the estate of Savoy cannot be changed by any alliance, for it hath ever depended, and must ever depend, either upon France or Spain. And for the strengthening our king, or the levy of an army in those parts, either against France or Spain, the least of the cantons of Switzers, or the meanest of the German princes, may be of far more use to the king's majesty, than the duke of Savoy can be. Certainly, that Savoy cannot but depend on Spain, it is manifest enough; for thus the case stands between those princes: the duke hath yet living four sons: he had five, but the eldest was poisoned in Spain, because the king bound himself to give the duchy of Milan to the first and eldest son borne by his daughter.

The second is now prince of Piedmont, called don Philibert; lives with the duke his father, but of less hope by far than don Philip his brother was.

His third son, don Victorio Amadeo, knight of Malta, is the great commander of St. John's in Spain, worth one hundred thousand crowns a year, and withal general of all the king of Spain's galleys; a place of great honour and profit.

The fourth son is a cardinal, and hath the one half of the profit of the archbishopric of Toledo, and is promised the whole after the death of the now bishop; an estate worth three hundred thousand crowns a year.

The fifth, don Thomaso, with whom the mother the lady Catharine of Austria died, a prince of fifteen years of age; and hath also a pension out of Spain, but hath not yet acquired any particular title.

Hereby it is easy to judge, whether the duke of Savoy, by the power of Savoy, will abandon all these pensions and preferments, and enter into a war with the king of Spain for the duchy of Milan, or for the quarrel of any other prince; seeing Milan itself, when it was a duchy apart, was ever a principality of greater force than Savoy and Piedmont. Shall we then hope, that he will offend the king of Spain in respect of England? Certainly it were madness so to do. Milan is too near him; and so are both Spain

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and Naples; and England too far off. They are ever like to be neighbours; England never like to be. Again; that he will ever be used against the French for the English, it very improbable: he hath been too well beaten for that fault; I mean for joining himself against the French, though not for us. For that he is a prince of no strength, if the king of France draw his sword against him, Francis I. hath resolved us; who, in despite of all the assistance of Charles V. when he returned victorious out of Africa, and notwithstanding the great armies which the said emperor employed in the duke's defence; and notwithstanding his forcible invading of Picardy, thereby to drain the French out of Piedmont; and notwithstanding (ere yet the war had ended) that king Henry VIII. of England did also invade France with a most puissant army; yet did Francis I. by the earl of St. Paul, take from him his duchy of Savoy in a short time, and by other his commanders possess Turin, the chief city of Piedmont, with the greatest part of all that principality; and held both the one and the other from the year 1538 to the year 1544; when with a daughter of France, or rather out of commiseration, it was restored.

This is true; and it is all the good our king of England can expect from Savoy, that he must either abandon his son-in-law, if either France or Spain oppress him, which were too great a dishonour; or he must enter into a war for his defence, which were too great a charge. And his majesty doth well know, that while the league stands between him and the Low Countries, that he is invincible by them, and they by him; and that all other petty combinations will be rather chargeable than profitable.

And if any man shall tell the king, that by having the duke of Savoy at his devotion, he may offend France whenever he pleaseth; his majesty may look into the exploits of Henry VIII., and what flowers and fruit that war of his in France brought forth. For king Henry VIII. had not only a duke of Savoy, but a duke of Bourbon, a king of Arragon, and an emperor the most ambitious and undertaking prince that Germany hath seen for many ages: he had

also the Low Countries, Flanders, Hainault, and Artois, to join with him, and he with them, against the French: but let us see what he brought to pass.

In the year 1512, Ferdinand of Arragon persuaded Henry VIII. to send an army of English into Biscay, and by the way of Bayonne to invade Guienne; by the countenance of whose forces, and while the English affronted the French in those parts, Ferdinand conquered the kingdom of Navarre, deferring his assistance of king Henry VIII. till the next year; and so the English returned with a great deal of loss, and more dishonour.

In the year 1513 king Henry did not only set out a fleet of ships of war against the French, and gave the emperor one hundred thousand ducats towards the levying an army to invade Burgundy; but the king landed in France with 40,000 foot and 5000 men at arms, and was persuaded by the emperor to besiege Terouenne, a town of as much use to the English, as if it had been seated in Arabia. Neither did he gain any foot of ground else by the emperor's assistance; neither could he succour or relieve that city without an army of equal strength to that by which it was won; to wit, an army consisting of 40,000 foot and 5000 barbed horse.

