The affairs of the Elector-Palatine, who had become King of Bohemia, were becoming more and more serious. The five thousand Englishmen sent by King James, ill-paid and poorly commanded, had rendered little service. The embassies with which he importuned all the powers interested exerted no influence. The throne of Bohemia, like the hereditary states of Prince Frederick, had been taken from him, and, driven from Germany, he had been compelled to take refuge at the Hague with his wife and children, there to live upon a pension allowed him by the Dutch; but his father-in-law, King James, had conceived a project which was, he thought, calculated at least to re-establish his son-in-law in the Palatinate. He counted in this affair upon the influence of Spain. In spite of the national opposition to a Catholic marriage for the heir to the throne, and notwithstanding the recent petitions of Parliament to this effect, King James, who had moreover quarrelled with the House of Commons and had caused several of its members to be arrested, continued his negotiations with Philip IV. for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, Donna Maria. For nearly twenty years the King of England had, in common with Spain, dreamed of this alliance, which he at length regarded as on the point of being realized. {35} The scheme had been proposed more than once in the shape of a union between Prince Henry with the Infanta Anne; the prince had died and the Infanta had married the King of France. The King of Spain, Philip III., had at first appeared favorable to the marriage, but on his death-bed he recommended his son Philip IV. to make his sister an empress by uniting her to her cousin the Emperor Ferdinand. King James did not know of the last wish of the dying king, but he hoped to find the new Spanish sovereign more accommodating than his father. After endless negotiations and journeys to and fro, after Catholic pretensions on the part of Spain, and displays of pecuniary avidity on that of King James, who threatened to break off everything, an almost complete understanding had been arrived at in the month of January, 1623: the Infanta was to preserve the free exercise of her religion; the English Catholics were to enjoy a practical, if not legal, toleration; the payments of the dowry of two millions of crowns were arranged, the dispensation of Rome was expected, and people spoke of celebrating the marriage by proxy through the ambassador forty days after the arrival of that important document. Everything appeared propitious. Lord Digby, Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, wrote to the king, "I do not wish to inspire by uncertain reasons a vain hope in your Majesty, but I can inform you that the court of Spain openly manifests its intention of giving you real and prompt satisfaction. If this is not really their design, they are more false than all the devils in hell, for they could not make more protestations of sincerity nor more ardent vows." {36}