At length, by the end of the year, the hard terms of the treaty were drafted. Renard had done his best, and so had the Imperial ministers in Flanders; but Gardiner had been firm, and the conditions were a bitter dose for Spanish pride to swallow; for, as they stood, they bade fair to deprive the bridegroom’s country of the only benefit to be derived from the marriage—namely, control of the policy and resources of England. The Consort was to have no rule in the country, and none of his countrymen were to hold office of any sort; the Queen was to receive a jointure of 30,000 ducats a year from Flanders; and the issue of the marriage, if any, should, failing Philip’s only son Carlos, succeed to all his Crowns, as well as to England; whilst in the case of Mary’s death, the Consort was to have no hold whatever upon her country, nor was he to take the Queen or her children out of England without the consent of the Council. These and many similar provisions fenced round the authority of the Consort so completely as to deprive him of any direct political power in England; but Charles, confident in Mary’s secret promises to Renard that, notwithstanding the conditions, the will of the Emperor should prevail in England after the marriage,[25] determined to make the best of it, and to gain the stubborn islanders by his son’s charming, if they were not to be won by a diplomatic document. Noailles grew daily more bitter, and almost came to blows with Paget on the subject of the marriage, but it became clear even to him now that he had been beaten, and that in future England and the Emperor would make common cause against France. A pompous Flemish embassy, headed by the splendid young Count of Egmont, was known to be on its way across to ratify the marriage treaty in the name of the Emperor; and Noailles took care that all London should be in a fever of apprehension at their coming. On the 1st January a great retinue of servants with the baggage of the ambassadors rode through London to Durham House in the Strand, where Egmont and his suite were to be lodged. Thick snow lay upon the ground, and as the foreigners, with their long line of pack-horses, passed through the narrow lanes of the old city, the very street-boys pelted them with snowballs, “so hatfull was the sight of ther coming in to theym.”[26]