It was not likely that the eyes of Richelieu,[106] which saw everything, should fail to observe the unfortunate predilection of the English Catholics for the enemies of France, and there is no doubt that one of the reasons for which Henrietta was sent into England was to detach them from this alliance. During the period of negotiations Richelieu wrote a friendly letter to the Catholic body in England,[107] and the French ambassadors were charged to do all in their power to win the confidence of its principal members, and to combat the wiles of the Spaniards, who tried to persuade them that the French had no true regard for religion. Ville-aux-clercs, when he was in London, was on one occasion obliged to attend a service at Westminster Abbey. He was careful to behave with the utmost rudeness, in order to show the uncompromising character of a Frenchman's Catholicism.[108] Tillières took great pains to conciliate the chiefs of the English Catholics, and to persuade them that his master was as good a Catholic as the King of Spain. But it was no easy task, and it was not until Louis XIII had stayed the passage of an anti-Catholic law in the English Parliament that they began to feel some confidence in him. Then a letter of thanks was sent to Paris,[109] and even the Jesuits, who were considered peculiarly pro-Spanish, wrote to express their desire for the coming alliance. Matters were the more satisfactory inasmuch as William Smith, who had recently been consecrated Bishop of Chalcedon, and who, in the teeth of the Jesuits, claimed the jurisdiction of an ordinary in England, was well known in France, where he had resided for many years in the household of Richelieu. It was, moreover, with the same object that the French Government insisted upon the promise to suspend the execution of the recusancy laws as a _sine qua non_ of the marriage, "otherwise," wrote Tillières frankly, "the English Catholics will be lost to France and assured to Spain."[110] Thus Richelieu's action in this particular fits into his general scheme of anti-Austrian policy, and he is cleared from any suspicion that he was actuated by weak religious scruples in thus setting himself against the Protestant prejudice of England.