So, throughout the century of strife, both Charles and his son, rigid as they were, were always obliged to conciliate England, whatever its faith might be; for France, and heresy in their own dominions, were ever the nearest enemies; and for England permanently to have thrown in its lot with either of them would have consigned Spain to impotence. Henry VIII. might defy the Pope, despoil the Church, and insultingly repudiate his blameless Spanish wife, but the Emperor dared not quarrel with him for long together, or provoke him too far. But, withal, it was a hard trial for the champion of orthodoxy to have to speak fair and softly to his heterodox, excommunicated uncle, and welcome alliance with the power that was a standing negation of the cause for which he lived. Still harder was it when Henry was dead; for his personal prestige was great, and his professions of orthodoxy were emphatic, apart from his personal quarrel with the Papacy. But to him there succeeded a child-king ruled by men of small ability, determined to alter the faith of England itself, and make a durable friendship with Spain impossible.

Then almost suddenly the whole aspect of affairs changed. It had been known for some time that the young King of England, Edward VI., was failing, and would probably die without issue; but the uncertain element had been the extent of the Duke of Northumberland’s power and the strength of English Protestantism. Edward VI. died on the 7th July 1553, and the undignified collapse of Northumberland at once decided the Emperor’s plans. The treachery of Maurice of Saxony had brought Charles to the humiliating peace of Passau, and had made for ever impossible the realisation of the great dream of making Philip Emperor as well as King. It was the heaviest blow that Charles had ever suffered; and, if he could have appreciated its significance, he would have seen that it proved the impossibility of the task he had undertaken. He was still at war with the enemy, France, who had supported his Lutheran princes, and he was burning to avenge the crowning disaster of Metz, when the death of the boy King of England opened to his mind’s eye the gates of a shining future. The hollow crown of the Empire might go, with its poor patrimony and its turbulent Lutheran subjects, the fat Portuguese dowry he coveted for his son Philip might be cheerfully sacrificed; but if only rich England could be joined in lasting bonds to Spain, then France would indeed be in the toils, Flanders and Italy safe, the road to unlimited expansion in the East open, and Spain, supreme, might give laws to Latin Christendom, and to heathendom beyond. The prize was worth bidding for, and Charles lost no time.

In the brilliant summer weather of late July in 1553, a faded little woman with a white pinched face, no eyebrows, and russet hair, rode in a blaze of triumph through the green-bordered roads of Suffolk and Essex towards London. Around her thronged a thousand gentlemen in velvet doublets and gold chains, whilst a great force of armed men followed to support if need be the right of Mary Queen of England. It was not much more than a fortnight since her brother had died, but into that time the poignant emotions of a century had been crammed. The traitors who had proclaimed Queen Jane had tumbled over each other to be the first to betray some of their companions, and all to disown the despotic craven who had led them, the wretched Northumberland; Protestant London, even, had greeted with frantic joy the name of the Catholic Queen, whose right it knew, and whose unmerited sufferings it pitied; but at thirty-seven, an old maid, disillusioned and wearied by years of cruel injustice, Mary Tudor came to her heritage resigned rather than elated.

Amongst the crowds of officials and gentlemen who rode out of London to pay homage to the new Queen, were two men, each pledged to outwit the other in his quest. They were of similar age, about fifty, both Frenchmen, though one was born in the Burgundian territory of the Franche Comté, and both were ambassadors; one, Simon Renard, representing the Emperor, and the other, Antoine de Noailles, the King of France, and they went racing towards Chelmsford, each to try to win Queen Mary to the side of his master. Noailles was the more courtly and aristocratic; and his insinuating grace made him a dangerous rival, for it hid a spirit that stopped at no falsity or treachery if it would serve his turn. But in gaining Mary Tudor he was fatally handicapped, though when she received him at New Hall she spoke so fairly that he thought he had succeeded.[[139]] For Simon Renard represented the power that throughout all the bitter trials of her life Mary had looked to as her only friend. Again and again the imperial ambassadors alone had dared to claim better treatment for her and her outraged mother; and had threatened her father with vengeance if ill befell her; whilst France had always taken the opposite side, and egged King Henry on to work his own will in despite of Spain and the empire. So, though Mary was diplomatic to Noailles she was friendly to Renard, for to him and his master she looked to keep secure her trembling throne.

