was already on the seas, bringing with him
ten thousand Spaniards, who were to be landed at the Tower, and that
eight thousand Germans were to follow from the Low Countries. Noailles
and M. d'Oysel, then on his way through London to Scotland, had an
interview with a number of lords and gentlemen, who undertook to place
themselves at the head of an insurrection, and to depose the queen.
{p.087} The whole country was crying out against her, and the French
ministers believed that the opposition had but to declare itself in
arms to meet with universal sympathy. They regarded the persons with
whom they were dealing as the representatives of the national
discontent; but on this last point they were fatally mistaken.

Noailles spoke generally of lords and gentlemen; but those with whom
d'Oysel and himself had communicated were a party of ten or twelve of
the pardoned friends of the Duke of Northumberland, or of men
otherwise notorious among the ultra-Protestants; the Duke of Suffolk
and his three brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey;
the Marquis of Northampton; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet; Sir
Nicholas Throgmorton; Sir Peter Carew; Sir Edmund Warner; Lord
Cobham's brother-in-law; and Sir James Crofts, the late deputy of
Ireland.[200] Courtenay, who had affected orthodoxy as long as he had
hopes of the queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and
Devonshire were to be the first counties to rise, where Courtenay
would be all-powerful by his name. Wyatt undertook to raise Kent, Sir
James Crofts the Severn border, Suffolk and his brothers the midland
counties. Forces from these four points were to converge on London,
which would then stir for itself. The French Admiral Villegaignon
promised to keep a fleet on the seas, and to move from place to place
among the western English harbours, wherever his presence would be
most useful. Plymouth had been tampered with, and the mayor and
aldermen, either really, or as a ruse to gain information, affected a
desire to receive a French garrison.[201] For the sake of their cause
the Protestant party were prepared to give to France an influence in
England as objectionable in itself, and as offensive to the majority
of the people, as the influence of Spain; and the management of the
opposition to the queen was snatched from the hands of those who might
have brought it to some tolerable issue, by a set of men to whom the
Spanish marriage was but the stalking-ho