The Spanish scribe waxes very indignant at this document, showing, as he says it does, the sagacity of the Queen and the blind infatuation of Dom Antonio, {21} "who gives up the substance for the shadow of kingship, and is content to make the Portuguese subjects slaves so that he shall be called King." But he is most shocked at the sacrifice to this "pestilent sect" of the two instincts clearest to the Portuguese heart, namely, devotion to their Church and their greed of gain; the first of which, he says, will be destroyed by relationship with the accursed heretics, and the second attacked by the substitution for "our lord the king who does not spend a maravedi of Portuguese money, but brings Castilian money into Portugal," of a King who has promised to pay away more than the Portuguese can ever give him. "And besides," he says, plaintively, "we Castilians and Portuguese are not so estranged in blood of boundaries after all, for only a line divides us, and if it be hard for the Portuguese to endure connection with their Castilian kinsmen who bring riches into the country and take nothing from it how much worse will it be to put up with a nation so greedy and insolent as the English, separated from them by land and sea, and foreign to them in customs, language, faith and laws?" He ridicules the idea of five millions (of ducats) in gold being paid, and says he supposes that a mistake of a nought has been made, which probably was the case; but even then, he asks, where is such a sum as 500,000 ducats to come from, "let alone the 15 months' pay"? However correct or otherwise in detail this agreement may be, it is certain that some such terms were made, and it may be safely assumed that Elizabeth, with her keen eye to the main chance, would take care to make the best bargain she could out of the sanguine eagerness {22} of Dom Antonio, who would be ready to promise "mounts and marvels" for ready aid.[13] My Portuguese diarist also ridicules the impossible terms promised by the Pretender, but adds the false finishing-touch, evidently spread by the Castilians for the purpose of arousing the indignation and resistance of the Portuguese, that the churches were to be plundered and the Portuguese inhabitants of Lisbon despoiled. It would appear strange at first sight that Elizabeth should have made any proviso for the benefit of English Catholics whom she had sometimes treated so unmercifully, but on other occasions she had favoured the idea of English Catholic settlements being established across the seas under her sway; and the great body of Catholic sympathisers resident in England had not acted altogether unpatriotically in the hour of panic and terror on the threat of invasion. It would, therefore, not have been an impolitic move to earn their gratitude and further loyalty by opening a new field for them outside of her own country but, in a manner, under her control.