It was at the expiration of five years of negotiation, that James at length saw the end of what had hitherto been an ever-continuing vista. The dispensation of the Pope, an indispensable preliminary to the union of a Most Catholic princess, with a Protestant heir-apparent, had been held up as a difficulty; James immediately loosened the reins with which he had held in the Catholic recusants--he set them at liberty, for the good of the reformed religion, _he said_; then apologized to his subjects for having so set them at liberty--for the benefit of Protestantism; and finally, he exulted in having accomplished so honorable an end for England, as making her the first to enter the path of moderation. He, moreover, sent to Spain, Digby, the good and great Lord Bristol, and while _he_ was negotiating with Philip IV., the Infanta’s brother, George Gage, “a polite and prudent gentleman,” was employed at Rome to smooth down the obstacles which the zeal of the Fourteenth Gregory raised in behalf of his mother-church. The parties were a long time at issue as to what period the presumed offspring of this marriage should remain under the guardianship of their mother; that is to say, under the Catholic tuition of her confessors. The period of “fourteen years,” was suggested by the Pope, and agreed to by the Court of Spain. Now, George Gage, we are told, was both polite and prudent; George made some slight objection. The father of the faithful and the descendant of Roderic now named twelve years as the stipulated period of maternal or ecclesiastical rule. Mr. Gage, without losing sight of his prudence, retained all his civility; he treated the Pope courteously. Gregory, in return, granted the dispensation, condescended even to agree to the term of nine years, and merely asked a few privileges for the Catholic suite of the Infanta, which were not hard to grant, and would have been impolitic to refuse. James’s advisers counselled him to demand the restitution of the Palatinate by a preliminary treaty. This he wisely refrained from doing; he saw that his desired object was considered inseparable from the marriage, and he was content to trust to the existing treaty which, probably, would not have been changed, had he so expressed his wish. There is a curious item in all these diplomatic relations; beside the public treaty there were various private articles, passed between and signed by the parties concerned, agreeing that more toleration should be granted to the papists, and that more of the penal laws against them should be repealed than was expressed in the public document. There appears also to have existed a yet more private treaty, of even more restricted circulation, whereby James was not to be required to act up to the very letter of that article, by which his royal word pledged what was then considered--emancipation to the Catholics.