PHILIP’S advisers had for many years been urging him to adopt reprisals against Elizabeth for her treatment of him. We have seen why, on account both of policy and necessity, he had not done so by a direct attack. His indirect attempts at retaliation had been quite ineffectual. He had subsidised Mary Stuart, he had found money for the northern rebellion, he had listened to proposals for killing the Queen of England at his cost, he had countenanced Stukeley’s wild plans for the capture of Ireland, and he had attempted to avenge the English depredations on his commerce by stopping English trade and persecuting English traders for heresy. But in every case the result had been disastrous for him. Elizabeth’s aid to the Protestants in Holland was bolder and more effectual than ever, English sailors mocked at his attempts to stop trade by ruining his own ports, and the Englishmen punished by the Inquisition were avenged by increased severity against the Catholic party in England and Ireland. But still he was constantly assured that the only way to disarm Elizabeth against him was to “set fire to her own doors” by arousing rebellion in Ireland and aggression of the Catholic party in Scotland.

Dr. Sanders had induced the pope to interest himself in favour of James Fitzmaurice, the brother of the Earl of Desmond, and had himself obtained the title of the pope’s nuncio. They landed in Ireland with a small Spanish and Italian force in June 1579, but Elizabeth, through Walsingham’s spies, was well informed of the movement, and was quite prepared to deal with it. Philip was willing that others should weaken his enemy so long as no responsibility was incurred by him, and Elizabeth was not further irritated against him. When, however, Fitzmaurice and Sanders found themselves overmatched, and appeals were made direct to Philip to aid them by sending an armed force to Ireland, he demurred. Fitzmaurice was ready to promise anything for aid, and the nuncio at Madrid did his best to inflame Philip’s religious zeal. But he could not afford to come to open war with England, and, although he consented to subscribe 25,000 ducats out of the revenues of the archbishopric of Toledo if the pope would subscribe a similar amount, and promised to find arms and ammunition, he provided that the fresh expedition should sail from Spain under the papal flag and be organised ostensibly by the nuncio. The commanders, moreover, were to be all Italians, and the Spanish recruits were to be enlisted privately. The semi-concealment was quite ineffectual in hoodwinking Elizabeth, and the ill-starred little expedition was all slaughtered at Smerwick in Dingle Bay (November 1580), as James Fitzmaurice’s force had been previously. John of Desmond and the Italian commanders had assured Philip only a month before the massacre, that they would require 8000 footmen and large stores of arms before they could effect any useful end. But this would have meant open war with England, and for this he was not prepared. Once more he proved that his advisers were wrong, and that he could only curb Elizabeth with overwhelming force, which he had neither the means nor the desire to employ at the present juncture. He continued to urge upon his new ambassador that she must be kept in a good humour at all costs. It was not an easy task, for she was more defiant than ever now. She knew Philip had his hands full, and the attempted invasion of Ireland was made the most of for years by her, as an excuse for all she did in Flanders and elsewhere to injure him. It was an unfortunate move for Philip, as it afforded Elizabeth a good grievance against him, and forced him into the weak position of having to justify his action by throwing the responsibility upon the pope.

Philip had at this time (1579) special reasons for dreading an open rupture with England, for he had for some time past been planning a stroke which would, if successful, enormously increase his power for harm at sea, in relation to both France and England. In August 1578 Sebastian of Portugal, the only son of Philip’s sister, Juana—as much a victim of atavism as was his cousin, Don Carlos—perished in his mad crusade against the Moors, and his successor on the throne was the aged, childless cardinal, King Henry. He was recognised as being only a stop-gap, and after him the claimants were numerous, mostly descended, although in different degrees, from the king, Don Manoel. The Duchess of Braganza was daughter of his son Duarte, Philip was son of the elder daughter of Don Manoel, the Duke of Savoy was a son of the younger daughter, Beatrix, whilst the children of Alexander Farnese were the offspring of a younger sister of the Duchess of Braganza. The most popular pretender, however, was Don Antonio, Prior of O Crato, an illegitimate son of Luis, a younger son of Don Manoel.

