accession, the Queen acknowledged herself answerable for the salaries, three years in arrear, of all the Crown officials, although she had no longer a private purse; and while one royal proclamation restored a depreciated currency, setting forth the Queen’s “tender care to her loving subjects,” adding how sensible she was of “the great intolerable charges had come to her subjects by base money,”[346] another remitted two odious and oppressive taxes levied by the late Parliament. These were subsidies of four shillings in the pound on land, and two shillings and eightpence on goods, a burden that had weighed heavily on the small merchants and farmers. Mary’s scrupulous justice and honesty left little wherewith to make a show of generosity. It had ever been the custom for English monarchs to reward those who had fought in their quarrel, with rich gifts of land and money, but clamour as her friends might, the Queen would not make grants of Church property, and there were few other resources at her command. “She is so poor,” said de Noailles, “that her want of money is apparent, even to the dishes put upon her table.” Her choice of Gardiner as Chancellor was fortunate for the rehabilitation of the public finances. His ability in this direction was undeniable, his integrity known to all, and while he lived, however low the state of her coffers, Mary was never in debt. An Englishman to a fault, rough, uncouth and frank, often to incivility, Gardiner was liked by few. Both the French and Imperial ambassadors hated him cordially. Renard added distrust to his relations with him, remembering the active part which he had taken in the divorce of Queen Katharine, and in the declaration of the royal supremacy. He could not believe in the sincerity of the man, who was in reality burning with desire to prove it. But apart from his past history, Gardiner’s actual attitude was an obstacle to imperial interests in England. His patriotism, no less than his honesty and common sense, led him to discern that no matrimonial alliance, however brilliant, would be acceptable to the nation, if contracted with a foreigner. Fear and abhorrence of any “foreign potentate” having jurisdiction in this realm had become part and parcel of that insular prejudice, which had sprung up since the separation from Rome, a prejudice which Mary underrated, if she did not entirely ignore it, while Renard, to make the situation acute, was entrusted with a secret mission from the Emperor to bring about a marriage between her and his son, the Prince of Spain. There were henceforth three antagonistic parties in the State—the Spanish, the loyal English headed by Gardiner, and the disloyal, leagued secretly with the French.