ABSTRACT
During the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign the main obstacles in the way of an Anglo-French matrimonial alliance had nothing to do with religion. From the English point of view, a French dynastic marriage was unwelcome since it would mean a re-orientation of foreign policy away from friendship with the rulers of the Netherlands which was still thought essential for the realm’s prosperity and security. Despite tensions over commerce and religion, the value of close relations with the Spanish Habsburgs dominated thinking in the 1560s and was a major influence on marriage considerations. On practical grounds, too, it was difficult to arrange a suitable royal marriage in France because of the disparity in age between Elizabeth and the three unmarried sons of Henry II and Catherine de Medici. The extreme youth of the Valois princes made it impossible to seal the Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis with a dynastic alliance as was the custom, despite the attempts of the treatynegotiators to find some formula to make it possible.1 One imaginative scheme proposed by the French was for a future marriage to be agreed between the as yet unborn daughter of the dauphin and the eldest son born of the so far unmarried Elizabeth, with Calais to be the dowry.2 Even later on, in 1565 when Charles IX was of marriageable age, the French king seemed far too young to marry Elizabeth, who commented that she would look like a mother leading her child to the altar.
