But what Philip dreaded even more than this was the encouragement that such a strong combination of Protestants would give to the Flemings, who were already straining in the leash to escape from the Spanish religious system. Philip sent envoys to England and France to urge, both by persuasion and threats, that the peace should be kept (March, 1560), but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostilities. The Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to Feria, was scornful of his master’s methods. “If these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to talk, they will do more harm than good, as the Catholics here expect much more than that.... The Queen is greatly alarmed, and this is the time to do what ought to have been done before; but if we are always to be on the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only pray for patience, though I well know we shall never have such an opportunity again. All here are with us, and the very heretics are sick of it.”[146] The Bishop dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said as much as he could; but the King saw, if his advisers did not, that he could not take up arms against Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it was equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic French allies on behalf of the heretic Queen. All he could do, therefore, was talk. The result of the short war in Scotland was favourable to Elizabeth, and the pressing danger passed; but Philip’s threat to aid the French if she insisted upon continuing the hostilities brought home to Elizabeth and her minister that the Catholic League was still a danger to them. An attempt was made to persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip’s advice, the object being to weaken the friendship between Spain and France; but Lord Robert Dudley’s philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth so obviously fond of him, that the new pretence about the Archduke and her sudden Catholic professions deceived nobody.[147] Even Cecil lost heart at the difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for Dudley, and the Spanish ambassador chuckled with delight that the “heretics” were falling out amongst themselves and the Catholic cause was looking brighter.