At the end of March therefore Lord Grey pushed over the border with 8000 men to join the Lords of the Congregation in the siege of Leith. The Scots gave little aid; and an assault on the town signally failed. Philip too in a sudden jealousy of Elizabeth's growing strength demanded the abandonment of the enterprise, and offered to warrant England against any attack from the north if its forces were withdrawn. But eager as Elizabeth was to preserve Philip's alliance, she preferred to be her own security. She knew that the Spanish king could not abandon her while Mary Stuart was queen of France, and that at the moment of his remonstrances Philip was menacing the Guises with war if they carried out their project of bringing about a Catholic rising by a descent on the English coast. Nor were the threats of the French Court more formidable. The bloody repression of the conspiracy of Amboise had only fired the temper of the Huguenots; southern and western France were on the verge of revolt; the House of Bourbon had adopted the reformed faith, and put itself at the head of the Protestant movement. In the face of dangers such as these the Guises could send to Leith neither money nor men. Elizabeth therefore remained immoveable while famine did its work on the town. At the crisis of the siege the death of Mary of Guise threw the direct rule over Scotland into the hands of Francis and Mary Stuart; and the exhaustion of the garrison forced the two sovereigns to purchase its liberation by two treaties which their envoys concluded at Edinburgh in June 1560. That with the Scotch pledged them to withdraw for ever the French from the realm, and left the government of Scotland to a Council of the Lords. The treaty with England was a more difficult matter. Francis and Mary had forbidden their envoys to sign any engagement with Elizabeth as to the Scottish realm, or to consent to any abandonment of their claims on the royal style of England. It was only after long debate that Cecil wrested from them the acknowledgement that the realms of England and Ireland of right appertained to Elizabeth, and a vague clause by which the French sovereigns promised the English Queen that they would fulfil their pledges to the Scots. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's character.]