The fundamental laws of Lamego, now believed to be apocryphal, but then accepted as genuine, excluded foreigners from the throne, but Philip asserted that a Spanish king was not a foreigner in Portugal, and began his intrigues for the succession immediately after Sebastian’s death. The Perez party had managed to get the old Duke of Alba disgraced and sent into arrest on an absurdly inadequate charge of conniving at his son’s marriage against the king’s wish, and De Granvelle had remained in honourable exile from Spain for many years. But when the great task of winning Portugal had to be undertaken, Philip knew that glib, brilliant Perez, with his biting tongue and ready pen, was not the instrument he wanted; so the stern soldier and the crafty statesman were recalled to their master’s councils. It was a black day for Perez, although he probably did not realise at the time how fatal it was to be. During the short reign of the cardinal-king, money and intrigue were lavished on all hands to corrupt and terrorise the Portuguese nobles to Philip’s side; the aged king himself was finally worried into his grave by pressure exerted upon him to approve of Philip’s claim, and when he died, the council of regency left by him were by various means coerced into accepting the King of Spain as their sovereign. But not so the Portuguese people or the clergy; they clung, almost all of them, to the Prior of O Crato, the popular native claimant, ambitious, ready, and sanguine, for the Portuguese bitterly hated the Spaniards, and the true native heiress, the Duchess of Braganza, was timid and unready; and before Philip and Alba could arrive Antonio was acclaimed the national sovereign. Around him all that was patriotic grouped itself, and for a short time he ruled as king. Philip was moving on to Portugal with that “leaden foot” of which he was so proud, and by the autumn of 1580 he had reached Badajoz, on the frontier. Here he fell ill of the mysterious disease we call influenza, which was afflicting Europe at the time. His devoted fourth wife, Anne, who accompanied him, prayed that her life might be taken for his. Her prayer was heard. She died (October 25) and Philip lived, but the loss deepened his gloom, and in the two years that he was away from Madrid his yellow beard turned nearly white, and he came back an old and broken man. How his icy heart turned to his children at the time may be seen by the letters he constantly wrote to his elder girls during his absence, full of love and tenderness. However weary and sad he might be, no courier was allowed to leave without playful accounts of his adventures, and kindly little messages to the three orphan children of his last wife. Soon two out of the three followed their mother to the grave, and only three-year-old Philip was left as his father’s heir.

Relentlessly Alba swept down upon Lisbon, as years before he had pounced upon the Netherlands, and crushed the life out of Portuguese patriotism. There was no question of creed to stiffen men’s backs here, no William of Orange to organise and lead them. The yielding Portuguese were made of different stuff from the stubborn “beggars of the sea,” and Alba rode roughshod over them with but little resistance. King Antonio was soon a fugitive, hunted from town to town, holding out for a few weeks in one fortress, only to be starved into another, proclaimed a bastard and a rebel, with a great price upon his head; and yet he wandered for eight months amongst the mountains, safe from betrayal by the peasants whose native king he was. In the meanwhile Philip was solemnly accepted as king by the Portuguese Cortes at Thomar (April 3, 1581) with all the pomp of ancient ceremonial. He was in the deep mourning which he wore for the rest of his life, and he tells his little girls in a letter at the time how his heart turned away from the finery which accompanied him. Then slowly he came to Lisbon to be crowned, whilst the defeated Antonio fled to France and thence to England, to be a thorn in his side for the rest of his life.

The accession of power thus accruing to Philip was a great blow both to England and France. Granvelle’s management of affairs had been so masterly that all legal forms had been complied with in Portugal; the regents and the Cortes had acknowledged Philip as king, and Elizabeth and Catharine had no excuse for open interference, although what could be done by private intrigue was effected. Catharine, indeed, had set up a nebulous far-fetched claim of her own to the Portuguese crown, to obtain some locus standi in the affair, but this did not prevent her from opening her arms to the other claimant, Don Antonio, when he arrived in France. He came to England in July 1581, and was made much of by the queen. In vain did Mendoza, Philip’s ambassador, demand his surrender as a rebel. Elizabeth said that she had not yet made up her mind to help him, though he was no rebel, but King of Portugal, but she had quite decided not to surrender him to be killed. He was too valuable a card in her hand for her to let him go, and she made the most of him. Elizabeth’s and Catharine’s first retort to Philip’s assumption of the Portuguese sovereignty was a pretence of cordial friendship for each other, and the resumption of active negotiations for Elizabeth’s marriage with AlenÇon. Orange was determined to attract once more to his side the Flemish Catholics, whom Parma’s diplomacy had estranged from the rebel cause. He considered that the best way to do this was to invest AlenÇon—a Catholic prince—with the sovereignty of the States. Elizabeth would not allow the French as a nation to gain a footing in Flanders, but her plan was to make AlenÇon dependent upon her in hopes of a marriage, to disarm his brother by the same means, and to secure that any French interference with Flanders must be of Huguenots, under her control. It suited Catharine to play the game for the purpose of reducing Philip to extremities in Flanders, and rendering him less able to resist attack in Portugal, whilst giving him no excuse for an open quarrel with the French nation. All the aid, therefore, given to Don Antonio was in the name of Catharine herself, as a claimant to the Portuguese crown, and both in this matter and in Flemish affairs Henry III. himself affected to stand aloof in disapproval.

