Ever since Jane’s conference with Gardiner, Dudley had resisted all overtures from the Romish priesthood to win him over to their religion, and if his own feelings had not prompted him to this course, policy would have now dictated it. Slight as was the information he was able to obtain, he yet gathered that Mary’s determination to restore the Catholic religion was making her many enemies, and giving new spirits to her opponents. And when he found, from the communication of De Noailles, that a plot, having for its basis the preservation of the Reformed religion, now menaced by the proposed alliance with Spain, was being formed, he became confirmed in his opinions. It was not deemed prudent by the conspirators to attempt any communication with Jane. They doubted much whether she could be prevailed upon to join them;—whether she might not even consider it her duty to reveal it;—and they thought there would be ample time to make it known to her when the season for outbreak arrived. Jane’s partisans consisted only of her father, her uncle, and ostensibly Do Noailles, who craftily held out hopes to Suffolk and his brother to secure their zealous co-operation. In reality, the wily Frenchman favoured Courtenay and Elizabeth, But he scarcely cared which side obtained the mastery, provided he thwarted his adversary, Simon Renard. During the early part of her imprisonment, Jane’s solitude was disturbed by Feckenham, who, not content with his own discomfiture and that of his superiors, Gardiner and Bonner, returned again and again to the charge, but with no better success than before. Worsted in every encounter, he became, at length, convinced of the futility of the attempt, and abandoned it in despair. At first, Jane regarded his visits as a species of persecution, and a waste of the few precious hours allowed her, which might be far more profitably employed than in controversy. But when they ceased altogether, she almost regretted their discontinuance, as the discussions had led her to examine her own creed more closely than she otherwise might have done; and the success she invariably met with, inspired her with new ardour and zeal.