St André's was a visit of ceremony; he brought with him the order of St Michael for the young King. The business of the connection was transacted on the Continent.
June.The differences with Scotland had been adjusted on the 10th of June in a treaty in which the engagements of 1543 for the marriage of Edward and Mary were passed over in silence. The French and English commissioners meeting to arrange a new connection, found it necessary to peruse and consider those engagements. The Scottish promises were produced, and Northampton first demanded that the contract should be fulfilled.
'To be frank and plain with you,' Montmorency replied, 'seeing you require us so to be, the matter hath cost us both much riches and much blood; and so much doth the honour of France hang thereupon, as we cannot talk with you therein, the marriage is already con-
French King word thereof; whereupon the man is committed to prison, and the young lady out of danger. Your honours are much increased by this your noble fact. Your integrities so much the more commended, that they see many are glad largely to hire whom they may by any means corrupt, and find few complaints made against such as in this point offer service. It is to your Lordships' eternal praise that ye, by this your honourable example, do teach the King's Majesty, in these his young years, to abhor foul practices—a lesson better and more worthier than is the violent catching of the fairest kingdom that the sun sheweth light unto. In spite of spite here, even those are forced to like, to allow, yea, to wonder at things rightly done, that by no entreaty can mean to follow them.'—Morryson to the Council from the Emperor's Court: MS. Germany, Edward VI. bundle 15, State Paper Office. I know no keener satire on the public morals of the age than this passage.
