The offer came weighted with a heavy bribe. The keen foresight of the Emperor already saw the difficulty of holding the Netherlands in union with the Spanish monarchy; and while Spain, Naples, and Franche Comte descended to Philip's eldest son, Charles promised the heritage of the Low Countries with England to the issue of Philip and Mary. He accepted too the demand of Gardiner and the Council that in the event of such a union England should preserve complete independence both of policy and action. In any case the marriage would save England from the grasp of France, and restore it, as the Emperor hinted, to the obedience of the Church. But the project was hardly declared when it was met by an outburst of popular indignation. Gardiner himself was against a union that would annul the national independence which had till now been the aim of Tudor policy, and that would drag England helplessly in the wake of the House of Austria. The mass of conservative Englishmen shrank from the religious aspects of the marriage. For the Emperor had now ceased to be an object of hope or confidence as a mediator who would at once purify the Church from abuses, and restore the unity of Christendom; he had ranged himself definitely on the side of the Papacy and of the Council of Trent; and the cruelties of the Inquisition which he had introduced into Flanders gave a terrible indication of the bigotry which he was to bequeath to his House. The marriage with Philip meant, it could hardly be doubted, a submission to the Papacy, and an undoing not only of the religious changes of Edward but of the whole system of Henry. Loyal and conservative as was the temper of the Parliament, it was at one in its opposition to a Spanish marriage and in the request which it made through a deputation of its members to the Queen that she would marry an Englishman. The request was a new step forward on the part of the Houses to the recovery of their older rights. Already called by Cromwell's policy to more than their old power in ecclesiastical matters, their dread of revolutionary change pushed them to an intervention in matters of state. Mary noted the advance with all a Tudor's jealousy. She interrupted the speaker; she rebuked the Parliament for taking too much on itself; she declared she would take counsel on such a matter "with God and with none other." But the remonstrance had been made, the interference was to serve as a precedent in the reign to come, and a fresh proof had been given that Parliament was no longer the slavish tool of the Crown. [Sidenote: Wyatt's rising.]