Of the few Spanish nobles of high rank who stayed with Philip II. during the whole of his residence in England after his marriage with Queen Mary, one was Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, a prime favourite and close friend of Philip. This nobleman had fallen deeply in love with Miss Jane Dormer, one of Mary's maids of {268} honour, and married her, and although the secret of the union had been well kept, circumstances made it necessary to openly avow it before the King and his suite left London for Flanders in September, 1555. Feria was again in London with the King in March, 1557, for a few months, but in January, 1558, he came back in another capacity. The war was going badly for Philip and England. The French had taken Calais, and Guines was on the point of falling; if the contest was to be carried on at all more money and more men must be squeezed out of unwilling England, or otherwise peace must be made, with England for a scapegoat. Philip could not come himself, so he sent his haughty, overbearing favourite Feria as his ambassador to bully and bribe the English courtiers and coerce the sorely beset Queen. He came with a large train of servants and with great magnificence; his English wife, a country knight's daughter only as she was, as proud as himself; and he was granted the use of Durham Place, furnished from the Queen's own house, as other great ambassadors had been granted it before him. Egmont had been lodged there with his splendid train in January, 1554, when he had come to offer Philip's hand to Mary. Chatillon, the French ambassador, too, had been given the use of the house during his short embassy in 1550, so that there was nothing extraordinary in the granting of the house to Feria. Only that former ambassadors had stayed for a few weeks, whereas Feria and his successor remained in possession for five years and a half, and made of Durham Place a trysting-place for treason during the most of that time. {269}