses ; 1 MSS. France, November 24.