The occasion was one of supreme international importance. Ever since Ferdinand the Catholic sixty years before had betrothed Mary’s mother to the heir of Henry VII., the sovereign of Spain had been trying to win for his country the control of English policy, in order that France might be beaten in the struggle for the hegemony of Europe. The tremendous cataclysm of the Reformation, personal ambitions, the weakness and sensuality of Henry VIII., and unexpected deaths, had again and again frustrated the design. England had more than once fought by the side of France in the great Continental duel, and the English friendship upon which the House of Spain was forced to depend as one of the main elements of success, had been for all those sixty years an unstable quantity, though generally on the side of its traditional ally. But what was necessary for Charles and his son was a friendship that could be counted upon in all circumstances—an alliance that no bribes nor blandishments of Frenchmen and Lutherans could shake; and for the first time this seemed possible of attainment if by the marriage of Philip and Mary the crowns of England, Spain, and Flanders could rest upon the same brows. To Mary of England, too, the match with her Spanish second cousin had more than a sentimental interest, strong as that was with her. The English people had rallied to her cause under the influence of their recognition of her legal right to the throne, and their detestation of Northumberland and his French friends; but Protestantism was undoubtedly strong, especially in London and the Eastern Counties, which had first acclaimed the new Queen; and it was evident to Mary that if she was to impose her faith upon the country, as she was determined to do, even against the advice of the Emperor, she must be able to depend upon some force independent of her own people to aid or support her at a pinch. France, of course, being out of the question for her, she could only look to a Spanish match to serve her turn. Mary shut her eyes obstinately to the vast change that had come over her country in the last thirty years. She believed, as did the Churchmen throughout Europe, that she only had to decree a return to the state of affairs prior to her father’s apostasy for the country to accept the change without demur. Pole was for extreme measures at once, and so, of course, was the Pope, Julius II.; but the Emperor, who in the supposed cause of religion was always ready to postpone religious considerations for politics, continued to advise Mary through Renard to go slowly and to avoid incensing her people until at least she was strong enough to coerce them. The marriage of Philip with the Queen therefore seemed to hold out to both contracting parties the ideal opportunity of attaining their great desire—in the one case the control of English policy to the detriment of France, and in the other the increment of strength necessary to force England once more into the