Any appearance of an approach of the French and Scots always drew England and Spain together, and with the added dangers already cited, this was quite sufficient to change Lord Burghley’s tone. Mendoza accordingly reports (25th December 1581) that, at a meeting of the Council held to consider the situation, Burghley suggested that an alliance should be made with Spain, and an agreement arrived at with regard to the Low Countries. This was approved of by the Lord Chancellor (Bromley), the Lord Admiral (Lincoln), and Crofts. Sussex held aloof, wavering between his enmity to France and Leicester, and his attachment to Protestantism; whilst Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton, and Knollys were strenuously opposed to any approach to Spain, as they were, even more violently, to Burghley’s proposal that Drake’s plunder, or what was left of it, should be restored. A few days afterwards Burghley had some business with a Spanish merchant established in London, and to him he expressed a desire that negotiations should be opened for an agreement between the two countries. When the merchant carried the message to Mendoza, the latter attributed the suggestion entirely to the fear which he had aroused by his firmness, and he made no response. Mendoza himself, indeed, one of the warlike Alba school, had now no hope or desire for peace. The rise of D’Aubigny in Scotland and the coming of the Jesuits had quite altered the position during the last year, and Mendoza had in his hands a plot that seemed to promise the triumph of the Catholics.