The difference between Feria’s arrogant methods and the Bishop’s blandness was soon seen in his intercourse with the Queen. Of her and her advisers in his letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse; but he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her, and got quite friendly with the “heretic” Cecil. He was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had been, and was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her brother, Lord Robert Dudley, who was soon to be created Earl of Leicester. During all the comedy of pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke Charles the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the progress as the interests of Philip seemed to dictate. If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good, but the moment there was any talk of his making religious concessions or appearing under Lutheran auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the perennial second string of Lord Robert Dudley. In the meanwhile he was hand in glove with the discontented and dismayed English Catholics, gaining friends amongst them by money promises and blandishments, whilst his spies were busy discovering the weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders, making lists of the Catholic and disaffected English gentry, and whispering to them of the armed aid that in case of need would be sent by the Catholic King. To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected humility, but with studied significance, saying how surprised the English Catholics were that he made no move to help them. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is the only hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked, if the latter are not to be allowed time to combat and weaken the Catholic party.”[145] But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help them, much as they might cry to him. The death of Henry II. and the accession of Mary Stuart’s husband, as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the English throne, and the despatch of a strong French force to Leith to succour the Regent Mary of Lorraine, hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip dreaded most—a war in Scotland between France and the Queen of England. If in such a war the latter were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish influence in England, however Catholic the country might become. Yet Philip dared not fight on the behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all-powerful; whilst if he interfered in England at all to Elizabeth’s detriment his action would draw together in close unity the powerful Protestant party in England, the majority of the Scots who were Reformers, the Huguenots of France, who were panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans of Germany and Holland. With such a combination as this behind her Elizabeth might adopt a stronger anti-Catholic attitude than ever.