royal household were proposed by Gowrie and his exchequer colleagues. These were described as "havand respect to the order of the hous of your hieness goudsire King James the fifth of worthie memorie and to the of your majesties present rents", a reference to the alleged thriftiness of James V. Lennox seems to have made himself particularly unpopular by using his office of Chamberlain to profit from merchant trade in the Scottish towns and burghs. The Ruthven Regime ordered him to leave Scotland. Lennox was able to delay his exile unto 22 December, when he sailed for France. He never returned. Response in England Queen Elizabeth was pleased with events and sent £1000 in September 1582 with Robert Bowes, a payment declared as the wages of the King's Guard. In response, the opponents of the Ruthven Regime, the Earls of Huntley, Argyll, Atholl, Crawford, Montrose, Arran, Lennox and Sutherland, wrote a letter from Dunkeld (near Atholl's Blair Castle) to the town of Edinburgh describing this force, funded by England, as four hundred men-of-war raised for the purpose of conveying James VI to their "auld enemies" in England. They urged the townspeople of Edinburgh to arm themselves and seize the King, who was at Holyroodhouse, on their behalf. The people of Edinburgh did not follow up on this suggestion. The reaction of Francis Walsingham was more circumspect. He wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury, the keeper of Mary, Queen of Scots, with news of progress in Scotland on 26 September 1582. Walsingham thought that "thinges stand not yet in so good termes as were to be wished". He found King James' own letters, and his speech in favour of the Duke of Lennox made at Stirling on 14 September, to demonstrate 'of what rare towardliness that yonge prince is, and howe dangerous an enemye therefore he would prove unto England yf he should happen to runne to any other coorse.' French reaction and English diplomacy Catherine de' Medici, the French queen mother, wrote to the French ambassador in London, Michel de Castelnau, with her concerns over the capture of King James and the exile of Lennox. Elizabeth I was told that Castelnau secretly conveyed letters to Mary, Queen of Scots, and to her supporters in Scotland. Walsingham asked the ambassador in France, Henry Cobham, to advise Henry III of France and Catherine de' Medici of the situation, and that Castelnau should