It is not to be supposed that the French and Scottish faction would sit tamely by and see without an effort the whole enterprise of England fall into the hands of Spain. The conversion of James Stuart was still a fervent hope with many who dreaded to see a Spanish king supreme in Britain; and the English Jesuit faction had to fight hard against the Welsh, Scottish, French, and many English Catholics at home and abroad. James Stuart himself and the Scottish Catholic nobles were fully alive to the danger that threatened. The Scottish nobles, with the secret connivance of James, made a bold attempt to associate themselves with Philip’s invasion, and to bring Guise again into the combination. Huntly, Morton, Claude Hamilton, Crawford, and Montrose, in the summer of 1586, sent one Robert Bruce with three blank signed papers to the Duke of Guise in Paris, where the letters over the signatures were written at Guise’s dictation and addressed to Philip,[278] begging him to listen to the verbal proposals of their envoy, Bruce. Guise and Beton introduced Bruce to Mendoza, and the gist of the proposals was that Philip should send to the Scottish Catholics 150,000 crowns to raise and arm soldiers, whom they would maintain for a year, and they also asked that a foreign force of 6,000 men should be sent to Scotland to secure the triumph of the Catholics, in consideration of which they promised to place at his disposal one or more ports in the south of Scotland to serve as a shelter and a base of operations against England. Mendoza understood, as indeed did all experienced fighting-men, the immense importance of the latter suggestion; for Santa Cruz from the first had insisted upon the need of seizing harbours in the Channel in case of contrary weather; and Bruce was sped on his way to see Philip with all the support that the ambassador could give him.