far from giving.

"Two contracts were made," said Secretary of State Villeroy; "the one
public, to give credit and reputation to the said league, the other
secret, which destroyed the effects and the promises of the first. By
the first his Majesty was to be succoured by four thousand infantry,
which number was limited by the second contract to two thousand, who were
to reside and to serve only in the cities of Boulogne and Montreuil,
assisted by an equal number of French, and not otherwise, and on
condition of not being removed from those towns unless his Majesty should
be personally present in Picardy with an army, in which case they might
serve in Picardy, but nowhere else."

An English garrison in a couple of French seaports, over against the
English coast, would hardly have seemed a sufficient inducement to other
princes and states to put large armies in the field to sustain the
Protestant league, had they known that this was the meagre result of the
protocolling and disputations that had been going on all the summer at
Greenwich.

Nevertheless the decoy did its work, The envoys returned to France, and
it was not until three months later that the Duke of Bouillon again made
his appearance in England, bringing the treaty duly ratified by Henry.
The league was then solemnized, on, the 26th August, by the queen with
much pomp and ceremony. Three peers of the realm waited upon the French
ambassador at his lodgings, and escorted him and his suite in seventeen
royal coaches to the Tower. Seven splendid barges then conveyed them
along the Thames to Greenwich. On the pier the ambassador was received
by the Earl of Derby at the head of a great suite of nobles and high
functionaries, and conducted to the palace of Nonesuch.