As soon as the Queen received from Norris news of Condé’s rising, she sent for Bôchetel, the French Ambassador, and ostentatiously condoled with him for the disrespect shown to his sovereign. She rather overdid the pity, and suggested that she should arbitrate between the King and the Huguenots, but would take care that no help was given to the latter from England. Bôchetel dryly thanked her for the assurance that she would not help rebels _again_, but said that his King was quite able to deal with his subjects without her assistance. Here, as in the case of Mary Stuart, Elizabeth’s first feeling was indignation at any disrespect being shown to a sovereign; but Cecil’s letter to Norris at the time (November 3, 1567) shows that he and his friends looked at the matter from another point of view,[262] which Elizabeth herself shortly afterwards adopted, as she had done in the case of the Queen of Scots. In the meanwhile the Council became daily more outspoken in favour of the Huguenots. Messages of encouragement went speeding across the Channel to Coligny, to Montgomerie, and the rest of the Huguenot leaders. Cecil himself took Archbishop Parker to task for his leniency to Bishop Thirlby and Dr. Boxall, who were in his custody for recusancy; and at the end of November the official blindness as to people attending mass in London came to an end. The English people who had worshipped undisturbed in the Spanish Ambassador’s chapel were suddenly arrested, and many of them sent to prison.[263] On the same day Cecil complained to Guzman that he had promoted the breaking of the law by persuading Englishmen to attend mass, and repeated other sinister reports about him. The Spaniard denied the charges, and warned Cecil that, although his present attitude might be prompted by patriotic motives, it was a dangerous one, “and that some people were casting the responsibility upon him (Cecil), for the purpose of making him unpopular.” Cecil, apparently, was not afraid of this, for he had strained the loyalty of his friends almost to breaking limits lately by the severity exercised against the anti-vestment divines and his approaches to Spain, and doubtless welcomed the change in the political position which allowed him to enforce uniformity upon Catholics as well as upon his own co-religionists. There was a talk of expelling all Catholics from the Queen’s household, and Bacon, the Chancellor, made a speech in the Star Chamber directing the judges and officials to put into renewed force and press vigorously, the laws against the possession of books attacking the Protestant faith. “What most troubles the Catholics, however,” writes Guzman, “is to see that Leicester has become much more confirmed in his heresy, and is followed by the Earl of Pembroke, who had been considered a Catholic. There is nobody now on the Catholic side in the Council.”