but only to encourage her until affairs appeared to him propitious, and we shall be able to judge, therefore, to what extent the zeal of de Spes precipitated matters. Elizabeth was making a progress through Hampshire, and Guzman presented his successor to her at Newbury on the 12th September, 1568. To the scornful anger of de Spes, Cardinal Chatillon, the Huguenot brother of Coligny, was also seeking audience of the Queen, and being feasted and made much of in the interval by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in London. That a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic Church, followed by a wife and family and with several bishops at his side as unorthodox as he, should be ruffling about the streets of London in cape and sword and jewelled cap, shocked de Spes gravely; but that he should be asking, and obtaining, arms from the Tower of London and money and English volunteers to fight against the Catholics and the King in France made the Spaniard more bitter than anything else. The new ambassador had not been installed in Paget House[177] a fortnight before Mary Stuart’s emissaries were in close conference with him. One of them came to him early in October disguised as a merchant, saying that he was bearing letters from her to the Duke of Alba in Flanders. The Conference of York, which had been summoned to decide Mary’s guilt or innocence of the murder of her husband, was already gathering, and the Scottish Queen herself was at Bolton. How eager de Spes was even thus early to engage in plots in her favour is seen in the letter he wrote to the King on the 9th October giving him this news. “Where she is the Catholics are more numerous than in any part of the country. She knows how to ingratiate herself with her keepers, and has many sympathisers on her side. It will not be difficult to release her, and even to raise a great revolt against this Queen; but it will be more prudent that your Majesty should not appear in this, and I will do nothing until I receive orders from your Majesty or the Duke.”[178]