need them; but they had to give way before the pressure of the Queen and Feria, insisting ultimately, however, that Philip should pay the sum of £2,000 for which Gresham had made himself responsible but had not paid for the arms supplied. The recruiting money of the Germans and first month’s pay was lost. Relations between the imperious Feria and the English Council became daily more strained, every unimportant point was made a question of dignity by the ambassador,[130] and the sick, disconsolate Queen between the jarring elements, wishing to conciliate both sides, was rendered doubly unhappy. From Feria’s contemptuous and insulting references to Pole it is evident that the Cardinal declined to become an instrument for purely Spanish ends; whilst all the rest of the Councillors are dismissed by the ambassador in his letters to the King as lying rascals intent only upon plunder. Looking beyond Feria’s intemperate, angry words, the principal sin of the Councillors in his eyes seems to have been a disinclination to squander money of which the nation was so sorely in need upon raising forces without some assurance that they would be used for English ends. Already people were grumbling that the powerful fleet under Clinton was to be merely an auxiliary of Philip in the war, at his entire disposal, and the continued bad fortune that followed the Spanish arms increased the anger in England at being thus tied to the tail of Philip in the war, without any attempt being made by him to recover the lost English fortresses.