[147] This pretended _rapprochement_ may be followed in detail in Quadra’s letters in the Spanish Calendar. The intrigue was mainly engineered by Lady Mary Sidney.

[148] Spanish Calendar, vol. i.

[149] Quadra wrote a letter to the Emperor on the 26th June, before he received Philip’s instructions, worded in a way that was purposely intended to deceive. Whilst saying that the Scots were not favourable to the Archduke’s suit unless he brought enough money to keep himself and also that he was strong enough to assert Mary’s claim to the English Crown, he hinted that it was to France and not to Spain that she was looking for a husband. No word is mentioned about Don Carlos.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 340.

[150] Serious allegations of intrigues against the Queen had been made against the Bishop by a former secretary of his to Cecil. Shan O’Neil was known to have frequented his house; English Catholics were known to be attendants at Mass in the embassy chapel, and many other complaints were made besides the harbouring and connivance in the escape of the fugitive Italian. The Bishop himself was placed under arrest and subsequently deprived of the use of Durham House as a result of the investigation of these charges.—Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and Domestic Calendar of the same date, 1563.

[151] And not alone to Philip. The merchants of Antwerp wrote beseeching letters to Cecil, and also to Gresham, asking for their influence to procure the re-establishment of commercial intercourse. The correspondence on the subject, extending over many months, is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and in the Flanders Papers of the date (1564) at the Record Office, for the most part abstracted in the Foreign Calendar.

[152] Some of the arguments he is directed to use sound strangely incongruous as coming from Philip. “You may say that they cannot fairly refuse the request about the [Catholic] churches, for even the Turk allows Christians who live in his country to worship God in their own way.”—Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 353.

[153] The meaning of this is that Dudley and his Catholic friends were saying that the suspension of commercial intercourse was favourable to them, as it was driving Englishmen to desperation, and would lead to a revolt against Cecil.

[154] Guzman was warned by his master that he must be very wary how he listened to treasonable suggestions, either from the English and Irish Catholics or from Dudley’s friends, as in either case they might be traps. If Dudley would get Cecil disgraced, Philip would be delighted, but the hand of Spain must on no account be seen in it.—Spanish Calendar,