In the meanwhile Elizabeth was somewhat roughly demanding to know why Mary delayed the ratification of the treaty of Edinburgh, and jealously watching for any signs of matrimonial negotiations to her detriment. The Earl of Arran, Elizabeth’s candidate for Mary Stuart’s hand, was extremely unpopular with the Scottish people, and soon became impossible as a consort for the Queen; and the carefully laid plans of Elizabeth and Cecil in Scotland were seen to be at the mercy of a secret matrimonial intrigue, which might be sprung upon them at any moment. Maitland of Lethington, Mary’s Secretary of State, ostensibly a Protestant, went to London[148] and saw Cecil in September, in the hope of arranging matters. He professed to be sanguine about the Arran marriage; but though bound to the English interest, he protested more than once on his return, in letters to Cecil, upon the pressure exerted upon his mistress to renounce her English birthright, and even begged the Secretary to furnish him with a draft of a reply for Mary to send which he thought might satisfy Elizabeth. Whilst Lord James, Maitland, and Cecil were trying to conciliate and calm matters, the zealot Knox and his like were clamouring for extreme measures and embittering spirits on both sides. Cecil in vain counselled Knox to be moderate; the reply reproaches him for “swimming betwixt two waters,” and throws all the blame for the troubles on moderate statesmen like Lord James and Lethington, “whose mistaken forbearance and gentleness” he denounces. The young Queen, he says, will never be of “our opinion, and in very deed her whole proceedings do declare that the Cardinal’s lessons are so deeply imprinted on her heart, that they … are like to perish together.… In communication with her I espied such craft as I have not found in such age.”