Philip accompanied his wife in state through London from Hampton Court to Greenwich[157] for the farewell; and there urged her—as he did her Council—to be moderate in punishment. Mary herself was kindly and gentle; but she was a Tudor Queen, and she lived in an age when the life of the individual was considered as nothing to the safety of the State as constituted. Moreover, counsels of moderation coming from Philip of Spain, the patron of the Inquisition, could hardly have sounded very convincing; though they were sincere in the circumstances, for Philip was a statesman before all things, and persecution in England at the time was contrary to his policy. In any case Philip did his best to keep his hand on the brake before saying goodbye to his wife. Mary was in the deepest affliction when she took leave of him on the 29th August 1555, though she struggled to retain her composure before the spectators of the scene. With one close embrace she bade him farewell, and sought solitude in a room of which the window commanded a view of the Thames. So long as the barge that bore him to Gravesend was in sight Mary’s tear-dimmed eyes followed it yearningly; whilst Philip, courteously punctilious, continued waving his hand and lifting his plumed cap to her until a turn in the river shut him from her sight. Renard was right. No sooner had Philip gone than the fires blazed out. Hooper, Rogers, Saunders and Tayor, were burnt a fortnight afterwards; then Ridley and Latimer some weeks later, to be followed in a few months by Cranmer and the host of others less distinguished. Gardiner, Mary’s prime minister and only able councillor, died in November, just after the opening of parliament; and then, with Pole, practically a foreign ecclesiastic, as her only guide, with a divided Council, and herself in utter despondency, Mary sank deeper and deeper into impotence. Philip had ordered before he left that minutes of all the Council meetings should be sent to him, but he soon found it difficult to control, for his own ends, the action of ministers far away; and when soon afterwards he began to press for English ships to fight the French at sea, he found the Queen’s Council tardy and unwilling. The ships, they said, were not ready; but as soon as possible some would be sent to guard the Channel. This did not suit Philip. The ships must be instantly fitted out and commissioned; not at Dover, as the Council had promised, but at Portsmouth, to guard the Emperor’s passage to Spain. This, of course, was the thin end of the wedge; what he really needed—and it was now the only benefit he could hope for from his marriage—was that an English fleet should be at his disposal to attack France. The coolness of the English Council and the continued refusal to accede to Mary’s request and give him the crown matrimonial of England, soon changed Philip’s attitude, and the suavity that had so remarkably characterised him in