His strongest rival was Mary Stuart, and before Mary landed in Scotland Lady Lennox planned the union of both their claims by the marriage of her son with the Scottish Queen. A few days after her landing Mary received a formal offer of his hand. Hopes of yet greater matches, of a marriage with Philip's son, Don Carlos, or with the young French king, Charles the Ninth, had long held the scheme at bay; but as these and her policy of conciliation proved alike fruitless Mary turned to the Lennoxes. The marriage was probably planned by David Rizzio, a young Piedmontese who had won the Scotch Queen's favour, and through whom she conducted the intrigues, both in England and abroad, by which she purposed to free herself from Murray's power and to threaten Elizabeth. Her diplomacy was winning Philip to her cause. The Spanish king had as yet looked upon Mary's system of toleration and on her hopes from France with equal suspicion. But he now drew slowly to her side. Pressed hard in the Mediterranean by the Turks, he was harassed more than ever by the growing discontent of the Netherlands, where the triumph of Protestantism in England and Scotland and the power of the Huguenots in France gave fresh vigour to the growth of Calvinism, and where the nobles were stirred to new outbreaks against the foreign rule of Spain by the success of the Scottish Lords in their rising and by the terms of semi-independence which the French nobles wrested from the Queen. It was to hold the Netherlands in check that Philip longed for Mary's success. Her triumph over Murray and his confederates would vindicate the cause of monarchy; her triumph over Calvinism would vindicate that of Catholicism both in her own realm and in the realm which she hoped to win. He sent her therefore assurances of his support, and assurances as strong reached her from the Vatican. The dispensation which was secretly obtained for her marriage with Darnley was granted on the pledge of both to do their utmost for the restoration of the old religion. [Sidenote: The Darnley Marriage.]