Editorial note — Chapter VII

This offensive behaviour of the French court is the apology of Elizabeth's intrigues during the same period with the malcontents, which to a certain extent cannot be denied by any one who has read the collection above quoted; though I do not think Dr. Lingard warranted in asserting her privity to the conspiracy of Amboise as a proved fact. Throckmorton was a man very likely to exceed his instructions; and there is much reason to believe that he did so. It is remarkable that no modern French writer that I have seen, Anquetil, Garnier, Lacretelle, or the editors of the General Collection of Memoirs, seem to have been aware of Elizabeth's secret intrigues with the king of Navarre and other protestant chiefs in 1559, which these letters, published by Forbes in 1740, demonstrate.