Great was the delight of the royalists, great the disappointment of the Huguenots, on hearing that the expedition had vanished in smoke. "The army of the Prince of Orange," wrote an agent of Conde in Paris, "after having thrice returned to the king's summons a sturdy answer that it would never leave France until it saw religion re-established, has retreated, in spite of our having given it notice of your intention to avow it. I know not the cause of this sudden movement, for which various reasons are alleged."[628] William the Silent had not, however, relinquished the intention of going to the assistance of the Huguenots, whose welfare, next to that of his own provinces, lay near his heart. Retaining, therefore, twelve hundred horsemen whom he found better disposed than the rest, he patiently awaited the departure of the new ally of the French Protestants, Wolfgang, Duke of Deux-Ponts (Zweibruecken), in whose company he had determined to cross France with his brothers Louis and Henry of Nassau.[629] [Sidenote: Aid sought from England.] [Sidenote: Generous response of the English people.] [Sidenote: Bishop Jewel's noble plea.] The Prince of Conde received more immediate and substantial assistance from beyond the Channel. When Tavannes undertook to capture Conde and Coligny at Noyers, it was in contemplation to seize Odet, Cardinal of Chatillon, the admiral's elder brother,[630] in his episcopal palace at Beauvais. He received, however, timely warning, and made his escape through Normandy to England, where Queen Elizabeth received him at her court with marks of distinguished favor.[631] His efforts to enlist the sympathies and assistance of the English monarch in behalf of his persecuted countrymen were seconded by Cavaignes, who soon arrived as an envoy from Conde. Cavaignes was instructed to ask material aid--money to meet the engagements made with the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and ships with their armaments to increase the small flotilla of privateersmen, which the Protestants had, for the first time, sent out from La Rochelle. Soon after appeared the vice-admiral, Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, under whose command the flotilla had been placed, bearing a letter from the Queen of Navarre to her sister of England, in which she was entreated to espouse a quarrel that had arisen not from ambition or insubordination, but from the desire, in the first place, to defend religion, and, next, to rescue a king who was being hurried on to ruin by treacherous advisers.[632] To these reiterated appeals, and to the solicitations for aid addressed to them by other refugees from papal violence who had found their way to the shores of Great Britain, the subjects of the queen returned a more gracious answer than the queen herself. The exiled Huguenot ministers were received with open arms by men who regarded them as champions of a common Christianity,[633] and some Protestant noblemen had in a few weeks after