It was an artful plan, but it was not to be expected that the Guises would stand by inactive whilst they saw their king’s only brother and heir being drawn further into the toils of the Huguenots and the Protestant Queen of England, and they soon delivered their counter-blow. As Catharine’s enmity to Philip became more pronounced, the Guises had drawn closer to him as the champion of Catholicism, of which cause they were the representatives in France. In February 1580, accordingly, the Archbishop of Glasgow, the Scottish ambassador in Paris, told Philip’s ambassador there that he and Guise had prevailed upon Mary Stuart to place her interests and influence unreservedly in Philip’s hands, and to send her son James to Spain, to have him brought up and married there, as the King of Spain wished. This was very important, because Philip had always been paralysed in his action with regard to Mary by the consideration that her accession to the throne of England would make the Guises—Frenchmen—paramount there. But if Mary and the Guises were henceforward to be his humble servants, the whole position was changed. Vargas, the ambassador, so understood it. “Such,” he says, “is the present condition of England, with signs of revolt everywhere, the queen in alarm, the Catholic party numerous, Ireland disturbed, and distrust aroused by your Majesty’s fleet, ... that if so much as a cat moved, the whole fabric would crumble down in three days, beyond repair.... If your Majesty had England and Scotland attached to you, directly or indirectly, you might consider the States of Flanders conquered, in which case you ... could lay down the law for the whole world.” Guise’s detachment from French interests made all the difference, and this marked a change of Philip’s policy towards England, which, as will be shown, ultimately led him into the quagmire of the Armada. Mary, unfortunately for herself, was always ready for a plot against her enemy; and Beaton assured Vargas shortly afterwards that she would not leave prison except as Queen of England. The Catholics were so numerous, said Beaton, that if they rose, it would be easy, even without assistance; but if the King of Spain helped, the result would be prompt and undoubted. Almost simultaneously with this Morton fell, and the Catholic party in Scotland gained the upper hand.

James’s cousin, D’Aubigny, Lennox, was now paramount in Scotland, and with his connivance the country had been flooded by Jesuit missionaries from seminaries largely depending upon Philip’s bounty. The priests had gone with the single-hearted desire to re-convert Scotland to the faith, and innocent of political aims at first; but the Jesuit organisation, which in its earlier years had met with much opposition from the Spanish clergy, and especially the Inquisition, had now been assimilated with Philip’s policy, and doubtless its leaders foresaw the political uses to which the propaganda might be turned, as certainly did Mary Stuart and Mendoza, Philip’s ambassador in London, who were prime movers in it. Philip was willing enough to accept the tempting offer of Mary and Guise, especially when it reached him soon after in a more direct way by the despatch of Fernihurst by D’Aubigny to Madrid. The death of Vargas, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, shelved the matter for a time, but in April 1581 Mary Stuart reopened negotiations with the new ambassador, Tassis. She assured him, for Philip’s information, that things were never more favourably disposed for Scotland to be taken in hand, with a view to dealing with England subsequently. She begged that a formal alliance should be signed between Scotland and Spain, and that a Spanish force should then be sent to Ireland, to be ready for the invasion of Scotland when summoned. Her son, she said, was determined to return to the Catholic faith, and she intended that he should be sent to Spain for that purpose, and for his marriage to Philip’s satisfaction.

Philip, however, wished to be quite sure that James was sincere in his religious professions before helping him to the English succession. He knew that the King of Scots, young as he was, had already established his fame as a master of deceit. He, James, had told the Jesuit fathers who were labouring in Scotland that “though for certain reasons it was advisable for him to appear publicly in favour of the French, he in his heart would rather be Spanish”; but he knew Father Persons and his companions were sustained by Spanish money, and that his expressions would eventually reach Philip. But, to his mother’s despair, he would never pledge himself too firmly. In January 1582 Mary herself was somewhat doubtful of her son’s religious sincerity. “The poor child,” she said, “is so surrounded by heretics that she had only been able to obtain the assurance that he would listen to the priests she sent him.” For her own part, she was determined that in future she would bind herself and her son exclusively to Philip, and to none other.

