Gresham’s instructions are dated two days after this letter was written, 12th March. He had previously been dismissed from his former post as royal financial agent at Antwerp, and his reappointment was probably owing to the fact that in the narrow condition of the national finances he alone had sufficient authority on the Continental money market to raise the funds required. He was to bargain for the loan of £100,000 that had been offered through one Germayn Scholl for one year, and to ascertain what powder and other munitions of war could be obtained in Flanders for English use.[122] Scholl was Gresham’s kinsman by marriage, but the bargain does not seem to have been fully concluded, only £10,000 being obtained from that source,[123] Gresham remaining in Flanders until the summer, spending much of the money he could raise in munitions of war. He had been instructed to present letters of recommendation to King Philip, and to acquaint him with all he did. But Gresham, who was no admirer of the Spanish faction, appears to have been somewhat remiss in paying court to the King, for he failed to mention anything about him in his letters. Mary, who was always hankering for news of her husband, began to get restive at the omission, and her Secretary, Boxall, writes a private letter to Gresham in April hinting to him that he will make things easier all round if he will pay more court to the King, as the Queen asked about him. Gresham promptly took the hint and wrote a long letter to Mary, saying that he had just seen King Philip at a monastery outside Brussels, where he had passed Easter, “who is in right good health as your Majestie’s own harte can desyre.”[124] Whilst Gresham in Flanders was thus borrowing and spending money, Feria was chafing at the lack of sympathetic activity in the Councillors in the direction he desired. Writing to Philip in March, he says: “Before God, I can do no more, Sire! I do not know what to make of these people. For, believe me, your Majesty, from morning to night and from night to morning they are changing their minds about everything, and do what I can it is impossible for me to make them understand what a state they are in—the worst, surely, that ever people were in before. If it were only for their own sakes, I should like to leave them to the mercy of those who would treat them as they deserve; but I am afraid that they will drag us after them, as your Majesty knows. The Queen does, and says, all she can, and she really has spirit and goodwill; but in all else there is nothing but trouble. As for the Cardinal, he is a dead man; and although he has plucked up a little with what they write to him every day from Italy since the loss of Calais, he is not so warm as I should have liked to see him. Of all the rest of them, I really do not know which is the worst disposed to your interest. But I know that those whom you have favoured most serve you the least.”[125]