So when, on the 1st January 1554, a troop of foreign servants and harbingers rode through the city of London to prepare the lodgings of the brilliant imperial embassy that was to arrive next day, even the ’prentices gathered as they passed and greeted them with curses and volleys of snowballs.[144] The brilliant Count of Egmont and his train landed duly at the Tower wharf on the morrow, to ask formally for the hand of the Queen for the Emperor’s son. ‘They were met by Sir Anthony Browne, he being clothed in a very gorgeouse apparel. At the Tower Hill the earle of Devonshire (_i.e._, Courtenay), with the lorde Garrett and dyvers others, receyved him in most honorable and famylier wyse; and so the lorde of Devonshire, gevyng him the right hand, brought him thoroughte Chepsyde, and so fourthe to Dyrram Place (_i.e._, Durham House in the Strand), the people nothing rejoysing, helde downe their heddes sorrowfully.’[145] The formalities were soon got through with a few solemn banquets and courtly ceremonies, and on the 13th January Gardiner, with as good a face as he could put upon the matter, made an oration in the Chamber of Presence at Westminster to the lords and officials, declaring the Queen’s purpose to marry Philip of Spain: ‘in most godly lawfull matrimonye: and further, that she should have for her joynter xxx.^{mil}.. ducketes by the yere, with all the Lowe Country of Flanders; and that the issue betweene them two lawfully begotten shoulde, yf there were any, be heir as well to the Kingdome of Spayne, as also to the sayde Lowe Country. He declared further that we were much bounden to thanck God that so noble, worthye, and famouse a prince, would vouchsafe so to humble himself in this maryadge to take upon him rather as a subject than otherwise: and that the Quene should rule all thinges as nowe: and that there should be of the Counsell no Spanyard, nether should have the custody of any fortes or castells, nether have rule or offyce in the quene’s house or elsewhere in all England.’[146] Gardiner made the best of it, but the bare fact was enough to send the friends of the late regime, and not a few of those who had profited by the plunder of the church, into a delirium of fear. Carews, Wyatts, and Greys protested, rebelled and collapsed, for England, in the main, was loyal to Mary, and the vast majority of the people, except in and about London, bitterly resented the iconoclastic changes of Edward’s reign. The Queen knew her own mind too, and in the face of danger was as firm as a rock, for in her sight the Spanish marriage meant the resurrection of her country and the salvation of her people. Charles and his son doubtless thought so too in a general way, but that was not their first object. What they wanted was to humble France permanently by means of their command of English resources, and to make Spain the dictatress of the world.