were still in progress the Queen rallied, and was pronounced out of danger. The first thing she did on recovering speech and consciousness was to beg the Council to make Dudley protector, with a peerage and an income of £20,000. Everything she asked was promised, though, as Quadra says, without any intention of fulfilling it. But Dudley and the Duke of Norfolk were admitted members of the Council, which was a great point gained for the former. When the Queen feared she might die she protested solemnly before God that, although she loved Robert dearly, nothing improper had ever passed between them.[31] Parliament assembled early in 1563, and deputations from both Houses addressed the Queen on the subject of fixing the succession. She was extremely angry, and said that what they saw on her face were pock marks and not wrinkles, and she was not so old yet as to have lost hope of children. Subsequent attempts to approach her on the subject, or that of the marriage, met with a similar or more violent repulse. In March, during the sitting of Parliament, Maitland of Lethington, Mary of Scotland’s famous Secretary of State, arrived in London for the purpose of forwarding his mistress’s claim to the succession. He soon saw that the Queen would have her way, and that no successor would be appointed, the evident intention of both Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici being, as Mary herself said, to force an unworthy or a Protestant marriage upon her, in order to injure her prestige with the English Catholics. Cardinal Lorraine and others were anxious that Mary should wed the Archduke Charles, but Mary said she must have a prince strong enough to enforce her claim to the English throne, which Charles was not, and refused him, her own Catholic noblemen being also strongly against him for similar reasons. The opponents of the Guises in France, and the Protestants in England, were of course against the marriage of Mary with a member of the house of Austria, so that, although his name was kept to the front for some time, Charles was never a probable husband for the Queen of Scots. In a long conversation Elizabeth had with Maitland she told him that if his mistress would take her advice, and wished to marry with safety and happiness, she would give her a husband who would ensure both: and this was Lord Robert, in whom nature had implanted so many graces that if she (Elizabeth) wished to marry she would prefer him to all the princes in the world. Maitland said this was indeed a proof of the love she bore to his mistress, to give up to her what she cherished so much herself, but he hardly thought his mistress, even if she loved Lord Robert as dearly as Elizabeth did, would consent to deprive her of all the joy and solace she received from his company. Elizabeth, after some more talk of this sort, said she wished to God that his brother, the Earl of Warwick, had the grace and good looks of Robert, in which case each Queen could have one of the brothers.