In the middle of May, 1586, Charles Paget, who was still one of Mary’s agents in Paris, came to Mendoza, bringing with him an English priest named Ballard, who had been sent by a number of Catholics, especially in Lancashire and the North, to represent to him that: “God had infused more courage than ever into them, and had convinced them that no time was so opportune as the present to shake off the oppression of the Queen and the yoke of heresy that weighs upon them, as most of the strongest heretics are now absent in Zeeland. They say that I have never deceived them, and they beg me to tell them whether your Majesty had determined to help them to take up arms when they decided to do so.”[268] Mendoza had but a general expression of sympathy to reply to this; for though the great fleet of conquest projected in Spain was already the talk of Europe, to Philip’s officers it was still supposed to be an inviolate secret. This inquiry of the English Catholics, however, was not John Ballard’s real reason for coming to see Mendoza. He handed him a letter from four English Catholics who had access to Elizabeth’s Court, in which they promised to kill the Queen either by poison or by steel if they were assured of Philip’s help after the deed was done. Mendoza ciphered the letter himself and sent it to Philip’s secretary, but as John Ballard did not broach the subject verbally Mendoza’s disinclination to give any pledges kept Ballard in Paris beating about the bush in doubt for many weeks. Parsons, who was a good hater, asserted ten years afterwards[269] that the whole scheme of Ballard and Gifford was promoted by Paget and Morgan, Mary Stuart’s correspondents in Paris, for the purpose of frustrating the purely Spanish attack upon England, to which they are represented as being bitterly hostile, and that Walsingham was informed of the plot with the same object. Paget was, and continued to be, a pensioner of Spain, and Morgan, who was entirely trusted by Mary, was also richly rewarded by Philip, at her request; but there is no reason to doubt the positive assertions of Parsons that both of them belonged to the anti-Jesuit party, to which, indeed, most English as well as the Scottish and Welsh Catholics adhered; and that by every means they endeavoured to frustrate what Allen and the Jesuits tried so hard to promote—a Spanish domination of England.