James blew hot and cold, and the Catholic nobles began to recognise that he was too slippery to be depended upon; so they came to a very momentous conclusion. They sent Father Holt to London to convey a message to a person to whom he was to be introduced by a disguised priest. To Holt’s surprise and alarm, the person was Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, for he, like most of the missionaries, had up to that time no idea that a political object underlay their propaganda. His message was to the effect that if James remained obstinate, the Catholic nobles had decided to depose him, and either convey him abroad or hold him prisoner until Mary arrived in Scotland. They besought the guidance of Philip in the matter, and begged that 2000 foreign troops might be sent to them to carry out their design. The message was conveyed to Mary in a softened form, in order not to arouse her maternal solicitude, and Mendoza begged Philip to send the troops, “with whom the Scots might encounter Elizabeth, and the whole of the English north country, where the Catholics are in a majority, would be disturbed. The opportunity would be taken by the Catholics in the other parts of the country to rise when they knew they had on their side a more powerful prince than the King of Scotland.”

Philip was on the Portuguese frontier at the time, and De Granvelle was the principal minister in Madrid. He warmly seconded Mendoza’s recommendations that troops should be sent to the Scots Catholics. “The affair is so important,” he says, “both for the sake of religion and to bridle England, that no other can equal it, because by keeping the Queen of England busy we shall be ensured against her helping AlenÇon or daring to obstruct us in any other way.” The Scots nobles were anxious that the foreign force should not be large enough to threaten their liberties, and De Granvelle agreed with this. “This is not what his Majesty wants, nor do I approve of it, but that we should loyally help the King of Scots and his mother to maintain their rights, and by promoting armed disturbance, keep the Queen of England and the French busy at a comparatively small cost to ourselves, and so enable us to settle our own affairs better.... It is very advantageous that the matter should be taken in hand by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us against French obstruction. Since we cannot hope to hold the island for ourselves. Guise will not try to hand it over to the King of France to the detriment of his own near kinswoman.” Thus far it is evident that there was no thought in Philip’s councils of invading and absorbing England in his own dominions.

It will be noted that these new proposals of the Scots Catholics had not been made through Tassis and Guise in Paris, as the previous approaches had been, but through Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, who had been very active in the matter of the religious propaganda, and who had entirely gained Mary’s confidence. So long as the negotiations were kept in their hands, all was conducted wisely and prudently, and doubtless some such arrangement as that suggested would have resulted. But the folly of Lennox and the political ineptitude of the Jesuit missionaries frustrated the whole design. In March 1582 the former wrote a foolish letter to Tassis, which he sent to Paris by Creighton, laying bare the whole plan and giving his adhesion to it, but making all manner of inflated demands. Creighton, he said, had promised him 15,000 foreign troops, of which he was to have the command; and he asked for a vast sum of money, and a personal guarantee against loss of fortune. Creighton also sent to Guise and brought him into the business, and Jesuit emissaries were appointed to go direct to Rome and Madrid to ask for aid. Mary and Mendoza were furious, particularly the former, that she should be endangered by her name being used as the head of the conspiracy. Creighton had no authority whatever to promise 15,000 men, nor would the Scottish nobles have accepted such a number, and the idea that Lennox should command them was absurd. Philip took fright at the large number of persons who were now privy to the affair, and gave orders that nothing further was to be done. Guise, ambitious and officious, as usual, also wanted to take a prominent share in the direction of the enterprise. He began to make large and vague proposals for a strong mixed force to be sent from Italy under the papal flag, whilst he and his Frenchmen made a descent upon the coast of Sussex, his evident object being to prevent a purely Spanish expedition being sent. Granvelle and Philip very soon saw whither the affair was drifting, and nipped it in the bud. They had only been induced to listen to it on the assumption that the Guises where to work exclusively for Spanish interests. The moment the contrary appeared, the proposal lost its attractions for them. It is true that at this time Philip had no intention of conquering England for himself, but Mary and James must owe their crown to him alone, and be forced to restore the close alliance between England and the House of Burgundy, or the change would be useless to him. Too much French or Italian aid or Guisan influence spoilt the business for his purpose. But there was still another reason. He had a large number of English Catholic refugees living on pensions from him in France, Flanders, and Spain; and they and Sir Francis Englefield, his English secretary, ceaselessly represented to him their national dislike and distrust of the French, their secular enemies, and their jealousy of any plan that should make the Frenchified Scots masters of England. Almost with one accord the English Catholics urged this view upon Philip and the Spaniards. All England, they said, would welcome a Catholic restoration if it came from their old friends, the Spaniards, but the attempt would fail if it were made under the auspices of their old enemies, the French. Philip’s policy thenceforward gradually changed. With the Raid of Ruthven and the fall of Lennox he saw that for the time the Protestants had conquered, and the plans of the Scottish Catholics were at an end. Guise was to be flattered and conciliated, but all Philip’s efforts in future were to confine his attentions to France, and to alienate him from English and Scottish affairs. He was told how dangerous it would be for him to leave France with the Huguenots in possession, and Spanish support was lavishly promised to him for his ambitious plans at home.

