Tassis, not unnaturally, remarked to the priests that Lennox was asking for a good deal, and he learned from them that the Duke of Guise had been consulted, and thought that fewer men would do. Parsons then took up the story, and was quite sure that the Catholics of England would rise immediately the Scottish affair began; and it was soon evident, even to Tassis, who had been previously quite in the dark about it, that not only Guise but many other people, clerical and lay, had been drawn into the business, since one of the Jesuits was to go to Madrid, others to Rouen and to Rome; and the Nuncio, Archbishop Beton, and Dr. Allen were also parties to the proposals. The idea that Lennox should be in supreme command, and that French troops were to be included, alone would have sufficed to render the plan abortive, apart from the other quite extravagant conditions he imposed. Lennox wrote a somewhat similarly foolish letter to Mary Stuart, saying that the Jesuit Creighton had promised him fifteen thousand men; and that he, Lennox, was to go to France to raise a large force of Frenchmen. Mary was furious at such impracticable nonsense, and wrote to Mendoza begging him to restrain the bungling priests, as she was trying to do, and once more to get the matter into his own hands. “I am advising Lennox,” she writes, “to stay in Scotland, and I disapprove entirely of his plan to raise men in France. You may inform these Jesuits, too, that I will not on any account allow anything concerning this matter to be done in my name ... and I do not approve of sending any one on my behalf to negotiate direct with the Pope and King Philip.” Mendoza also was full of scorn for such muddling, and the whole scheme was thrown into confusion. Guise, as soon as he was informed by Lennox’s letter brought by Creighton, travelled from Eu to Paris and met Tassis secretly at Beton’s house. He, too, was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans, his main object evidently being to prevent Spanish troops from being sent to Scotland, in order to avoid, as he says, French jealousy, but really because he feared Philip’s power. His plan was to raise a large mixed force to be sent by the Pope to Scotland, whilst he, Guise, was to make a descent upon the coast of Sussex with a French force. Philip met the new situation in his characteristic way. So far as he was concerned, the plan became impossible the moment that Guise and the French interest were included in it, and he wrote to Tassis, with vague sanctimonious sympathy, deprecating overzeal and ordering that nothing more should be done in the matter until further orders.[241]