"We know you will think a little more time will be well spent to bring her with us, when by that means we may upon equaller terms treat with them of other things. Do your best there (_i.e._ in England), and we will not fail of ours here.... Of all this we must entreat you to speak nothing; for if you do our labour here will be the harder, and when it shall be hoped there and not take {115} effect they will be the more discontented.[24] I, your Baby, have, since this conclusion, been with my mistress, and she sits publicly with me at the plays, and within these two or three days shall take place of the Queen as Princess of England." James in London was sorely perplexed, for the Marquis of Hinojosa and Carlos Coloma, the Spanish ambassadors, were pressing him still more to make the concessions to the English Catholics thorough and irrevocable; whilst the Council, even Buckingham's sycophantic creatures, Conway and Calvert, the Secretaries of State, were ill at ease. But the step had to be taken, and James, with many prickings of conscience, or more worldly fears, summoned his Council at Whitehall on Sunday the 20th July, and, after feasting the two Spanish ambassadors, the King of England took an oath before them and a Catholic priest, with Cottington and the two Secretaries of State only in attendance, to comply with all the conditions of the marriage which had been accepted in Madrid, the English Catholics being given immediate and complete toleration.[25] This ceremony in the palace of Whitehall having come to an end, King James was entering his coach to go to the Spanish embassy, and take a secret oath there to obtain within a {116} given time the abrogation by Parliament of all the penal laws, when, as he says, Lord Andover, travel-stained with his long rapid journey from Madrid, "came stepping in the door like a ghost," and delivered the letter from Charles and Buckingham, saying that the Spaniards were insisting upon deferring the departure of the Infanta until the spring, to give time for the reception of the Pope's consent to the modified conditions, and for the full execution of the decrees, relieving the English Catholics from their disabilities. [Sidenote: Charles outwitted] Poor James must have seen now clearly that he had been outwitted. He was pledged, pledged up to the hilt. He had just solemnly sworn to accept all the Spanish conditions. His son was still in the hands of Spain; no promise whatever binding Spain had been given for the return of the Palatinate to Frederick; and now the gage that he and his shallow favourite had thought would guarantee their demands upon Spain was not to be delivered until next spring, which might mean never!