A fortnight after (May 25), he wrote again, replying more elaborately to the emperor's charges. It was true, he admitted, that in his letters to the queen he had dwelt more upon her religious duties than upon her marriage: it was true that he had been backward in his demonstrations of pleasure, because he was a person of few words. But, so far from disapproving of that marriage, he looked upon it as the distinct work of God; {p.149} and when his nephew had come with complaints to him, he had forbidden him his presence. He had spoken of the rule of a stranger in England as likely to be a lesson to the people; but he had meant only that, as their disasters had befallen them through their own king Henry, their deliverance would be wrought for them by one who was not their own. When the late parliament had broken up without consenting to the restoration of union, he had consoled the queen with assuring her that he saw in it the hand of Providence; the breach of a marriage between an English king and a Spanish princess had caused the wound which a renewed marriage of a Spanish king and an English queen was to heal.[350] [Footnote 350: Scrissi alla Regina non la volendo contristare condolermi di cio, che lo interpretava et intendeva che questa tardita non venisse tanto da lei quanto delle Providentia di Dio, il qual habbia ordinato che si come per discordia matrimoniale d'un Re Inglese et d'una Regina Hispana fu levata l'obedientia della chiesa de quel Regno cosi dalla concordia matrimoniale d'un Re Hispano et d'una Regina Inglese ella vi doverse ritornare.--Pole to Morone: _Epist._ Reg. Pol. vol. iv.] The defence was elaborate, and, on the whole, may have been tolerably true. The pope would not take the trouble to read it, or even to hear it read;[351] but the substance, as related to him by Morone, convinced him that the emperor's accusations were exaggerated: to recall a legate at the instance of a secular sovereign was an undesirable precedent;[352] and the commission was allowed to stand. Julius wrote to Charles, assuring him that he was mistaken in the legate's feelings, leaving the emperor at the same time, however, full power to keep him in Flanders or to send him to England at his own discretion. [Footnote 351: E benche S. Sanctita non havesse patienza secundo l'ordinario suo di leggere o di udir la lettera, nondimeno le dissi talmente la summa che nostro restare satisfattissima, e disse esser piu che certa che quella non haveva dato causa ne all' Imperatore ne ad altri d'usar con lei termini cosi extravaganti.--Morone to Pole: Burnet's _Collectanea_.]