Guise was flattered but dissatisfied, and sent emissaries to Scotland and the pope to endeavour to keep alive the plan of landing foreign troops in Scotland. James pretended to be strongly favourable, but Philip purposely threw cold water on the plans whilst appearing to entertain them, to prevent anything being done without his knowledge. In May 1583 Guise had a new design. Philip and the pope were to find 100,000 crowns, and Guise would have Elizabeth murdered, whilst he landed in England and raised the country. Father Allen and the English exiles frowned upon such “chatter and buckler-play,” as they called it. They would not have any Scotch control over England, they declared, but would rather the affair were carried through by Spaniards.

They had a plan of their own. A Spanish force was to be landed in Yorkshire, accompanied by Westmoreland, Dacre, and other nobles, with Allen as papal nuncio. Guise heard of this, and wished to co-operate by landing 5000 men in the south of England at the same time. He sent word of it to James, who professed to be favourable; he sent Charles Paget in disguise to England to arrange a place for his landing; he despatched an envoy to the pope to ask for money and to explain the whole plan. When Philip learned all this he was naturally angry, and it is clear, from the notes he has scrawled upon the papers sent to him, that he was determined that in future Guise should have nothing more to do with his English and Scottish policy. What opened Philip’s eyes more than anything else was Guise’s pledge to the English Catholics that his one object was to restore religion in England and place Mary Stuart on the throne; “and when this is effected, the foreigners will immediately retire. If any one attempts to frustrate this intention, Guise promises that he and his forces will join the English to compel the foreigners to withdraw.” Well might Philip scatter notes of exclamation around this passage, for thenceforward he knew that in English affairs Guise was his rival, and that Allen and the English Catholics were wise in insisting that England must be taken in hand directly by Spain, and not through Scotland and the Guises. The Marquis of Santa Cruz, Philip’s great admiral, had just scattered the fleet that Catharine de Medici had aided Don Antonio to fit out to hold the Azores; and in the flush of victory he wrote, in August 1583, begging his master to let him conquer England in the name of God and Spain. Philip was not quite ready for this yet, but the idea was germinating, for the English exiles were for ever pointing out that this was the only course, and that his own descent from Edward III. Plantagenet gave him a good claim to the crown after Mary Stuart, her son being excluded by his heresy.

At last, in 1583, Philip instructed his ambassador in Paris to hint discreetly at his claims to the English crown. If he was to keep in close alliance with England, which was necessary for him, it is difficult to see what other course he could have taken. James was out of the question now as a successor to his mother, and Elizabeth’s action in allowing her suitor AlenÇon to cross over from England to Flanders, and under her auspices receive the investiture of the sovereignty of Philip’s patrimonial domain, proved finally that reconciliation with her personally was impossible. Mendoza, Philip’s ambassador in England, had been implicated in Throgmorton’s plot, and was ignominiously expelled from the country. Thenceforward for twenty years all direct diplomatic relations between the two countries ceased, and a state of war practically existed. Slowly the idea of the invasion of England grew under the influence of the English exiles, but the Scottish Catholics, the Guises, and the papacy were unwearied in their attempts to alter the plan. James himself, seeing how matters were drifting, again feigned a desire to become a Catholic, and sent fervent protestations to Philip and the pope, whilst Guise continued to urge his plan for a landing in Scotland and an invasion of England over the Border under James. The English exiles declared that, if such a course were taken the English Catholics themselves would resist the invasion, as they were determined the Scots should not rule their country. At last Philip had seriously to warn the pope that, if the English affair was to be effected, it must be done by Spain in a very powerful way, and with large money aid from the pope, Guise being told from Rome that he must not leave France, where he might serve the Catholic cause better than elsewhere. To aid in this Philip took care to promote religious disturbance in France, which would paralyse Henry III. and the Huguenots from helping Elizabeth, and Guise from promoting the interests of his kinsman James.

