“_Wednesday, the 4th._--I went to see the Duchess of Lennox. I wrote to the duke on the subject of my business, and then went to find the Queen to show her the copy of what I had written. In the evening the duke sent Montague to sup with me, and to assure me from him that he would arrange all my business in accordance with my wishes. I forthwith sent to apprise the Queen of this.” On the Thursday, Conway arrived to request Bassompierre to come on the following day to the Council, where he should receive an answer to proposals which he had made. The next day Buckingham came to dine with him, and afterwards took him to Whitehall, and left him in a room in the King’s apartments, with Goring, Montague, and Lewkenor to entertain him, while he himself went to the Council. “A little while after he came to seek me, and told me that the answer the Council proposed to make me was worth nothing [_i.e._, a mere formality], but that I should not be uneasy about it, but that I should reply firmly, on the spot, and that afterwards he would arrange everything in such a way that I should be satisfied. A little while after Convé [Conway] came to call me into the Council, where after they had placed a chair for me at the upper end, the gentlemen of the Council acquainted me, by the mouth of Carleton, of what they had resolved in reference to the proposition that I had made to the same Council some days before. They handed me this answer in writing, and then had it read to me.”[85] The first part of this document contained a long and elaborated defence of Charles I’s action in summarily expelling the Queen’s attendants from the country, by which, the commissioners maintained, neither the letter nor the spirit of the marriage-treaty had been violated, since “the said persons had been sent back as offenders, who had by their ill-conduct disturbed, in the first place, the affairs of the kingdom, and, secondly, the domestic government of the house of his Majesty and of the Queen his dearly-loved consort, whereon depended the happiness of their lives.” * * * * * The Bishop of Mende and his priests (to whom the ambassador, M. de Blainville, had also lent his hand) had endeavoured, by their intrigues, to create factions and dissensions amongst the subjects of his Majesty, exciting fear and mistrust in the Protestants, encouraging the Roman Catholics, and even instigating the disaffected in Parliament against everything connected with the service of the King and the public tranquillity of the kingdom. The Queen’s house they had converted into a rendezvous of Jesuits and fugitives, and a place of security for the persons, property, and papers of such as had violated our laws.