In the year 1515 he again paid divers regiments of Switzers against king Francis (because the said king sent the duke of Albany into Scotland) for the protection of king James V., king Henry's own nephew, and his majesty's grandfather.

In the year 1522 he renewed the war against Francis I. and entered into league against him with the emperor, the pope, the duke of Milan, and the Florentines; and after the English army had in vain besieged Hesdin, and set fire on Dourlans, dispeopled and abandoned unto them, they privately hasted homeward; and in exchange for a great deal of treasure and time spent, they returned again loaden with nothing but poverty and diseases.

In the year 1523 he invaded France with the like success, by the duke of Suffolk; took certain small towns to

day, and lost them again to-morrow; and spent a world of treasure to be laughed at.

In the year 1524 it was promised, that all former errors should be amended, and France should be conquered for king Henry by the emperor and the duke of Bourbon, who received of king Henry 100,000 crowns for the first month; and so much they were to have monthly during the same war.

But the duke of Bourbon, to whom the preservation of the duchy of Milan was more profitable than the invasion of France, spent our king's crowns merrily in that good city so as when king Henry had spent all the treasure left him by that provident king Henry VII.; all that mass of monies made by the dissolutions of the abbeys, and all that England could yield him besides, in war against the French, assisted also therein by all the foreign princes and states, he had nothing remaining of all those great expenses of treasure, arms, and the body of men, but the poor town of Boulogne, the restitution of which to the French, king Henry himself promised; but being prevented by death, the same was delivered up by Edward his son. What ac

count can we make therefore of Savoy, since neither Charles the emperor, nor all that joined with him and with the English against the French, would put us in possession of one good place in eighteen or twenty years' war? But, sir, that which we are to consider in this treaty is, whether it doth not drag after it some Spanish exploit. For it is certain that the Castilians, and those of whom these princes are descended, have gotten no less, by the traffick of their marriages than they have done by the trade of their Indies; of which, because the instances are many, I will remember unto you some few, and leave the rest to your own reading.

In the year 1503, Philip, archduke of Austria, (authorized by Ferdinand of Arragon, his father-in-law,) made a peace with Lewis XII. promising, that his son Charles (afterwards emperor) should marry the lady Claudia, the king's daughter; which marriage was solemnly sworn and

performed at Blois. But what was the end of this lovemaking, other than to persuade king Lewis, that, according to the division made of the kingdom of Naples between the Spanish and French, the French king should enjoy his part, and the Spanish his, and all war and debate take end? Whereupon, while Lewis (meaning all things in good faith) neglected to reinforce and to supply his army in those parts, Gonsalvo, according to his secret instructions, (and notwithstanding that this peace was proclaimed through all Naples, and commandments sent to Gonsalvo by the archduke to abstain from all acts of hostility,) set upon the French unawares, defeated the duke of Antry and mons. D'Aubigny, and following the advantage of his former victory, overthrew the remainder of the French army, led by that valiant duke of Nemours, who lost himself, with all, in effect, that the French possessed in that kingdom. And yet this was not all the use the Spaniard made of this lady; for after that Lewis XII. had sent a new army into Italy, for the recovery of Naples, commanded at the time of the overthrow thereof by the marquis of Salluco, (the Spaniard being not as yet strongly settled in his new conquests,) the former marriage was again to be confirmed, and in recompense of one half of the kingdom of Naples, the investiture of the duchy of Milan was promised to king Lewis, and his heirs male, and for want of heirs male to the lady Claudia and Charles her imaginary husband: and to make it a plain bargain, king Lewis was to pay unto Maximilian a great sum of money, which was presently sent by the cardinal of Amboise at Haguenau in Alsatia; but this money was never repaid, this match never effected, nor the duchy of Milan ever delivered into the French possession. In the neck of this, and upon the death of Isabella, queen of Castile, Ferdinand of Arragon, fearing to be dispossessed of Castile and Leon by his son-in-law the archduke Philip, (who, by the right of his wife, the daughter of queen Isabel, was now lawful king thereof,) sought peace with Lewis XII. and to that end took to wife the lady Germain de Foix, sister to Gaston de Foix, the king's niece, upon con