Courtenay was still on the horns of a dilemma, where the weakness and natural timidity of his character kept him irresolute. While he did not hesitate to play with treason, listening to the French ambassador’s flattering suggestions that he should marry Elizabeth, set up his standard in the south-west, and gather round it the disaffected, he hesitated, in the faint hope that the Queen might yet raise him by a safer path to the throne. Never was ambition supported by less courage, moral or physical. De Noailles was in despair as much on account of Courtenay’s want of decision as because of his loose conduct.[378] It had cost Paget and Renard much trouble to persuade Mary to simulate a belief, which she was now far from entertaining, in Elizabeth’s loyalty. But at last, her sister’s collusion with traitors could no longer be ignored, and remembering all that she had suffered at the hands of Anne Boleyn, the Queen would have been credulous indeed, if she had continued to place confidence in Anne Boleyn’s daughter.[379] The awakening had involved a shock, but Renard and the Spanish party in the Council, consisting of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Arundel and Lord Paget, prevailed on her to control her indignation, in order to pave the way for her marriage; and it is probable that the idea, which now suggested itself to the Queen and Paget, of marrying Elizabeth to Courtenay,[380] originated in the wish to propitiate those who were opposed to the Spanish match. Half the objection to the Queen’s union with a foreigner would, they thought, vanish, if it were clearly understood, that in the event of her death without issue, not Philip of Spain, but the English heirs of Elizabeth and Courtenay would succeed to the throne. It was a strange coincidence that the same idea should have occurred both to the Queen and her friends, and to her bitterest foe the French ambassador. He thought thereby to create a strong party for Elizabeth and Courtenay, while the loyalists hoped to put an end to the discontent. But the Emperor, to whom of course the plan was at once referred, nipped it in the bud. He saw that to promote such a marriage would be suicidal, for it would constitute the contracting parties natural heads of the conspiracy, and furnish them with a strong motive for plotting against the Queen’s life.[381]