All this haughty pressure on the part of Feria, and the servile compliance of Paget and the rest of the Spanish clique, in order to bully the English into raising a large force to join Philip’s army on the pretext of recovering Calais, was seen by the politic King to be unwise. The English fleet, with its seven thousand soldiers on board, might be useful for him in many ways, and he made much of Clinton when he saw him in Brussels, urging him to have the fleet provisioned and ready for service whenever ordered from June to September; but the raising of a land army of Englishmen did not suit him: in the first place because it would pledge him to a regular campaign against the French in Calais for the ultimate benefit of England alone, to the neglect of the Flemish frontier that concerned him most, and secondly, as he says, because “the English, as they would arm unwillingly, however much they were pressed and encouraged, would not be of much use. I can even see that they might cause more inconvenience than otherwise. Either they might come so badly organised and weak as to be easily defeated, which would be most injurious, or they might force me to go to their rescue, and upset my own plans.” The King was of opinion that the English had much better concentrate their land strength on the Scottish frontier and in Ireland, so long as he was allowed to do as he liked with the English fleet. The meaning of this is made abundantly clear, and Philip’s own foresight vindicated by the sequel. If the English Council were encouraged to employ all their own forces on the Scottish Border it was foreseen that they would not need the three thousand or more German auxiliaries which were now mustering on the Rhine under the leader Wallerdun, much of the money for them having been already disbursed by the English special agents in Flanders, Sir William Pickering and others. Feria, in his letter of 18th May to the King, says: “I understand that these people already repent of having asked for the three thousand Germans, for their view now is only to defend their own shores, and the Scots will not trouble them. They have said nothing to me about it yet, but I know that what I say is true.... If they do not want to bring these 3,000 Germans over, your Majesty might consider whether you will ask for them for yourself.” This, although it was exactly what Philip himself desired and intended, was only effected after much wrangling about the money spent and the responsibility incurred by the English Council. Philip, writing on the 10th June, instructs Feria cunningly to manage so that the Council may be got to propose that the German mercenaries might be taken off their hands as a favour; but if they could not be got to see it in this light that the Queen should be told in confidence that the King needed the Germans very much. The Council proved recalcitrant; for, as they said, they had spent already a large sum upon the mercenaries, and might