Calling Sussex and Leicester to her, she ordered that inquiry should be made in the matter, and then once more started her Irish grievance, again forcing Mendoza to take the defensive. He made the best of matters, and retorted with Drake’s plunder and her constant aid to the Netherlanders, ending by a scarcely veiled threat that unless she mended her behaviour towards his master, especially in her attitude towards Portugal, his vengeance would fall upon her. Elizabeth was rather cowed at this, and said she did not want to quarrel with her good brother; the King of France had done more harm in the matter of Portugal than she had. To this Mendoza retorted curtly that if the King of France did evil that was no reason why she should. Mendoza afterwards snubbed and hectored Cecil and the Council, and left the Palace in no very pacific frame of mind. “If I had not shown spirit,” he wrote to the King, in giving him an account of the interview, “which is the thing that moves the Queen and her ministers most, such is their insolence that probably I should never have been able to get conference with them. This attitude alone has enabled me to hold my own with them until now, thus gaining time for matters to develop themselves.”[232] Notwithstanding his self-satisfaction, it is clear that Mendoza got the worst of the interview with the Queen, for although she was compliant on the unimportant point of the violation of domicile, the boy was never restored, and she assumed the position of the injured party about Ireland, as well as preventing Mendoza from making a formal reclamation about Drake’s plunder.