Already it was seen that the Queen must marry. She had been betrothed times out of number as an instrument of policy, but of her own will she desired no husband; and when Renard, in a long private chat with her at New Hall on the 1st August, broached the subject, she told him that she knew her duty in that respect and would do it, but prayed for the guidance of the Emperor in her choice of a husband. She was no longer young, she said, and hoped that too youthful a husband would not be recommended to her. Renard knew that already English people had chosen as the Queen’s prospective bridegroom young Courtenay, still in the Tower as a prisoner; and that failing him, some had thought of Cardinal Pole; but he knew well, as did the Emperor, that Mary was too proud to marry a subject, and looked to her marriage as a means of strengthening her throne; and soon afterwards even Noailles saw that Courtenay had spoilt his chance by dissoluteness of life, though he continued to make use of him as a tool for conspiracy against Mary and her Spanish friends.

On the 3rd August the new Queen, dressed in violet velvet, and mounted on a milk-white pony, came to her city of London through the gaily decked portal of Aldgate, and so to the Tower, where she released those who had lain there in prison to suit the policy of the men who had ruled Edward VI. Events moved apace. Gardiner from a prison was suddenly raised to the post of chief minister. Bonner, the hated Bishop of London, came from the Marshalsea to his throne in Saint Paul’s; and everywhere, though yet illegal, the mass was already being introduced. The Emperor kept warning Mary to be moderate, and to walk warily; whilst the churchmen, burning with zeal to come upon their own again, were obstinately shutting their eyes to all that had happened since bluff Henry’s death. Renard it was who almost daily saw the Queen with these messages of modern counsel from his master; and the subject of marriage was mentioned more than once. Noailles and Gardiner were pushing as hard as they might the suit of Courtenay; but on the 7th August Mary told Renard that she saw no fit match for her in her own country, and had decided to marry a foreigner.

Then gently and tentatively the ambassador mentioned the Emperor’s only son Philip. She affected to laugh at the idea, for the Prince was only twenty-seven—the same age as Courtenay, by the way—and, as she said on another occasion, most of the bridegrooms they offered her might have been her sons. But Renard saw that his suggestion was not altogether an unwelcome one, and hastened to ask his master for further instructions. ‘Do not overpress her,’ wrote Granvelle, ‘to divert her from any other match; because if she have the whim she will carry it forward if she be like other women.’ But Mary Tudor’s birth and trials had made her not like other women; and she listened to the tale of marriage, not because she hankered for a husband, but because she hungered for a son to present to her people.

Noailles soon got wind of the plan to marry Mary to the Emperor’s son, and wherever French gold or interest could reach the enemies of the new regime they were plied with hints of the terrible results that would come if Spain ruled England by Torquemada’s methods. A gust of panic swept over London at the idea of an Inquisition; for the Queen had come at first with promises of toleration, and already the zeal of the churchmen had darkened the horizon. On the eve of the Queen’s coronation, on the 1st October, a Spanish resident in London, whilst professing to despair of the probability of the match, writes words that show how well aware even private citizens were of the advantage that it would bring to Spain. ‘And if the Lord vouchsafed us to behold this glorious day, what great advantage would befall our Spain, by holding the Frenchmen in check, by the union of these kingdoms with his Majesty. And if it were only to preserve Flanders his Majesty and his son must greatly desire it, ... for when the Lord shall call his Majesty away the Low Countries will be in peril of the Frenchmen attacking them, or of the Germans (i.e., Lutherans) invading them by their help, the succour from Spain being so remote, and the people (i.e., of Flanders) not being well affected towards our nation. It would also be most advantageous to Spain, because if aught should happen to the Prince’s son (i.e., Don Carlos) the son born here would be King of both countries, and, in sooth, this would be advantageous to the English also.’[[140]]

We may be sure that Mary’s coyly sympathetic attitude was not lost on the Emperor. But Philip was a man of twenty-seven, a widower since his boyhood, with a mistress (Isabel de Osorio) whom he loved; and for many years past he had been his own master, and practically King of Spain, though nominally only Prince Regent. His marriage, moreover, to a Portuguese cousin with a rich dowry was in active final negotiation, and the Emperor could not be sure how the Prince would receive the suggestion of marriage with an unattractive foreign woman more than ten years his senior, and living in a far country. He need have had no distrust. Philip under his system had been brought up from his birth to regard sacrifice to his mission as a supreme duty. He was a statesman and a patriot, and he saw as clearly as his father the increment of strength that the union with England would bring to the cause to which their lives were pledged; and his reply, given, as Sandoval says, ‘like a second Isaac ready to sacrifice himself to his father’s will and for the good of the church,’ was, ‘I have no other will than that of your Majesty, and whatever you desire, that will I do.’