not require much rhetoric, for there is not a man amongst them worth anything, counting the married ones and all. If, after this, she inclines to your Majesty, it will be necessary for you to send me orders whether I am to carry it any further or throw cold water on it and set up the Archduke Ferdinand, for I see no other person we can propose to whom she would agree.”[16] Philip had sent to the Queen a present of jewels by the Bishop of Aquila, with which she was delighted, and assured Feria that those who said her sympathies were French told an untruth. She was indeed quite coquettish with him sometimes, but he felt that he was outwitted. He could get no information as he did in the last reign. The councillors fought shy of him, anxious as ever for bribes and pensions, but willing to give no return for them, for the very good reason that they had nothing to give, they being as hopelessly in the dark as every one else as to the Queen’s intentions. “Indeed I am afraid that one fine day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be the last man in the place to know anything about it,” said Feria. In the meanwhile Arundel was ruining himself with ostentatious expenditure; borrowing vast sums of money from Italian bankers and scattering gifts of jewels of great value amongst the ladies who surrounded the Queen. He was a man far into middle age at the time, with two married daughters, the Duchess of Norfolk and Lady Lumley, and was in antiquity of descent the first of English nobles; but one can imagine how the keen young woman on the throne must have smiled inwardly at the idea of the empty-headed, flighty old fop, aspiring to be her partner. “There is a great deal of talk also,” writes Feria, “lately about the Queen marrying the Duke Adolphus, brother of the King of Denmark. One of the principal recommendations they find in him is that he is a heretic, but I am persuading them that he is a very good Catholic and not so comely as they make him out to be, as I do not think he would suit us.” At last, after the usual tedious deliberation, the prayers and invocations for Divine guidance, Philip made up his mind that he, like another Metius Curtius, would save his cause by sacrificing himself. He approached the subject in a true spirit of martyrdom. Feria had been repeating constantly--almost offensively--how unpopular he was in England, ever since Mary died. He had, he was told, not a man in his favour, he was distrusted and disliked, and so on, but yet he so completely deceived himself with regard to the support to be obtained by Elizabeth from her people through her national policy and personal popularity, as to write to Feria announcing his gracious intention of sacrificing himself for the good of the Catholic Church and marrying the Queen of England on condition of her becoming a Catholic and obtaining secret absolution from the Pope. “In this way it will be evident and manifest that I am serving the Lord in marrying her and that she has been