Sixtus V. was elected pope as the result of a secret intrigue, after the nominees of Philip and the French had both been set aside. He was therefore not a humble instrument of the Spanish policy, and was a wise, frugal, and moderate pontiff, ambitious to signalise his reign by some great religious service, but not desirous of serving Philip’s political ends. The College of Cardinals was divided into three parties: those who were strongly in favour of the French view, which aimed at an arrangement with Elizabeth and James, and desired to exclude Spanish influence from England; those who were for Philip through thick and thin; and the “politicals,” who went with the stronger party.

Olivares, the ambassador, and the Spanish cardinals were bold and untiring in forwarding Philip’s wishes; but the pope was to be carefully kept in the dark with regard to his intention to claim the English crown for himself. The cause of religion was invoked as being his only motive, inconvenient points were left indefinite, with the certainty that Caraffa, the secretary of state, would take a pro-Spanish view when the time came. It was to be hinted to the pope that Philip could not undertake the invasion to benefit the heretic James, and that the cause of religion demanded that a sovereign whose orthodoxy was undoubted should be substituted for him as Mary’s successor; but, if the pope asked questions as to who was indicated, only vague answers were to be given to him. At last, partly by cajolery, partly by threats, Olivares contrived to obtain a written pledge that the pope would give the investment of the English realm to the person to be nominated by Philip, and would subscribe 1,000,000 gold crowns to the enterprise, the first instalment of which was only to be paid after the landing on English soil. Sixtus was only brought to this after infinite haggling and misgiving, for Olivares represents him in most insulting and undiplomatic language to Philip, as a silly, miserly, petulant, garrulous old man, which probably meant that the pontiff did not meekly accept the orders of the arrogant minister, at all events without some slight hesitation. Philip was told that the pope did not dream that the crown of England would be claimed by him, but that when he learned the truth he would certainly oppose it. To this the invariable reply was that he must be shown how necessary it was for a good Catholic to be chosen to succeed Mary, and, if he mentioned the name of any particular person, he was to be reminded that he had agreed to abide by Philip’s nomination.

In the meanwhile Allen and the English pensioners continued to propagate the idea of Philip’s own right by birth to succeed Mary owing to the heresy of James, and this view was forced upon Mary herself by Mendoza and her confidants in Paris, who were all in Philip’s pay. At length she was convinced, and in June 1586 she wrote to Mendoza in Paris, giving the important news that by her will she had disinherited her son in favour of the King of Spain.

Just previous to this, Ballard had called upon Mendoza in Paris, and said he had been sent by certain Catholic gentlemen in England to say that they had arranged to kill Elizabeth, either by poison or steel, and they begged for Philip’s countenance and reward after the deed was done. This was the first word of the Babington plot, and after the reception of Mary’s important letter by Mendoza, Gifford arrived in Paris, and gave full particulars of the widespread conspiracy for Philip’s information. By this time too many people were concerned in the affair to please Philip’s stealthy methods. Mendoza’s zeal had already outrun his discretion; he had written a letter to the conspirators hotly approving the design as one “worthy of the ancient valour of Englishmen,” and promising them ample support from the Netherlands when the deed was done. He proposed, further, that they should kill Don Antonio and his adherents, Cecil, Walsingham, Hunsdon, Knollys, and Beal. Philip was not squeamish, but even he disapproved of the proposal to murder Cecil, who, he said, was “very old and had done no harm.” His approval of the rest of the plan is very characteristic of him. “The affair is so much in God’s service that it certainly deserves to be supported, and we must hope that our Lord will prosper it, unless our sins be an impediment thereto.” He for his part will do all that is asked of him “as soon as the principal execution is effected. Above all, that should be done swiftly.” But he blamed Mendoza for his incautious letters, and expressed fears that they might be betrayed. He himself was so careful of secrecy that he even kept the matter from Farnese. He sent two letters for him to Mendoza, the first simply instructing him to prepare the forces, and the other only to be delivered after the queen’s murder, giving him final instructions as to their destination. This was in September 1586, and before Mendoza received the letters Walsingham’s heavy hand had fallen on the conspirators. It was all confessed, the letters had been intercepted, the great conspiracy was unmasked, and Mary Stuart’s doom was sealed, whilst Mendoza’s proved complicity still further embittered Elizabeth against Philip.