It is thought that when years later Milton drew his portrait of the great apostate of heaven, he had in his mind this man who was to many the great apostate of earth: that character of inevitable greatness which is in the Miltonic Satan is also in the royalist statesman, who scorned the weaker spirits of his time, much as the fiend despised the weaker spirits of heaven and hell. Neither Charles nor Henrietta had ever truly loved him. Greatness disturbs and frightens smaller minds, and the Queen had other reasons to regard him coldly. He was not handsome (though she noted and remembered years after his death that he had the most beautiful hands in the world), he was unversed in the courtier-like arts which she loved, he was the friend of Spain rather than of France, and above all his policy in Ireland was strongly anti-Catholic. Nevertheless, experience and trouble were opening her eyes. Lady Carlisle, Strafford's close friend, had done something to prepare his way with the Queen, and the sense of common danger was coming to complete her work. On April 13th, 1640, the Short Parliament met. Charles, for the first time for eleven years, stood face to face with the representatives of his people, representatives for the most part hostile, for the elections had gone badly, and few of his or the Queen's friends had been returned. Nevertheless, he was hopeful, for he held what he and perhaps what his advisers believed to be a trump card. He had probably throughout his reign been aware that France had not forgotten her ancient alliance with Scotland. He had recently been reminded in a sufficiently startling manner that Scotland on her side had an equally long memory. He possessed evidence of a letter written by the rebellious Scots to the King of France, evidence on which he acted while Parliament was sitting by sending Lord Loudon and others of the Scotch Commissioners to the Tower. It was not yet forty years since the union of the two Crowns. The Scotch were unpopular in England, and the favour shown to them by the King and Queen was resented. Scotland and France, whose alliance had more than once embarrassed England, were both old enemies. It argues no special lack of insight in either Charles or his wife that they thought the discovery of these practices would lead to a great revulsion of feeling against the Scots in the minds of the English Puritans. That it did not do so is a remarkable proof of the enlightened self-interest of the latter, and of their power of setting a religious and political bond of union above an antiquated national prejudice.