Needless to say, Mendoza soon got into touch with the new fighting element in the struggle against Elizabeth. The ambassador’s feigned politeness towards Elizabeth had been strained almost to breaking point by the news of Drake’s terrible depredations in the Pacific; and he had already fallen in his correspondence with his master into the same heated tone of indignation as his predecessors had done, urging the King to prompt reprisals upon these “insolent heretics.” When Drake himself arrived with his vast booty, and was effusively received by the Queen, Mendoza’s angry violence of word, and his open threats, earned for him exclusion from the Queen’s presence. He was offered, indeed, a bribe of 50,000 crowns to moderate his tone, but he replied in a rage, “that he would pay more than that sum himself to punish so great a thief as Drake.”[231] Almost daily Mendoza’s indignation with Elizabeth became more heated. Amongst other causes of complaint was one that for the first time brought him into an acrimonious squabble with Elizabeth herself, though the occasion was a small one. The ambassador had been trapped into one of the usual bogus plots, ostensibly to betray Flushing, but really to cheat and betray him, and he had paid a large sum of money and given much information to certain Dutchmen for the purpose. One of the conspirators had left his son, a child, in Mendoza’s hands as a hostage, and when the fraud was complete, on the 4th June, 1581, during the ambassador’s absence, his house in the Strand was forcibly entered by London constables accompanied by the Secretary of the Prince of Orange, and the young hostage was taken from the custody of the Spaniards. The household drew their swords and attacked the authorities, but before the affray had proceeded far the ambassador himself appeared. Learning that the officers were acting under the authority of the Council, he ordered his servants to put up their weapons and angrily protested against this violation of his domicile.