The objection to Lennox's appearance had come, through Randolph, from Knox.

"You may cause us to take the Lord Darnley," wrote Kirkcaldy to Cecil, to stop Elizabeth's systems of delays; and Sir James Melville, after going on a mission to Elizabeth, warned Mary that she would never part with her minion, now Earl of Leicester.
Lennox, in autumn 1564, arrived and was restored to his estates, while Leicester and Cecil worked for the sending of his son Darnley to Scotland.

Leicester had no desire to desert Elizabeth's Court and his chance of touching her maiden heart.
The intrigues of Cecil, Leicester, and Elizabeth resemble rather a chapter in a novel than a page in history.

Elizabeth notoriously hated and, when she could, thwarted all marriages.

She desired that Mary should never marry: a union with a Catholic prince she vetoed, threatening war; and Leicester she offered merely "to drive time." But Mary, evasively tempted by hints, later withdrawn, of her recognition as Elizabeth's successor, was, till the end of March 1565, encouraged by Randolph, the English ambassador at her Court, to remain in hope of wedding Leicester.
Randolph himself was not in the secret of the English intrigue, which was to slip Darnley at Mary.