Spain did everything possible to thwart the negotiation. Her ambassador in the presence of the King’s council inveighed against the plan, asserting that the kingdom of France was going to ruin, but he was cautious not to allege any ground but that of religion.[1478] Finally the counter-practices of the Guises and the Spanish ambassador, partly by appeals to religious scruples and partly by the means of lavish promises, overcame Anjou’s hesitation and he flatly refused to consider the marriage.[1479] The King was furious. “Brother,” he said, “you should have used some plainness with me in this matter and not leave me to wade so far to abuse a prince I so much esteem and honour. You allege conscience to be the cause but I know it is a late pension offered unto you by the clergy, who would have you still remain here for a champion of the Catholic faith. I tell you plainly, I will have no other champion here but myself, and seeing you have such a desire to remain here on such respects, it behooves me the more narrowly to look to you; and as for the clergy, seeing they have so great superfluity, and I so great necessity, the benefices being at my disposition, I will take a new order; and as for those who make the offer, I will make some of them shorter by the head.”[1480] Nevertheless, despite the fact that the cause was a lost one, the matter was protracted so long that the negotiators of the affair themselves perceived the humor in it. Elizabeth protested that “of herself she had no mind thereto, yet the continual crying unto her of her Privy Council, the necessity of the time, and the love of her subjects, had turned her mind to marriage,” while the duke of Anjou reasserted his belief in his future damnation if he yielded anything in the matter of religion. Smith, the English envoy, solemnly averred that “the matter of religion would be the most honourable to break off with,” both for his mistress and the duke, and in the same breath asked whether it would suffice if the duke were suffered for a time to have his mass private in some little oratory or chapel—this so that there should be no scandal to any of the Queen’s subjects. The queen mother replied that the duke must have the exercise of his religion open, lest he should seem to be ashamed of it, and that he was now of late so devout that he heard two or three masses every day, and fasted the Lent and vigils so precisely “that he began to be lean and evil-coloured,” so that she was angry with him and told him that she “had rather he were an Huguenot than be so foolishly precise to hurt his health.” She told the English ambassador that he would not be content to have his mass in a corner, but insisted upon “high mass and all the ceremonies thereof according to the time, and in song after all solemn fashion of the Roman church, and a church or chapel appointed where he might openly have his priests and singers and use all their ceremonies.”