Lord Bristol (Sir John Digby) was full of care, for matters were not going very smoothly with the difficult negotiation upon the successful issue of which his whole future depended, as well as great international issues. For twelve years he {68} had been backwards and forwards to Spain as King James' ambassador to bring about a marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta Maria. James Stuart was a cunning fool, who was easily beaten in diplomacy, because he flattered himself that he could beat everybody else in duplicity. Most of his life, from long before he inherited the English crown, he had been playing the same game: trying to make other men his tools by pretending to agree with them. He had professed himself both Catholic and Protestant so often that now no one believed or trusted him, least of all the Catholics, whom he had deceived again and again. [Sidenote: The English match] When it had been necessary for Philip III. and Lerma to divert England from a threatened coalition with France, they had feigned to listen to the British King's advances, which they had previously repelled with scorn. Though insincere, they always had in view the prospect of gaining great immediate advantages for the Catholics of England, and subsequently they hoped the re-entry of Great Britain into the fold of the Church. The King of Spain and his minister had also been somewhat led astray by the sanguine hopes in this direction, given by their own ambassador in London, Count de Gondomar, whose diplomatic position was as much at stake as that of the Earl of Bristol. Gondomar, confident, as well he might be, of his power to bend King James ultimately to his will, had, there is no doubt, systematically minimised for years the obstacles to the match on both sides, and had led both his own Government and King James to believe that the other side would ultimately make concessions, which {69} we now see clearly would have been impossible for either. James or his son dared not become openly Catholic, nor could they force the English Parliament to reverse the whole religious policy of the last half century at the bidding of a foreign Power; whilst, with their traditions behind them, it was equally impossible for Philip and Lerma to mate their Princess with a "heretic." In order to keep James from breaking away from Spain, the intrigue had for some years past been transferred to Rome, where a dispensation from the Pope for the marriage was being interminably discussed.