The Earl of Oxford had constantly been a source of trouble to Lord Burghley. He was extravagant, eccentric, and quarrelsome, and only by the exercise of great forbearance on the part of his father-in-law had any semblance of friendship been kept up. If on this occasion, as is probable, Hatton acceded to Walsingham’s suggestion, and persuaded the Queen once more to receive Oxford at court, it was not long before the intractable Earl again misbehaved himself; for on May of the following year (1583) his long-suffering father-in-law appealed to the new favourite, Ralegh, to exert his influence with the Queen to forgive him again. Ralegh’s answer,[473] giving a long account of his efforts to move the Queen, shows that Oxford had injured him also. “I am content,” he writes, “for your sake to lay the serpent before the fire, as much as in me lieth, that having recovered strength, myself may be most in danger of his poison and sting.” As we have seen, Mary Stuart had never ceased, since the triumph of D’Aubigny, to negotiate through Mendoza for her release and restoration, and the subsequent invasion of England over the Scottish Border. The raid of Ruthven and the fall of D’Aubigny did not at first discourage her. She still believed that the expected arrival of foreign troops, and her son’s secret favour of the Catholics, would enable the plot to be carried through,[474] and under this belief it was that she wrote her violent letter of denunciation and complaint to Elizabeth (8th November).[475]