The great difficulty in the English question was the restitution of the property taken from the Church during the previous reigns. It was evident to the emperor that, if an uncompromising stand were taken up on that point, the whole edifice would collapse. Pole was all for complete and unconditional restitution, and his powers, indeed, gave him little or no discretion to compromise or abandon the claim of the Church. The first point therefore agreed upon by Charles and Philip was to delay Pole’s voyage to England until the pope had been induced to confer large discretionary powers on Pole, and the latter had been made to promise that he would do nothing except in accord with Philip. When this had been effected, and Renard, at Philip’s instance, had seen Pole and obtained a promise that he would not insist upon restitution of the property that had passed into private hands, he was allowed to proceed to England. Forty years afterwards, one of Philip’s English adherents, Father Persons, told him that all the ill-fortune that had attended his efforts in England was due to the impious omission at this juncture of insisting upon some sort of restitution of the ecclesiastical property in private hands. In November 1554 England returned to the bosom of the Church, and Pole to this extent was satisfied; but he was no politician, and could never be brought round to the purely Spanish view of English politics, which may be said indeed of most of Mary’s advisers. On the very day of Pole’s arrival it was officially announced that the queen was with child, and the new legate and the rest of the churchmen fell into what would now be looked upon as blasphemous comparisons, the people at large being suddenly caught up by the wave of rejoicing at the promise of an heir to the throne. The opportunity was discreetly taken by Philip to cause his instruments to propose in Parliament the sending by England of armed aid to the emperor against France, and the nomination of himself as Regent of England in the event of the looked-for heir outliving his mother. But again the over-zeal of the churchmen spoilt his game. Bonner and Gardiner began to think that persecution of Protestants was necessary and holy. Reaction in the country was the natural result, and Philip and Mary were obliged to dissolve Parliament in a hurry, without the political plans being effected.