Melvil went back to Scotland with all manner of kind messages for his mistress; and Cecil especially was gracious to him, placing a fine gold chain around his neck as he bade him farewell. But when Mary asked her envoy if he thought Elizabeth “meant truly towards her inwardly in her heart, as she appeared to do outwardly in her speech,” he replied that in his judgment “there was neither plain dealing nor upright meaning; but great dissimulation, emulation, envy, and fear lest her princely qualities should chase her from the kingdom, as having already hindered her marriage with the Archduke. It appeared likewise to me, by her offering unto her, with great apparent earnestness, my Lord of Leicester.” Melvil says that Leicester’s humble and artful letters to Mary, and the consequent kindness of the latter, aroused Elizabeth’s fear that after all Mary might marry her favourite, and caused her to consent to Darnley’s visit to Scotland.[206] “Which licence,” he says, “was procured by means of Secretary Cecil, not that he was minded that any of the marriages should take effect, but with such shifts to hold the Queen (Mary) unmarried as long as he could, persuading himself that Lord Darnley durst not proceed in the marriage without consent of the Queen of England first obtained.”[207] Cecil’s task was again an extremely difficult one. He had to keep up an appearance of leaning to the Catholics and the House of Austria, and encourage the idea of Elizabeth’s marriage with the Archduke, in order to prevent the alliance of Mary Stuart with so powerful an interest; he was obliged to keep his own restive Protestant friends in hand; to counteract at every step the intrigues of Leicester against him, and to be ready at any moment to cause a diversion if Leicester’s suit to the Queen looked too serious to be safe. The replies and recommendations of the bishops to the Council’s circular, referred to in a previous note (page 160), had caused much apprehension amongst Catholics; and the Queen herself, as well as Cecil, assured Guzman that the bishops should do the Catholics no harm; whilst, on the other hand, Cecil’s Protestant friends were urging him to adopt strong measures to prevent the growth of the “Papists.” Cecil’s reply to one such recommendation shows that he was just as ready to wound Leicester underhand as Leicester was him. “He replied that he was doing what he could, but he did not know who was at the Queen’s ear to soften her so, and render her less zealous in this than she ought to be.”[208]