Creighton had promised him, he said, 15,000 {189} foreign troops, of which he was to have command, and he asked in addition for a vast sum of money and a personal guarantee against loss of fortune in any event. Creighton also went to Guise and brought him into the business, and Jesuit emissaries were to go to Rome and Madrid to crave aid from the Pope and Philip. Mary and Mendoza were furious at the ineptitude of Lennox and the priests, and Mary particularly that her name should be used by them as being the head of the conspiracy. Creighton had no authority whatever to promise 15,000 men, and the idea that Lennox was to have command was absurd from a Spanish point of view. Philip was alarmed too at the large number of persons who were now concerned in the affair, and directed that no further steps should be taken. The inclusion of Guise in the project soon produced its result. He wanted naturally to take a large and prominent part, and travelled to Paris to meet Tassis secretly at Beaton's house. He was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans; but his main desire evidently was to prevent Spanish troops from being sent to Scotland, for fear, he said, of the jealousy of the French. His idea was that a large mixed force should be sent from Italy under the papal flag, whilst he made a descent with Frenchmen on the coast of Sussex. But all these fine plans were soon frozen under the cold criticism of Philip and de Granvelle. Philip, it is true, did not yet think of conquering England for himself, but Mary and James must owe the English crown to him alone, and be bound to restore the close alliance between England and Spain, or the change would be of no use to him: and this could hardly {190} be hoped for if there were too many French and Italian troops concerned in the business, or if Guise had the main direction of the enterprise. Sir Francis Englefield was in Madrid as Philip's adviser on English affairs, and both he and the numerous English Catholic refugees in France, Flanders, and Spain soon made it clear that their national distrust and enmity of the French was as keen as ever, whilst they looked sourly upon any project which should make the Frenchified Scots paramount over England. This feeling they were careful to urge upon the Spaniards upon every occasion, and it is not surprising that Philip at last came to believe their assurances that all England would welcome a Catholic restoration if it came from their old friends the Spaniards, and not from their old enemies the French.