This latter declaration, we may well suppose, was only for the purpose of forcing the hand of Philip, for the match would certainly not have been allowed by Catharine de Medici. The old Bishop, aware of this, passed it over with a smile, and said that there was nothing the Queen of England dreaded more than a marriage between Mary Stuart and a friend of Spain. She had been at infinite pains lately to make them believe that she was a Catholic, but now that her friends the Huguenots were in the ascendant she had become less anxious to conciliate them. But were not the Scots Protestants too? he asked. Lethington, Protestant and friend of Knox though he was, minimised the difference between the creed of Scotland and Spain. Religion, he assured the Spaniard, was not really at the bottom of their trouble in Scotland. Both Elizabeth and Catharine, he said, were in mortal fear of the marriage of Don Carlos and Mary of Scotland, as well they might be; for not only would the Prince thus win the most chaste and beautiful bride in the world, “but he would also succeed to almost universal monarchy by adding to the dominions already possessed by your Majesty two entire islands, this and Ireland, the possession of which would give no trouble whatever, having regard to the attachment which the Catholics bear to this marriage and the union of England and Scotland.” Bishop Quadra, well aware of the vast importance of such a declaration from one of the leaders of the Scottish Protestants, tried to extract precise religious pledges from him. But Lethington had said all he wished to say in the four hours’ conference, and the Bishop, full of encouragement, promised to obtain promptly the King’s answer to the proposal. Lethington’s next move was to approach the discontented English Catholic nobles, already in a ferment at Dudley’s insolence and Cecil’s religious policy. Almost to a man they assured the Scot of their enthusiastic support of a Spanish marriage for Mary and the acceptance of the revolutionary changes that such a marriage would produce in England. “Only let her marry the heir of Spain and we will salute her as our leader,” they said. This could only mean that with Spanish aid Mary and Carlos were to be placed upon the throne of a united Britain, and that Philip would regain the paramountcy he had lost. Elizabeth’s spies soon got wind of all this, and her counter move was a most extraordinary one—no other, indeed, than to offer Dudley as Mary’s husband, with the assurance of her succession to the English Crown after Elizabeth’s death without issue. It was a mere feint and never meant seriously by Elizabeth, but it divided Scottish opinion and unsettled poor Mary herself, and shows how much more than a match Elizabeth was for Philip in diplomacy.