y Catholic religion,
and asked for his help to enable her to withstand the apostates in her
kingdom: as long as she lived, she would join him against all and
every enemy.[212] This quite fell in with the ideas which Philip
himself cherished. From the park of Segovia in October 1565 he
commissioned Cardinal Pacheco to reassure the Pope with the
declaration that he meant to support the Queen of Scots not less than
the Pope himself. In this they must, he remarked, keep three points in
view: first the subjugation of her rebellious subjects, which he
thought not difficult, as Elizabeth would not support them; then the
restoration of the Catholic Church in Scotland, than which nothing
would give him greater satisfaction; lastly, the most difficult of
all, the obtaining the recognition of her right to the English throne:
in all this he would support the Queen with his counsel and with
money: he could not however come forward himself, it could only be
done in the Pope's name.[213]

The ordinary accounts of the conferences at Bayonne have proved
erroneous, as the proposals which were certainly made there by the
Spaniards were not accepted. But Philip II's resolutions seem not less
comprehensive in this case; these were his hostility to Queen
Elizabeth, still concealed from the world but fully clear to his own
consciousness, and his resolve to do everything in his power to place
Mary, if not now, yet at a future time on the English throne. The
great movement he was designing was to begin from Scotland. Like the
Guises at a later time, so now Mary and her partisans in England and
Scotland, if he supported her, were to be instruments in his hand.

Mary had the good fortune to break up the seditious combination of
some lords who opposed her marriage. Strengthened by this she prepared
for quite a different state of things. She received money from Spain:
Pope Pius V had promised to support her as long as he had a single
chalice to dispose of. She expected disciplined Italian troops from
him: artillery and other munitions of war were brought together for
her in the Netherlands. Leaning on Rome and Spain the spirited Queen
hoped to become capable of any great enterprise.[214]

It was clearly to be expected that she would unite a political
tendency with the religious one. In the letter quoted above Philip
reminds her how dangerous to monarchy were the doctrines of the
pretended Gospellers:[215] opinions like those which Knox, regardle