Note 342 — Chapter X · 1570-1572

It added to De Spes’ rage that the time he was thus contemned Burghley was celebrating with great magnificence the marriage of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, with the young Earl of Oxford, a connection which in after years brought him much trouble and anxiety. During the wedding festivities the open slight to Spain was made the most of. Cavalcanti was flattered and caressed, the Guises were denounced as “Hispaniolised traitors,” and the Queen’s connection with the Protestants of Germany and Flanders boasted of; whilst De Spes and his master were scornfully held up as an object-lesson of England’s boldness and strength. De Spes, in his last letter to Alba before his embarkation, says that “Burghley has received certain threatening letters, and had informed the Queen that if I stay here during the trial of the prisoners the country will rise up in arms; and he, timid, contemptible fellow that he is, commits so many absurdities that people are quite astonished.”