Richelieu had not yet entered the king’s council (1624), when the breaking off of the long negotiations between England and Spain, on the subject of the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta, was officially declared to Parliament. At the very moment when Prince Charles, with the Duke of Buckingham, was going post-haste to Madrid, to see the Infanta Mary Anne of Spain, they were already thinking, at Paris, of marrying him to Henrietta of France, the king’s young sister, scarcely fourteen years of age. King James I. was at that time obstinately bent upon his plan of alliance with Spain; when it failed, his son and big favorite forced his hand to bring him round to France. His envoys at Paris, the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Holland, found themselves confronted by Cardinal Richelieu, commissioned, together with some of his colleagues, to negotiate the affair. M. Guizot, in his _Projet de Mariage royal_ (1 vol. 18mo: 1863; Paris, Hachette et Cie), has said that the marriage of Henry IV.’s daughter with the Prince of Wales was, in Richelieu’s eyes, one of the essential acts of a policy necessary to the greatness of the kingship and of France. He obtained the best conditions possible for the various interests involved, but without any stickling and without favor for such and such a one of these interests, skilfully adapting words and appearance, but determined upon attaining his end. The tarryings and miscarriages of Spanish policy had warned Richelieu to make haste. “In less than nine moons,” says James I.’s private secretary, James Howell, “this great matter was proposed, prosecuted, and accomplished; whereas the sun might, for as many years, have run his course from one extremity of the zodiac to the other, before the court of Spain would have arrived at any resolution and conclusion. That gives a good idea of the difference between the two nations--the leaden step of the one and the quicksilver movements of the other. It also shows that the Frenchman is more noble in his proceedings, less full of scruple, reserve, and distrust, and that he acts more chivalrously.” In France, meanwhile, as well as in Spain, the question of religion was the rock of offence. Richelieu confined himself to demanding, in a general way, that, in this matter, the King of England should grant, in order to obtain the sister of the King of France, all that he had promised in order to obtain the King of Spain’s. “So much was required,” he said, “by the equality of the two crowns.”