purpose, as being poor and powerless, and Philip was willing to cut out his own close kinsman if he could thus gain England and Scotland for his son, or rather for himself,[149] and above all avoid another French domination of Scotland, which was threatened by Mary’s pretended willingness to marry the King of France. When Philip’s letter arrived in London the old Bishop was under a cloud. He was accused of holding communication with Arthur Pole in the Tower. It was known that he had been receiving in Durham House emissaries of the Irish Catholics; and Cecil’s spies reported that suspicious boats came often at night to the water gate. To make matters worse, one day in May a hanger-on of the Bishop’s household, an Italian serving lad, had shot at from the back gate of Durham House a Huguenot captain who was swaggering down the Strand towards Whitehall. The would-be assassin had taken refuge in the house, and had sought sanctuary in the Bishop’s own chamber, whence he was smuggled away by boat by the servants and escaped. Search and violation of diplomatic domicile by the officers of the law followed. The Bishop’s servants were interrogated, the house itself placed in the custody of an officer of the Queen, and the old Bishop, with bitterness in his heart, found himself shunned by all and powerless.[150] So when Philip’s impossible instructions reached the Bishop, affairs had changed. Lethington had been plainly told by Elizabeth that she was well aware that he was plotting to marry his mistress to Don Carlos or the Archduke, but that if she married either she must face her enmity, whereas if she married a friend of England she would make her the heir to her throne. Lethington and the Scots were therefore already wavering, for the fear was that if Mary wedded a Spanish nominee, Elizabeth would make Darnley her heir. The Catholics, too, not unnaturally, seeing the Countess of Lennox, Darnley’s mother, suddenly taken into high favour with Elizabeth, were thinking what an ideal arrangement it would be to marry Mary and her cousin Darnley with Elizabeth’s blessing, and the assured joint succession to her crown. The Bishop knew all this, and had well nigh lost heart when Philip’s letter arrived. He saw how impossible his master’s methods were in the face of Elizabeth’s rapid changes of policy and fertility of resource; for how could he keep the English Catholics in hand and learn all their combinations, or even get them to make any, on vague secret encouragement which might mean nothing? To the Duke of Alba he wrote: “The remedy is a weak one for so dangerous a malady. When they see that instead of giving them a firm reply we come only with halting proposals and inquiries, I know not what they will think. It is useless to ask them to give me information as to the amount of support the Queen of Scots can rely upon in England for the information of his Majesty. Lethington knows well that all this has been