All this foregathering with Scottish agents on the part of de Spes was not lost upon the English Government, whose spies reported everything. De Spes says that Cecil sneeringly asked Beton (the nephew of the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was in London on his way from Paris to see Mary) “whether he had been with his complaints to the new Spanish ambassador yet, and how often he went to Paget House.” In these circumstances it is not surprising that relations grew rapidly acrimonious between Philip’s ambassador and Elizabeth’s ministers. He pressed with boldness and persistence the claims of the Spanish shipmasters for the depredations committed by English rovers, and by the Huguenots and Dutch rebels who took shelter in English ports; and to these claims Cecil retorted by bringing up the old grievance of Dr. Man’s expulsion, and certain insulting references to the Queen of England contained in a recently published Spanish book by Dr. Illescas on Pontifical History. To make matters worse, de Spes did not confine himself to the redress of Spanish grievances, but made himself the champion of Catholics generally. A Portuguese envoy, Dr. Alvarez, was in London to ask Elizabeth to forbid English ships to go to the coast of Guinea, where Hawkins had been slave-trading, and suddenly one morning the Bishop of London’s men appeared before the house in which Alvarez lived and demanded that certain Englishmen then attending Mass there should be delivered to them for punishment. The Portuguese refused to surrender them, and the house was soon surrounded by a threatening crowd. Word was carried to de Spes, who immediately sent off one of his household to demand of the Lord Mayor (Sir Roger Martin) the dispersal of the mob. “What is the cause of the gathering?” asked the chief magistrate, and when the Spaniard told him that it was a question of Catholic worship, Sir Roger burst out in a rage that he would rather send his men to reinforce the mob than to disperse it in such a case. The presence of such a firebrand ambassador as this in London, in constant communication, as Elizabeth’s ministers knew, with all the elements of disaffection in England, and in close correspondence with the terrible Duke of Alba in Flanders, convinced the English Government that evil plans were brewing. It was known that Philip’s principal difficulty was money. The expense of the campaigns in Flanders and the constant wars in the Mediterranean had exhausted the resources of Castile, and Philip’s credit was as bad as could be. Alba’s troops were unpaid and growing mutinous, committing outrage and depredations upon Catholics as much as upon Protestants. The Duke had pressed, again and again, for money from Spain, and the English spies in Flanders had continued to send alarmist reports, all premature as we see now, but then believed to be true, of the hostile intentions of Alba against England as soon as he had crushed the Dutchmen and obtained the needed resources from Spain.