It is clear that notwithstanding de Spes’s constant predictions of immediate coming success, and his repeated assurances that Elizabeth and her friends would be swept aside as a consequence of this plan, Philip was never greatly deceived by it. Alba had told him that he was powerless for the present, and he knew England sufficiently well to see that unless a large and well-organised force was used at the critical moment by him, an attempt to revolutionise England in his interests would fail. The trail of deadly deliberation, moreover, palsied every act of his life. At some time in August, 1569, when Mary Stuart’s appeals were reaching him, he instructed Alba to obtain full particulars of the military possibilities of the situation in England, in order that any action he might decide to take later should be effectual. A half-dozen or more envoys of various sorts, official and unofficial, had been sent over one after the other to try by some means to effect a mutual restitution of the seizures—Genoese financiers, Flemish diplomatists, and even Protestant merchants—but all without effect. On receiving the King’s orders, however, Alba instructed another embassy, surely the strangest for such a purpose ever seen, to go to England and endeavour to make terms with Elizabeth or bribe her advisers. The leader was one of Alba’s most trusted Italian generals, Ciappino Vitelli, and he was to be accompanied by fifty experienced military officers, with a couple of official secretaries for appearance’ sake. That their mission was not that which ostensibly appeared is clear from the fact that at the same time Alba sent another unofficial envoy—the Genoese merchant mariner Fiesco—to attempt to gain a restitution by the private bribery of Leicester and Cecil. Cecil and the Queen laughed at the idea of such an embassy as that of this fire-eating Ciappino coming to settle a commercial dispute, and when the party arrived at Calais for embarkation for England, Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, sent word that only Ciappino Vitelli himself and a small suite would be received. A still smaller number was allowed to proceed beyond Dover, and another detachment was stayed at Canterbury; so that by the time the gouty, obese, old Italian general was received by the Queen at Kingston-on-Thames, not even de Spes being allowed to accompany him to the presence, the military object of the mission was cleverly frustrated. The plague was raging in London, and Ciappino never entered the capital; and his interview with the Queen was mainly taken up by her angry complaint of the insolence of the Duke of Alba. After many days of quibbling, he was told that his powers were insufficient, and was politely invited to get out of the country as quickly as possible, his despatches to Alba being intercepted and read at Dover.