His sister, Lady Sidney, was sent to the Bishop of Aquila, with the assurance that the Queen would consent to marry the Archduke at once if she were asked (September 1559). Dudley and Parry both came and assured the Bishop of their devotion, body and soul, to Spanish interests.[116] There was, they said, a plot to kill the Queen, and she had now made up her mind to concede the religious points at issue and marry the Archduke at once. The Queen herself avoided going so far as that in words, but by looks and hints she confirmed what Lady Sidney and Dudley had said. Between them they hoodwinked the Churchman, and he urged upon Philip and the Emperor the coming of the bridegroom. After his long talk at Whitehall with the Queen at the end of September, the Bishop saw Cecil, who by this time was fully aware of what was going on, and adroitly turned it to the advantage of his policy. War with the French in Scotland was practically adopted, if Philip could be depended upon to stand aloof. When, accordingly, the Bishop approached Cecil, the latter, although he avoided pledging himself to the Queen’s marrying the Archduke, spoke sympathetically about it. But his tone was different from Dudley’s. “I saw,” says the Bishop, “that he was beating about the bush, and begged that we might speak plainly to one another. I was not blind or deaf, and could easily perceive that the Queen was not taking this step to refuse her consent after all. He swore he did not know, and could not assure me.” But then Cecil shot _his_ bolt. The French, he said, were striving to impede the Archduke’s match, and had offered great things to the Swedes if they could bring about the marriage of Elizabeth with the Prince of Sweden. “They (the English) well understood that this was only to alienate the Queen from her connection and friendship with Philip, and thus to enable the French to invade this country more easily.”[117] Cecil then consented, but vaguely, to help forward “our affair,” and was promised all Philip’s favour if he did so. All Cecil asked for and wanted was an assurance of the help or neutrality of Spain, in the event of a French invasion, and this he unhesitatingly got—“if the Queen will marry the Archduke,” a condition which Cecil, at least, must have known would not be fulfilled.