The English Catholics were naturally losing heart. They had looked in vain for help from Philip ever since the Queen’s accession. The war party in the Spanish King’s councils had ceaselessly urged him to overturn Elizabeth and the “heretics” before their power was consolidated. Feria and his successor the Bishop had done their best to keep alive the hopes of Elizabeth’s enemies in England; but as year followed year and leaden-footed Philip moved not the English Catholics began to cast their eyes elsewhere. Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland (19th August 1561) surrounded by her Lorraine kinsmen. Elizabeth now thoroughly distrusted her, for she saw that she was her match in dissimulation, at all events, and made some show of intercepting her on the voyage;[147] but her Scottish subjects of all faiths were ready to welcome the young half-foreign Queen from whom they hoped so much. The country was practically in a condition of anarchy; but the administration, such as it was, was in the hands of the reform party under Maitland and James Stuart. Although herself devoutly following the Catholic faith—to the disgust of the predominant party—the Queen soon after her arrival confirmed the free exercise of the Protestant worship, and for a time both she and her ministers were popular. To the north, therefore, the English Catholic party now cast their eyes. Catharine Grey had recently contracted a doubtful marriage with the eldest son (Hertford) of the Protector Somerset, and was out of the question as a Catholic candidate; but Mary Stuart’s claim to the English throne was in many respects better than that of Elizabeth herself. Lady Margaret Lennox, too, was busy in the north of England, where the population was mainly Catholic, plotting for the marriage of her son and the subsequent raising of the country in the interests of Mary and a Catholic England.