[Footnote 483: Le dict conseil voyant que plusieurs gentilhommes s'assembloient a Londres, et communicquoient par ensemble, qu'ils se tenoient a Londres, contre ce qu'est accoustume en Angleterre, qu'est que ceulx qu'ilz eu moien ne demeurent a Londres en l'este, ains au pays pour la chaleur et maladies ordinaires qu'ilz y reignent, et que toutes les dicts gentilhommes sont heretiques, ains este pour le plus part rebelles, les autres parens et adherens de Elizabetz, leur a faict faire commandement de se retirer chascun en sa maison et se separer; qu'ilz ont prins mal et en out fait grandes doleances, en pretendant qu'ilz estoient gens de bien, qu'ilz n'estoient traistres.--Renard to the Emperor: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.] But neither impatience nor violence could conceal the fatal change which had passed over Mary's prospects. Not till the end of July could she part finally from her hopes. Then, at last, the glittering dream was lost for the waking truth; then at once from the imagination of herself as the virgin bride who was to bear a child for the recovery of a lost world, she was precipitated into the poor certainty that she was a blighted and {p.218} a dying woman. Sorrow was heaped on sorrow; Philip would stay with her no longer. His presence was required on the continent, where his father was about to anticipate the death which he knew to be near, and, after forty years of battling with the stormy waters, to collect himself for the last great change in the calm of a monastery in Spain. It was no new intention. For years the emperor had been in the habit of snatching intervals of retreat; for years he had made up his mind to relinquish at some time the labours of life before relinquishing life itself. The vanities of sovereignty had never any particular charm for Charles V.; he was not a man who cared "to monarchise and kill with looks," or who could feel a pang at parting with the bauble of a crown; and when the wise world cried out in their surprise, and strained their fancies for the cause of conduct which seemed so strange to them, they forgot that princes who reign to labour, grow weary like the peasant of the burden of daily toil. Many influences combined to induce Charles to delay no longer in putting his resolution in effect.