Philip of Spain and his representatives in England had not realised the true strength of Elizabeth's position, and certainly had no suspicion that she and her advisers were entirely alive to it. On this point they had absolutely no misgivings. They took it for granted that the English queen must place herself in their hands and meekly obey their behests, if only in order to secure Spanish support against France. Philip began operations by proposing him self as her husband, expecting thereby to obtain for himself a far greater degree of power than he had derived from his union with her sister, while inviting her to share the throne of the first Power in Europe. But Elizabeth and Cecil were alive to the completeness of the hold on Philip they already possessed; and Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, would have utterly stultified her own position by marrying her dead sister's husband, since it would be necessary to obtain a papal dispensation, acknowledge the Pope's authority, and recognise by implication the validity of her father's marriage with Katharine of Aragon. To the ambassador's amazed indignation, the Queen with the support of the Council, decisively rejected the honour. Paget, who had in the last reign stood almost alone in commending the Spanish match, would have repeated his counsel now; but he had been displaced, while Cecil and his mistress were entirely at one. The Queen's argument that the marriage, however attractive to herself or desirable politically, was, from her point of view out of the question, was unanswerable. The Spaniards had to cast about for some other candidate for her hand, whose success would still be likely to attach England to the chariot-wheels of Spain; besides seeking another bride for their own King. When Philip's hand was definitely declined, three months after Elizabeth's accession, the most pressing danger arising out of the Marriage question was at an end. Thenceforward, dalliance with would-be suitors became simply one of the tactical tricks of Elizabeth's diplomacy, employed by her perhaps not less to the torment of her own advisers than to the perturbation of foreign chancelleries; seeing that whether she knew her own mind or not, up to the last she invariably took very good care that no one else should know it. [Sidenote: The Religious Question]