Though Philip had failed again to secure England as a satellite, the need for his doing so was as urgent as ever, for the Netherlands were seething in discontent, the Huguenots in France were being supported for the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if the stronger coming combination in Europe would not be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract this threatening state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try a new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated the opening of the first war of religion in France (March, 1562), and this made it expedient for him to strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which, when Cardinal Lorraine had made it a year before, he had looked upon coldly, was now regarded with favour. This was no less than the marriage of the widowed Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill terms with Catharine, with Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. It was not such a match as the Spanish King in ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate for his son; but as Mary was the Catholic heiress of England, and might by a turn of the wheel become Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to Protestant combinations. As soon as the project got wind Elizabeth, Catharine de Medici, and the Scottish Protestants, led by the Earl of Murray, sought an antidote to the threatened evil. The Darnley match was positively patronised both by Elizabeth and Catharine, and Lethington posted off to London eager to negotiate a friendly understanding between England and Scotland before his Catholic mistress should fall into the marriage net of Spain. But the war between Catholics and Protestants in France was now blazing fiercely, and the Guises were fighting for their lives, unable to help their niece or interfere in any way with Elizabeth’s game in Scotland. This made her for the time the mistress of the situation, and she could afford to deal high-handedly with the Queen of Scots, especially after the Duke of Guise himself had been assassinated before Orleans (February, 1563). She threw all her power on the Huguenot side in the struggle, allowing English contingents to join in the fight and subsiding Condé with money. Mary Stuart’s Protestant advisers had tried hard to negotiate an alliance between England and Scotland on Protestant lines in conjunction with the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heiress under the same auspices; and once more Lethington went to London, in February, 1563, to urge his point. He found the Queen coolly evasive, for she had nothing to fear from Mary or her French kinsmen now, and she knew that Philip would not dare to attack her or interfere forcibly in Scotland whilst the Protestants in France were in the ascendant.