Of all things slow-minded, unwarlike Philip desired peace, almost at any price, and he saw, as his advisers did not, the dangers that surrounded him. Marriage designs, cajolery, and other peaceful methods having failed to bind Elizabeth to him, he attempted to form a new combination. He married the French king's daughter as his third wife; and doubtless even thus early had evolved in his mind the idea of a league of the Catholic powers as a counterbalance to Elizabeth's friendship with Denmark, Sweden, and the German Protestant princes. He knew that overt assistance from him to the English Catholics to depose the Queen and stifle Protestantism would increase the enmity of the allied Protestants of the Continent, and perhaps let loose the storm of which the mutterings were already audible in Flanders. So, in answer to Feria's advice and Bishop Quadra's arguments in favour of force, he insisted upon a policy of soft words, pacification, and palliation; and again and again told his ambassadors, "You _must_ keep principally in view by all ways and means to avoid a rupture ... the importance of which is so {181} great that I cannot be satisfied without repeating it so many times." But if he thus deprecated open warfare he was at all times, after Mary Stuart's French husband was dead, ready enough to subsidise plots to assassinate or depose Elizabeth; and large sums were sent to England for that purpose. In vain his agents continued to tell him how useless it was to expect that the English Catholics would pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him, unless they were assured of his armed support. But this assurance he would not give. A marriage of his son Carlos with the widowed Mary Stuart, simultaneously with a Catholic rising in England, was an expedient after his own heart, but even here his timidity was so great that he would run no risk of firing a shot in favour of a project in which he would have been the principal gainer. He writes (June 15, 1563) to Bishop Quadra: "With regard to the adherents that the Scots will have in England, and the increase of their number if necessary, you will not interfere in any way further than you have done, but let them do it all themselves, and gain what friends and sympathy they can for their opinions amongst the Catholics and those upon whom they depend. _I say this because if anything should be discovered they should be the persons to be blamed and no one in connection with us._" He was told plainly that the negotiations could not be carried on in this way, which pledged everybody but himself, but it was all useless: his instructions were firm and undeviating: under no circumstances was he to be drawn into war with England.