Perhaps the most remarkable of these cases was that of the Queen's friend, Walter Montagu. This gentleman, who had improved his natural talents by travels which led him to Madrid, to Paris and to Rome, was also much noticed by the King, to whom he was recommended by the fact that he had been a friend of Buckingham, and had actually been with the Duke when he was assassinated at Portsmouth. He was employed a good deal on secret service, and once he was able to render an important service, destined to influence both their lives, to Queen Anne of Austria. He had been sent by his own sovereign to stir up Savoy and Lorraine against France, and not even his position as envoy of England could save him or his dispatches from the emissaries of Richelieu or from the Bastille. Anne was implicated in these intrigues against her husband's country, and in an agony of terror, haunted by visions of the ignominious return to Spain with which she had several times been threatened, she sent to Montagu to learn the extent of her danger. The young Englishman, who had long worshipped the beautiful Queen,[185] gladly seized the opportunity of proving his devotion. Let the Queen have no fear, came back his chivalrous answer; she was not mentioned in the dispatches, and rather than that she should come to harm he would lay down his life. This sacrifice was not required, but Anne escaped detection and Montagu earned her lifelong gratitude. On his return to England after his enlargement, he made rapid progress in the favour of Henrietta Maria in spite of the connection with Buckingham, which can hardly have been a recommendation to her. So great was the kindness with which she regarded him, that no courtier seemed to have before him a more prosperous career, when towards the end of 1635 the Court was startled by the news that he had joined the Church of Rome. "Sure the Devil rides him,"[186] was the pithy comment of one of his acquaintance, John Ashburnham. Walter, who at this time was living in Paris, defended his action in a highly argumentative letter which he addressed to his father, but which he took care to have distributed among his friends in many copies. The Earl of Manchester, who was said to be the best-tempered man in England, does not seem to have been able to support this vexation with equanimity, and he sent a somewhat acrid reply to his son, whose apologetics were also refuted by Lucius, Lord Falkland. Montagu had often enjoyed the intellectual hospitality of Great Tew, where men of wit and learning were accustomed to gather round this accomplished young nobleman, who was the more fitted for his task of controversy, inasmuch as his mother, his brothers and his sisters were among the "revolters to Rome," while his own fidelity to the Church of England had been for a while gravely in question.