marriage until God called her to the throne, and now the step would be taken against her own inclination and on public grounds alone. There need have been no misgivings as to Philip’s attitude in the matter. Throughout his life he made of himself a martyr to his duty. Overshadowed always by the immensity of the task confided to him and his House, awed by the greatness and majesty of his father, he looked upon himself from youth to age as an instrument in the hands of the Most High to compass the victory of righteousness upon the earth as he understood it, and incidentally to exalt Spain to the highest place among the nations. That human suffering had to be endured to arrive at the end was only an incident: that he himself, in his degree, should forego his own inclinations, his ease, his comfort, and his pleasures in favour of the great objects for which he lived, was to him quite natural and inevitable, and he accepted the fate without repining. The marriage with Mary—a woman whom he had never seen, who was twelve years his senior and no beauty at best—could not have been attractive to him. His domestic life with Doña Isabel de Osorio had apparently been harmonious; and the absence from Spain which the English marriage would entail was both inconvenient and unpleasant, whilst the necessary concessions in manner and demeanour to his wife’s English subjects would, perhaps, be more distasteful to him than any other of the sacrifices imposed upon him by the match. But, as his Spanish contemporary biographer says, like another Isaac he readily submitted himself to his father’s will and wrote without a day’s delay that the Portuguese match might still be avoided, and he had already taken steps in that direction, “cheerfully and unreservedly placing himself in the Emperor’s hands to do with him as he thought best in the interests of their great cause.”[18] Two days after the Emperor had received the welcome letter from his son, a swift courier was speeding to England with instructions to Renard to propose Philip, Prince of Spain, as a husband for Queen Mary.