While Escovedo was in Madrid, apparently engaged in these details, Antonio Perez, Philip's confidential secretary, accidentally discovered from the Pope's nuncio, who asked him if there was about the court such a person as one Escovedo,[34] that Don John's ambitious views were by no means extinguished. As his brother's policy would not permit him to found a new empire at Tunis, the Pope, the Guises, and Don John had planned an expedition for the conquest of England. Mary, queen of Scots, was to be released from prison; Elizabeth dethroned; England brought back to the bosom of the Catholic church under the guidance of Mary, queen of Scots, and her new husband, Don John of Austria--for this marriage formed part of the project. Here was a scheme to captivate an ambitious, chivalrous young prince! The nuncio in answer told Perez that, in a despatch which he had received from Rome, he was instructed to interest Philip II. in this expedition, and to request the Spanish monarch to aid Don John in this meditated attempt upon England. This was not quite new to Perez; some vague surmises had already been excited against the doings of Escovedo and Don John, by hints thrown out by Don Juan de Zuniga, the Spanish minister in Rome, whose suspicions had been excited by the frequent communications between Escovedo, the Pope, and the Guises. Antonio Perez, now that he held the threads of the plot in his hand, instantly informed Philip of the whole project. At this inauspicious moment Don John himself, against Philip's peremptory orders to proceed direct to the Netherlands, reached Barcelona, with two fast-sailing galleys, and hurried on to Madrid, where he found his brother Philip fully apprised of his scheme. But such was Don John's manly air, such the influence which his straight-forward conduct exercised over the suspicious nature of Philip II., that the Spanish monarch yielded a reluctant assent to his brother's plans of aggrandisement, and promised to allow him to make use of the Spanish veterans in aid of his expedition against England, after he had pacified the Low Countries. Perez says that Philip consented to this scheme with the view of encouraging Don John of Austria to use greater diligence in Flanders. Full, therefore, of his new government and of his own ambitious projects, Don John left Spain; and on the 17th October 1576, we find the following letter from him to his friend and adviser Don Garcia de Toledo, Marquis of Villa Franca, whose reputation as a general was founded upon the capture from the Moors of the impregnable fortress of El Peñon de Velez.