The French marriage of Charles I represented, in a measure, a compromise between the hopes of the English Catholics and the fears of the English Puritans. From the point of view of the latter an alliance with any Catholic Princess was a misfortune; but, nevertheless, Henrietta was regarded as a modified evil by those who had feared a Spanish Infanta. Spain was the old enemy, the land which had sent out the Great Armada, and which in every way had fostered the most militant and uncompromising elements of English Catholicism; France, if unfortunately it had not fulfilled the promise it had once given of becoming a Protestant country, was Catholic in another and a far less rigid sense, and it was remembered that Henrietta was the daughter of the man who had been at one time the hope of the Reformers, and who, if he had deserted his faith with a light-hearted cynicism not often to be paralleled, had found at the end that the Mass which gained Paris for him could not save him from the knife of the man who was believed to be the pupil of the Jesuits. The qualified satisfaction which was general in England is well reflected in the following paragraph which appeared in a newsletter when it was known that the negotiations for the marriage were approaching completion:-- "The first tidings of this joyfull newes were welcome unto all except Jezuited English who have not so much hope to accomplish their ambitious projects, allwayes hurtfull to the good and tranquillity of this Kingdome by this Marriage of France, as they had by that of Spaine, since all men know who know any thing at all, how all true-hearted Frenchmen detest and hate this cruell king-killing Ignatian order since the death and murther of two Burbonian Henries kild by them and their accomplices."[104] But, on the other hand, the substitution of a French for a Spanish Queen was a severe blow to the English Catholics. These heroic men who, hiding their heads "mid ignomy, death and tombs," had kept alive through years of persecution the faith of their fathers, had acquired something of the harshness and narrowness which belongs to a persecuted remnant. The more liberal type of Catholicism prevalent in France was not congenial to them,[105] and they had, moreover, good reason to be grateful to the House of Austria. The King of Spain not only permitted English seminaries and religious houses to be established in Spain and in the Low Countries, but he even supported some of them with pensions, and during the negotiations with James I for a matrimonial alliance he showed both his will and his power to protect the English Catholics at home, where a peace of the Church was then enjoyed which was long remembered in less happy times. All persecution ceased, and at St. James's Palace a Catholic Chapel was seen in course of building, designed for the use of the Spanish Queen who never came.