Maitland of Lethington came to London during the sitting of Parliament to forward his mistress’s claims. He found Cecil now against the solution which he had formerly favoured, namely, the abandonment of Mary’s present claims in exchange for the reversion, failing Elizabeth and her descendants. Cecil was more distrustful of the French than ever; for the defection of Condé had turned all arms against the English in Havre, and he knew that Cardinal Lorraine was still untiring in his planning of the Austrian match for Mary, whilst the Protestants of France and Germany watched unmoved the isolation and embarrassment of England. Maitland therefore soon persuaded himself that his mistress had not much more to hope for now from the dominant party in England than from Elizabeth herself. Mary was convinced that both Catharine de Medici and the English Queen wished to force her into an unworthy Protestant marriage with a subject, in order to injure her prestige with English Catholics and decrease the power of the Guises.[186] Maitland consequently cast his eyes to another quarter. Mary was determined to fight for the English succession, if she could not get it by fair means; and with this end she wanted a consort strong enough to force her claims, which her uncle’s candidate, the Archduke Charles, could not do. She and Maitland accordingly threw over the Guises, who did not wish their niece to marry a prince strong enough to exclude _them_, and boldly proposed a marriage with Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. Maitland went one night secretly to the Bishop of Aquila in London, and cautiously opened the negotiation. The Queen of Scots, he said, was determined never to marry a Protestant, even if he owned half the world, nor would she accept a husband from the hands of the Queen of England. The French and English Queens were almost equally against her, the Duke of Guise was dead, the Archduke Charles was not strong enough to help her; would Philip consent to a marriage with his son?