At the same time Sir Henry Wotton was sent to Paris with certified copies of Mary’s will in favour of Philip, and of her correspondence with Mendoza. “He is instructed to point out how much she depended upon your Majesty, and how shy she was of France.”[529] This was exactly the course most likely to alienate Henry III. from Spain and his sister-in-law; and although he tardily sent Pomponne de Bellièvre to remonstrate with Elizabeth, the Spaniards and Guisans, at all events, never believed in the sincerity of his protests.[530] Mendoza writes: “Elizabeth has given orders that directly Bellièvre arrives in England the rumour is to be spread that the Queen of Scots is killed, in order to discover how he takes it. Bellièvre, however, is forewarned of it, and has his instructions what to say when he hears it. It is a plan of Cecil’s arising out of a desire (as I wrote to your Majesty) to sell to the French on the best terms they can what they do not dream of carrying out. The English and French will have no difficulty in agreeing on the point, because the King and his mother are very well pleased that the Queen of Scots should be kept alive, though a prisoner, in order to prevent the succession of your Majesty to the English throne; whilst the English see plainly that the many advantages accruing to them from keeping the Queen of Scots a prisoner would change into as many dangers if they made away with her.”[531] On the 6th December public proclamation of Mary’s sentence was made in London amidst signs of extravagant rejoicing on the part of the populace. The next day Bellièvre delivered a long speech to the Queen, in which he made no attempt to deny Mary’s guilt, but appealed to Elizabeth’s magnanimity, and proposed guarantees from France to insure Mary’s future harmlessness. The Queen repeated bitterly her grievances against Mary, and replied that the life of Mary was incompatible with her own safety; and Lord Burghley, in a subsequent interview with the Frenchman, repeated more emphatically the same idea. Shortly afterwards, at the renewed request of Bellièvre and Chateauneuf, Elizabeth ungraciously consented to grant a respite of twelve days to Mary to enable the Ambassadors to communicate with their master. But Henry III. himself was now in a hopeless condition. “Such is the confusion of the court, the vacillation of the King, and the jealousy, hatred, and suspicion of the courtiers, that decisions are adopted and abandoned at random.… The King is trying to draw closer to the Queen of England, which is the principal object of Bellièvre’s mission.”[532] The only reply, therefore, sent to Bellièvre and Chateauneuf from France was a pedantic and wordy appeal to Elizabeth’s mercy, which must have convinced her that she need fear nothing from the French.[533]