{p.056} The external advantages of the connection were obvious; it recommended itself to the queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in her blood, and from the assistance which it promised to afford her in the great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary affected to find difficulties; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to prolong the conversation upon a subject which delighted her. She spoke of her age; Philip was twenty-seven, she ten years older; she called him "boy;" she feared she might not be enough for him; she was unsusceptible; she had no experience in love;[127] with such other phrases, which Renard interpreted at their true importance. With the queen there would be no difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only English statesman who listened with any show of favour. [Footnote 127: "Elle jura que jamais elle n'avoit senti esquillon de ce que l'on appelle amour, ny entre en pensement de volupte, etc."--Renard to the Bishop of Arras: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.] The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some attempt, however, may be partially successful. The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England, liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential family, titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of confiscated church property. There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink into a provincial dependency; while, again, there was the utmost unwillingness to be again entangled in the European war; the French ambassador insisted that the emperor only desired the marriage to secure English assistance; and the council believed that, whatever promises might be made, whatever stipulations insisted on, such a marriage, sooner or later, would implicate them. The country was exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state of unexampled suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet and public economy; there were attractions in the offer of a powerful alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance; they desired to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their queen at home. With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while Gardiner was loudly national.