the demands of the Pope and Spain, had triumphed. {40} Parliament, convoked with regret in 1624, immediately offered substantial supplies, and the rigorous laws against the Catholics, suspended for a moment, were applied with more severity than ever. Alliances began to be formed against the House of Austria in Germany and in Spain. France, Savoy, Denmark, Sweden, united with England and Holland, which latter country having already resumed the war with its perpetual enemies, it was a question of nothing less than completely delivering the soil of the Low Countries from the presence of the Spaniards and retaking the Palatinate. The English troops, placed under the orders of Prince Maurice of Nassau, were defeated. The prince died at the Hague. The Count of Mansfeldt, then the great adventurer in war, came to seek in England the reinforcements which had been promised him. The soldiers were inexperienced, the quarters unhealthy; before arriving at the frontiers of the Palatinate half the troops were unfit for service. The Elector-Palatine was not yet upon the point of recovering his states. While England was thus raising the standard of the Protestant war, King James was negotiating another Catholic marriage. He had long kept the court of Spain in suspense, pretending successively to seek for his two sons the hand of a French princess. When the affair decisively miscarried at Madrid, he turned again towards Paris. Cardinal Richelieu was more resolute and his designs were grander than those of Olivarez. "The marriage of the Princess Henrietta-Maria with the King of England, and the league of the Protestant states under the patronage of the King of France were necessary to the greatness of France and to his own power." {41} He had formed a league against the House of Austria, and consolidated it by promising the sister of Louis XIII. to the Prince of Wales. A secret act, securing to the English Catholics not only toleration, but more liberty and immunity, was signed on the 12th of December, 1624, by King James and the Prince of Wales. The preparations were already begun for receiving the French princess in London, when King James fell ill and died on the 6th of April, 1625, at the age of fifty-eight. He had been twenty-two years king of England. His foolish pretensions to absolute power, his religious tyranny, his bad and weak policy had prepared the storm which was to burst upon the head of his son. {42} Chapter XXIII. Charles I. And His Government (1625-1642).