The bold action of Felton, however, frightened the Government into a milder attitude towards the moderate English Catholics, and the mustering of a strong fleet in Spanish Flanders, for the purpose of conveying to Spain Philip’s fourth wife, Anna of Austria, heightened the alarm. Elizabeth was so much perturbed that she kept her room for days together, bewailing the vengeance that she thought at last was about to fall upon her for all her provocations of her brother-in-law. Cecil (now Lord Burghley) appears to have been the great object of his mistress’s wrath. To him, she cried, alone was due the trouble in which she found herself. Here, thanks to Cecil’s policy, she said, was a great army and fleet ready to attack her in the Channel, and Philip was causing another force to be mustered in Spain under the traitor Stukeley to invade Ireland. But this was only a momentary weakness, which even steadfast Burghley himself shared to the extremity of preparing for timely flight with such portable property as he could gather.[191] The unwonted fit of despair did not last long. English forces were got together rapidly, the English conservative and moderate Catholics were conciliated, and the Duke of Norfolk was released from the Tower to only nominal arrest in his own house; for if the conservative nobles of his party considered themselves absolved by the Pope’s Bull from their oath of allegiance to the Queen, then, indeed, might Elizabeth tremble. This was on the 4th August, and, on the 23rd June previous, the Duke of Norfolk had made in writing the most abject submission to the Queen, pledging himself “freely, voluntarily, and absolutely, by my allegiance to your Majesty, my Sovereign Lady, never to offend your Highness, but do utterly renounce and revoke all that which on my part any wise hath passed, with a full intention never to deal in that cause of marriage with the Queen of Scots, nor in any other cause belonging to her.”[192] Even Mary herself was now smiled upon by Elizabeth, and negotiations for a reconciliation were opened with her; for the Spanish fleet was still in English waters, and a peace between the warring parties had been patched up in France.