Throughout the negotiations that followed Elizabeth’s accession, Philip’s advisers urged upon him incessantly the vital need for him to retain his hold over England by conquest and force if other means failed. The new Queen, they said, was not yet firmly established; the country was unsettled, and now was the time to act if ever. Philip was well aware that the friendship of England was of greater importance to him than ever, but he hated war, and the growth of protestantism in Europe, especially now that Elizabeth was Queen of England, had suggested to him a combination that exactly suited his diplomatic methods. When the peace negotiations had first been broached in the summer of 1558, Henry II. of France had suggested that a close league of the great Catholic powers might be formed to withstand the growth of heresy throughout Europe. Such combinations had been attempted several times before, but had never been sincerely carried out; national traditions had always been too strong. It had been further proposed at the ephemeral truce of Vaucelles in 1556, that the friendship of France and Spain might be cemented by the marriage of Philip’s only son Carlos to Henry’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of France. The idea slumbered and the truce was broken; but at the beginning of the peace negotiations of Cateau Cambresis the marriage was again brought forward, and in principle accepted by Philip. When it became evident after Mary Tudor’s death that England under the new Queen might stand aside, or even permanently oppose Spain on religious grounds, Philip decided that an entire change of policy that should isolate Elizabeth would suit him better than war. So a close union with France was adopted; Philip’s name was substituted for that of his son in the treaty, and the widower of thirty-two became the betrothed husband of the most beautiful and gifted princess in Europe, the dainty eldest daughter of Henry II. and Catharine de Medici. It was a clever stroke of policy; for it not only bound France to Philip against heresy everywhere, as it was intended to do, but it enabled him to counteract from the inside any attempt on the part of his allies to depose Elizabeth of England in favour of Mary Queen of Scots, the next Catholic heir and the betrothed wife of the Dauphin of France. So far as France was concerned, the substitution of Philip for his son as a husband of the princess was an advantage. Don Carlos, though of the same age as the bride (14), was a deformed, stunted epileptic, who probably for years to come, if ever, would not possess any political power; whereas Philip, in the prime of manhood, was by far the most powerful sovereign in the world at the time, and could, if he chose, at once render any aid that France might need in suppressing the reformers.