[223] 'Monsenor de Moreta ... anadio (to his narrative of the event) algunas particularidades, que en juicio del embajador probaban o inducian mucha sospecha que la reina avia sabido y aun permetido el suceso.' Apuntamientos 320. The affair has been very wrongly drawn into the sphere of religious controversy. [224] Account in the collection for the history of the times of the Emperor Maximilian II, which Simon Schardius embodied in the tomus rerum Germanicarum iv, not authentic, yet based on what was then held in Scotland to be true. It runs: 'Rex cum illa se accedente ita suaviter sermones commutat, ut reconciliatae annulum daret, hoc pacto, ut illa se in lectum conjugalem intra duos dies admitteret. Erant in aula, qui hanc offensionem placari minime vellent, unde, priusquam rex voti compos fieret, eum e medio tollere constituerunt.' [225] Trial of James Earl Bothwell. State trials. [226] Report of the Nuncio, which agrees fairly with the statements in Schardius. [227] Mary's confessor told the Spanish ambassador in answer to his questions: 'Que el caso se habia consultado con los obispos catolicos y que unanimemente havian dicho que lo podia hacer (casarse) por que la muger de Bodwell era pariente sua en quarto grado.' [228] Memorandum of Cecil. 'She committed all autority to him and his compagnons, who exercised such cruelty as none of the nobility that were counsel of the realm durst abide about the Queen.' [229] Norris to Elizabeth 23 July 1567, in Wright i. 260. [230] Throckmorton to Cecil: 'upon other accidents [since Leith] they have observed such things in H. My's doings, as have tended to the danger of such as she had dealt withall.' Wright 251. [231] Calderwood ii. 384: 'Modo cha ha usato la regina di Scotia per liberarsi,' from the Florentine archives, in Labanoff vii. 135. CHAPTER IV. INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE EUROPEAN DISSENSIONS IN POLITICS AND RELIGION. If we inquire into the reason why Philip II gave up his previous relations with England and sided with the Queen of Scots, we shall find it mainly in the fact that the victory of Protestant ideas in England exercised a counter-action which was insupportable for the government he had established in the Netherlands. But that he gave Mary no help in her troubles, though information was once collected as to how it might be done, may also be traceable to the disturbances that had broken out in the Netherlands, the suppression of which occupied all his attention and resources. In 1568 the Duke of Alva was master of the Netherlands: he was already able to send a considerable force to help the French government, which had once more broken an agreement forced upon it by the Huguenots; the stress of the religious war was transferred to France, and there too the Catholic military force by degrees gained the upper hand.