History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, Vols. 1 and 2

by William Hickling Prescott

PHILIP'S PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE.

These communications could not be carried on so secretly but that some rumor of them reached the ears of Mary's ministers, and of Noailles, the French ambassador at the court of London.[74] This person was a busy and[{39}] unscrupulous politician, who saw with alarm the prospect of Spain strengthening herself by this alliance with England, and determined, accordingly, in obedience to instructions from home, to use every effort to defeat it. The queen's ministers, with the chancellor, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, at their head, felt a similar repugnance to the Spanish match. The name of the Spaniards had become terrible from the remorseless manner in which their wars had been conducted during the present reign, especially in the New World. The ambition and the widely-extended dominions of Charles the Fifth made him the most formidable sovereign in Europe. The English looked with apprehension on so close an alliance with a prince who had shown too little regard for the liberties of his own land to make it probable that he or his son would respect those of another. Above all, they dreaded the fanaticism of the Spaniards; and the gloomy spectre of the Inquisition moving in their train made even the good Catholic shudder at the thought of the miseries that might ensue from this ill-omened union.

It was not difficult for Noailles and the chancellor to communicate their own distrust to the members of the parliament, then in session. A petition to the queen was voted in the lower house, in which the commons preferred an humble request that she would marry for the good of the realm, but besought her, at the same time, not to go abroad for her husband, but to select him among her own subjects.[75]

Mary's ministers did not understand her character so well as Charles the Fifth did, when he cautioned his agent not openly to thwart her. Opposition only fixed her more strongly in her original purpose. In a private interview with Renard, she told him that she was apprised of Gardiner's intrigues, and that Noailles, too, was doing the impossible to prevent her union with Philip. "But I will be a match for them," she added. Soon after, taking the ambassador, at midnight, into her oratory, she knelt before the host, and, having repeated the hymn Veni Creator, solemnly pledged herself to take no other man for her husband than the prince of Spain.[76]

This proceeding took place on the thirtieth of October. On the seventeenth of the month following, the commons waited on the queen at her palace of Whitehall, to which she was confined by indisposition, and presented their address. Mary, instead of replying by her chancellor, as was usual, answered them in person. She told them, that from God she held her crown, and that to him alone should she turn for counsel in a matter so important;[77] she had not yet made up her mind to marry; but since they considered[{40}] it so necessary for the weal of the kingdom, she would take it into consideration. It was a matter in which no one was so much interested as herself. But they might be assured that, in her choice, she would have regard to the happiness of her people, full as much as to her own. The commons, who had rarely the courage to withstand the frown of their Tudor princes, professed themselves contented with this assurance; and, from this moment, opposition ceased from that quarter.

Mary's arguments were reinforced by more conciliatory, but not less efficacious persuasives, in the form of gold crowns, gold chains, and other compliments of the like nature, which were distributed pretty liberally by the Spanish ambassador among the members of her council.[78]

In the following December, a solemn embassy left Brussels, to wait on Mary and tender her the hand of Philip. It was headed by Lamoral, Count Egmont, the Flemish noble so distinguished in later years by his military achievements, and still more by his misfortunes. He was attended by a number of Flemish lords and a splendid body of retainers. He landed in Kent, where the rumor went abroad that it was Philip himself; and so general was the detestation of the Spanish match among the people, that it might have gone hard with the envoy, had the mistake not been discovered. Egmont sailed up the Thames, and went ashore at Tower Wharf, on the second of January, 1554. He was received with all honor by Lord William Howard and several of the great English nobles, and escorted in much state to Westminster, where his table was supplied at the charge of the city. Gardiner entertained the embassy at a sumptuous banquet; and the next day Egmont and his retinue proceeded to Hampton Court, "where they had great cheer," says an old chronicler, "and hunted the deer, and were so greedy of their destruction, that they gave them not fair play for their lives; for," as he peevishly complains, "they killed rag and tag, with hands and swords."[79]

On the twelfth, the Flemish count was presented to the queen, and tendered her proposals of marriage in behalf of Prince Philip. Mary, who probably thought she had made advances enough, now assumed a more reserved air. "It was not for a maiden queen," she said, "thus publicly to enter on so delicate a subject as her own marriage. This would be better done by her ministers, to whom she would refer him. But this she would have him understand," she added, as she cast her eyes on the ring on her finger, "her realm was her first husband, and none other should induce her to violate the oath which she had pledged at her coronation."

MARRIAGE ARTICLES.

Notwithstanding this prudery of Mary, she had already manifested such a prepossession for her intended lord as to attract the notice of her courtiers, one of whom refers it to the influence of a portrait of Philip, of which she had become "greatly enamored."[80] That such a picture was sent to her appears from a letter of Philip's aunt, the regent of the Netherlands, in which she tells the English queen that she has sent her a portrait of the prince,[{41}] from the pencil of Titian, which she was to return so soon as she was in possession of the living original. It had been taken some three years before, she said, and was esteemed a good likeness, though it would be necessary, as in the case of other portraits by this master, to look at it from a distance in order to see the resemblance.[81]