Before Yaxley left again—not, as this letter says, to Flanders, but direct to Spain from Dumbarton—he renounced his English citizenship to become a Scotsman. “The Queen and her husband,” wrote Randolph, “have sent him ambassador to Spain; he embarked three days past [_i.e._, 17th September]. It passes my power to know his commission, but it is for little good.”[165] What Randolph could not fathom is to some extent divulged to us by the letter Mary wrote to Philip by Yaxley; although, of course, his verbal message was more precise as to what was required and intended. “Monsieur mon bon frère,” she writes from Glasgow on the 10th September, “the earnestness you have always displayed in the maintenance of our Catholic faith has caused me previously to crave your favours and aid, foreseeing that which has now happened in this realm of mine, tending to the entire ruin of the Catholics and the establishment of these unhappy errors. In resisting them my husband and myself will be in peril of losing our Crown, and by the same means our claims elsewhere, unless we have the help of one of the great Christian princes. Bearing this in mind, and seeing the energy with which you have proceeded in your own States, and especially the firmness with which you have upheld those who have depended upon your favour, we have thought well to address you, in preference to any others, to ask for your counsel, and for your help and support. With this end we have sent this gentleman, an Englishman and a faithful servant of my husband and myself, with ample charge to render to you an account of the condition of our affairs, of which he has full knowledge; praying you to give credit to his words as if they were our own, and to send him back with all speed, as the case is so pressing as to touch both our Crown and the liberty of the Church for ever. To maintain this we will spare neither life nor estate, with your support and counsel.”[166]