The opportunity, though he did not know it, had been lost already, for all the threads were now in Burghley’s hands, and he was master of the situation. In August was intercepted the bag of money (£600) with a cipher letter[338] being sent secretly to Herries and Kirkaldy of Grange, Mary’s friends in Scotland, by the Duke of Norfolk’s secretary, and in a day or two the net swept into the Tower the Duke and all the underlings who had served as intermediaries. Burghley lost no time now. Almost every day, threats or the rack wrung some fresh admission from the instruments—secretaries, messengers, and the like. Norfolk at first, with extreme effrontery, denied everything;[339] but he was a weak man, and soon broke down. Even then De Spes did not see that all was lost. “The Catholics,” he said, “are many, though their leaders be few, and Lord Burghley, with his terrible fury, has greatly harassed and dismayed them, for they are afraid even of speaking to each other. The whole affair depends upon getting weapons into their hands, and giving them some one to direct them.”[340] It was too late. Mary Stuart’s prison was made closer; her correspondence was intercepted and read; there was no more concealment necessary or possible. One Catholic noble after the other was isolated and imprisoned; Dr. Storey’s dreadful fate was held up as a warning to traitors, and London and the country was flooded with broadsheets calculated to arouse English and Protestant sentiment to fever heat at the dastardly conspiracy which was laid bare. On the 14th December a message reached De Spes summoning him to the Council at Whitehall. When he arrived there he found them awaiting him, with Lord Burghley as spokesman. There was no mincing matters. The Ambassador was told that he had plotted with traitors against the Queen’s life and the peace of the country, and he would be expelled, as Dr. Man had been from Spain with far less reason.[341] De Spes tried to brazen it out, but ineffectually. Burghley was on firm ground: no delay, he said, could be allowed, excepting the time absolutely necessary for the preparations for the voyage, which time was to be passed out of London.[342] Speechless, almost, with indignation, in pretended fear that Burghley would have him killed, De Spes was hustled out of the country he had sought to ruin, and a week afterwards (16th January 1572) the Duke of Norfolk was tried by his peers and found guilty of the capital crime of high treason.