Philip foresaw the danger of Elizabeth’s being driven by the fear of a Catholic coalition against her to adopt Catharine Grey, or some other Protestant, as her successor, and he enforced upon Guzman, the Lennoxes, and the Scottish and English Catholics, the closest secrecy, and especially that every means should be employed to prevent a rival successor being brought forward. At the same time there is in the King’s letter to his ambassador no concealment of the intention to use this union of Mary Stuart and Darnley to foment a Catholic revolt in England which shall sweep Elizabeth aside. “You will,” he writes, “keep in good intelligence with their party in England and with the Catholics, which is the same thing, and try by all means in your power to animate and encourage them to carry the business into effect, promising them what I have said. But it must all be done so dexterously and adroitly that it shall not become public or reach the Queen’s ears, or evil results will ensue.” Anxious as Philip might be for secrecy, it was difficult to attain where so many people were concerned. Already Murray and the Scottish Protestant nobles had fallen away from Mary on the mere rumour of a Catholic Darnley match, and were looking askance at the Queen’s new Catholic friends. The Lennoxes, even the Earl himself, retorted foolishly by boasting of the support of the King of Spain,[159] which made matters infinitely worse and gave rise to alarming whispers in Scotland that religious persecution at the point, mayhap, of Spanish pikes might be the outcome of this godless wooing. Darnley, who was still ill in bed, was as imprudent as his father; threatened to break the Duke of Chatelherault’s head as soon as he could get up, and vapoured about his coming greatness under foreign auspices that would enable him to snap his fingers even at the Queen of England. Nor was Mary herself much more cautious in her utterances, and the English agent, Randolph, attributed her new-born pride and indifference to the effects of some devilish enchantment.