As there was little time to be lost, and as Sidney on getting out of the
vessel found himself thus confronted with the soldier-king in person, he
at once made the demand which he had been sent across the Channel to
make. He requested the king to deliver up the town and citadel of Calais
to the Queen of England as soon as, with her assistance, he should
succeed in recovering the place. He assigned as her Majesty's reasons
for this peremptory summons that she would on no other terms find it in
her power to furnish the required succour. Her subjects, she said, would
never consent to it except on these conditions. It was perhaps not very
common with the queen to exhibit so much deference to the popular will,
but on this occasion the supposed inclinations of the nation furnished
her with an excellent pretext for carrying out her own. Sidney urged
moreover that her Majesty felt certain of being obliged--in case she did
not take Calais into her own safe-keeping and protection--to come to the
rescue again within four or six months to prevent it once more from being
besieged, conquered, and sacked by the enemy.

The king had feared some such proposition as this, and had intimated as
much to the States' envoy, Calvaert, who had walked with him down to the
strand, and had left him when the conference began. Henry was not easily
thrown from his equanimity nor wont to exhibit passion on any occasion,
least of all in his discussions with the ambassadors of England, but the
cool and insolent egotism of this communication was too much for him.

He could never have believed, he said in reply, that after the repeated
assurances of her Majesty's affection for him which he had received from
the late Sir Henry Umton in their recent negotiations, her Majesty would
now so discourteously seek to make her profit out of his misery. He had
come to Boulogne, he continued, on the pledge given by the Earl of Essex