Some people censure as fantastic the scheme of invading England which the two Pontiffs Pius V and Gregory XIII were always planning, and D. John as a dreamer, for placing in this project all his aspirations and ardent desires for glory. But Lord Burghley judged otherwise. He was an immoral politician, certainly, but the most far-seeing and profound that England then possessed. In a memorandum all in his own handwriting, which exists in the British Museum in London, and from which Mignet quotes, he advises Queen Elizabeth to send prompt aid to the Flemish rebels. "If the Spaniards succeed in subduing the Low Countries, they will lose no opportunity of invading England, and will unite their forces with the malcontents of this kingdom; thus, if D. John finishes with the States, he will not tarry in turning his arms against Y.M. The correspondence which is carried on between him and the Queen of Scots since he arrived in the Low Countries, his interview with the Bishop of Glasgow, the ambassador of this Queen, and the general opinion that there is a plan of marriage between him and her, are the reasons which make for this conclusion. According to those who desire a change of religion in this kingdom, this marriage is the best and only means for the return of the kingdom to the Church of Rome. By this marriage D. John would have a claim to the crown of England, and then it would be seen that the Pope, the King of France, and the King of Spain, and all the Catholic Princes would help him; the Pope from religious motives, the King of France to please the house of Guise and to prevent England helping the French Protestants, and the King of Spain to settle his brother advantageously. Therefore, to give aid to the Low Countries is a means of preservation and defence for this realm."

These grave reasons, which did not seem fantastic to Burghley, decided Queen Elizabeth and the lords of her Council to help the Flemish rebels even more openly than they had hitherto done, not only with money, but also with English and Scotch troops, under the command of Norris. But they soon saw that the real obstacle to these ends was the person of D. John, and that nothing and nobody could dismay him or weary out his patience, or overcome his military skill, and they judged, as Orange had done before the retreat from Namur, that the shortest and safest way to conquer this obstacle was to overthrow it by treachery, taking D. John's life. One warning voice, however, God sent from a prison, and it reached the ears of D. John, and stopped this new crime.

There was a Spanish merchant in London, a native of Tarragona, called Antonio de Guaras, rich and respected. He lived in a house belonging to the Guild of Drapers, with a warehouse and wharf on the Thames, and many pedlars came there to fit themselves out with things that they afterwards sold retail, travelling about the counties. But in these humble pedlars' boats which slowly mounted the Thames, most important secrets and messages from great personages came to the house of Antonio de Guaras. The merchant was an Aragonese, and an agent of the Court of Spain since the time of Henry VIII, and since the arrival of D. John in Flanders he had constituted himself the most active promoter of the Spanish invasion of England, and the intermediary between D. John and the Queen Mary Stuart, at that time a prisoner in Sheffield Castle. D. John sent his letters for the Queen of Scots to Guaras, and she also sent him the answers; a very interesting correspondence, of which no trace remains.

Under the disguise of one of these hucksters the English Jesuit Hort, whom Gregory XIII had sent to England, together with his Scotch companion Crichton, to be Papal agent in the business of the Spanish invasion, came one day to the house of Antonio de Guaras. He came from Sheffield, and brought a letter in cipher from Mary Stuart for Antonio de Guaras. He carried it cleverly hidden in a little mirror, which in these perilous times he always had among his pedlar's wares. In this letter the Queen of Scots ordered Antonio de Guaras to tell D. John of the plot that the Council of Queen Elizabeth were scheming against his life, rumours of which reached Sheffield by one of the many advocates of the marriage of Mary and D. John, who were numerous, and were working in England and Scotland. The news was vague, however, as she only talked of this plot without giving any details, and contented herself by warning D. John to have a care for his person. "It seems to me that the Lord Don John should be very careful that he has not near him some greater spies than faithful servants, English or others."

Guaras, al............