The hard rule of this monarch who claimed to govern by the will of God was rendered even more abhorrent to the stern Puritan moralists by reports of "drunken orgies" and horrible vices which made the royal court appear to be a veritable den of Satan. But worst of all was his suspected leaning towards "popery." The Puritans had a passionate hatred for anything that even remotely suggested Roman Catholicism. Consequently it was not with extreme pleasure that they welcomed a king whose mother had been a Catholic, whose wife was suspected of harboring a priest, a ruler who at times openly exerted himself to obtain greater toleration for Roman Catholics and to maintain the Anglican ritual against Puritan modification. With growing alarm and resentment they learned that Catholic conspirators had plotted to blow up the houses of Parliament, and that in his foreign policy James was decidedly friendly to Catholic princes. The cardinal points of James's foreign policy,--union with Scotland, peace, and a Spanish alliance,--were all calculated to arouse antagonism. The English, having for centuries nourished enmity for their northern neighbors and perceiving no apparent advantage in close union, defeated the project of amalgamating the two kingdoms of England and Scotland. James's policy of non-intervention in the Thirty Years' War evoked bitter criticism; he was accused of favoring the Catholics and of deserting his son-in-law, the Protestant elector of the Palatinate. The most hotly contested point was, however, the Spanish policy. Time and time again, Parliament protested, but James pursued his plans, making peace with Spain, and negotiating for a marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta of Spain, and Prince Charles actually went to Spain to court the daughter of Philip III. [Sidenote: Interconnection of Puritanism, Commercialism, and Parliamentarianism] It was essentially the Puritan middle classes who were antagonized by the king. The strength of the Puritans rested in the middle class of merchants, seamen, and squires. It was this class which had profited by the war with Spain in the days of "good Queen Bess" when many a Spanish prize, laden with silver and dye woods, had been towed into Plymouth harbor. Their dreams of erecting an English colonial and commercial empire on the ruins of Spain's were rudely shattered by James. It was to this Puritan middle class that papist and Spaniard were bywords for assassin and enemy. By his Spanish policy, as well as by his irregular methods of taxation, James had touched the Puritans in their pocketbooks. The Puritans, too, were grieved to see so sinful a man sit on the throne of England, and so wasteful a man squander their money. They were even hindered in the exercise of their religious convictions. Every fiber in them rebelled.