For a time it looked as if the alliance had been rendered proof against all attack by the marriage of Philip and Mary, and it is highly probable that it would have been so if Renard's plan to marry Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy had been carried out; but here again circumstances were too strong for persons. The marriage would have been useless unless Elizabeth were first legitimised, and Mary {179} could not legitimise her without bastardising herself, which she obstinately refused to do, notwithstanding all the entreaties of Philip and his friends. But Philip ostentatiously favoured his young sister-in-law, in the hope that when she came to the throne he might have some claim upon her gratitude, and induce her to maintain the friendship which was so necessary for his interests. It was no question of Catholic or Protestant yet. He would have supported her--as indeed he did--however firm a Protestant she might be; for the next Catholic heir to the crown, Mary Stuart, was practically a Frenchwoman, married to the heir of the French throne, and with her as Queen of England and France, Spain and the house of Burgundy would have been ruined. Elizabeth knew as well as any one how vital it was for Philip to be friendly with England; and during a long course of years she traded unscrupulously upon her knowledge that she might assail, insult, plunder, and make more or less veiled war upon him, and yet that he dared not openly break with her whilst France was greedily eyeing his Flemish harbours. From the first moment that Elizabeth's reform policy became evident it was seen by Spanish statesmen that either the government of England must be changed, so as to bring it back to the old cordial alliance, or else Spain must seek new combinations of powers, in order to redress the balance. For the first alternative to be successful promptness was necessary, and the government of the Queen changed whilst the country was yet unsettled and divided. Feria wrote from London to Philip only a day or two after Mary's death that {180} the country must be dealt with sword in hand rather than by cajolery, unless it were to be allowed to slip through their hands; and thenceforward for years all of Philip's agents, one after the other, pressed upon their master the necessity of using force, either by aiding the Catholics to revolt or by a direct attack on England. Angry, almost contemptuous, references to the King's hesitancy and timidity are constantly occurring in the letters of the various Spanish ambassadors in England, but beyond occasional money aid to the English Catholics nothing could be obtained from the King.