Renard presented the Emperor’s formal offer of his son’s hand to the Queen on the 6th of October, and after some hesitation she asked him to put upon paper his arguments in favour of the match. He did so in a long paper dated the 11th, which will be found in the Renard Correspondence transcripts in the Record Office. In it he tells her that she is surrounded by dangers against which only a powerful marriage can protect her. She has, he says, four sets of enemies: namely, the heretics and schismatics, the rebels and friends of Northumberland, the powers of France and Scotland, and Madam Elizabeth, who would never cease to trouble and threaten her. Mary replied that she knew all about the French intrigues, and was certain to be kept well informed of approaches made by the French ambassador Noailles to Elizabeth and Courtney. In conversation with Renard afterwards she told him, and he faithfully transmitted the conversation to his master,[10] that she had had a long talk with Courtney three days before at the instance of his mother, and he had told her in all simplicity that an English lord had suggested to him that he should marry Elizabeth, since he could not now hope to obtain the Queen. If he took the Princess either he or his heirs might hope to succeed to the throne as the Queen was getting old. The idea seems to have originated with Lord Paget, who was doubtless the lord referred to by Courtney, and who thought to stand well with all parties in future by the device. As he was the principal supporter in the Privy Council of the Spanish match, Renard could not at first openly veto the suggestion. Mary consulted Renard upon the subject, and told him that Courtney had said that his own thought was only to “_marry a simple lady rather than Elizabeth who was too proud a heretic and of a doubtful race on her mother’s side_.” The imperial ambassador replied that such a marriage would have to be very deeply weighed and discussed,[11] and so politely shelved the question. On the other hand, the idea was zealously promoted by Noailles, who, Courtney asserted some months afterwards, pressed him warmly to marry Elizabeth,[12] and it was considered even by the strongest Spanish partisans in the Council to be a happy combination which would conjure away all dangers. How far Elizabeth herself was a consenting party it is difficult to say, but Noailles, who was in the heart of the intrigue, writes to his king on the 14th of December that it depends entirely on Courtney whether she married him and joined him in Devonshire to raise the flag of revolt. “But the trouble,” he says, “is that Courtney is so alarmed and timid that he dares nothing.” So Courtney disappears promptly from the scene where soon such rough work was to be undertaken. Even before the arrival of Egmont in the winter of 1553 to offer formally Philip’s hand to Mary, the Council was mainly opposed to the match. Paget was first bought over with a