fold of the Church. Thenceforward for forty-five years Philip of Spain strove, often in almost impossible circumstances, to attain this end. There was no instrumentality left untried by him to secure it. Marriage, and proposals of marriage, wars, and threats of wars, arrogance, humility, diplomacy, bribery, subornation of treason and murder, were some of the means to which Philip in his long struggle appealed; for to him and his cause and country it was a matter of life and death; and it is my object to set forth in the following chapters from contemporary sources the story of this long series of efforts on the part of the Spanish King to win the support of England by fair means or foul. To regard Philip as a fiend, or even as a bad man, because in the cause of this life-struggle of his he assailed England with weapons that would now be rejected by any right-thinking statesman, would be unjust. The ethics of the time were widely different from those prevalent to-day; the supposed interest of the State was infinitely greater in proportion to the lives of individuals that is at present the case, whilst the assumed interests of religion—or, rather, of the orthodox Church—were considered by Philip to be so overwhelming as to condone any action necessary to serve them, no matter how criminal it would be if employed for other ends. No doubt, in the view of the present day, Philip blinded himself to a sense of right and wrong in his zeal to serve the cause for which he lived, namely, the dominance of Catholicism for the temporal benefit of Spain. But to him there was no wrong if it was done by his orders in the cause which he believed to be that of righteousness. Sacrifice and suffering seemed to him, as to most Spaniards of his day, a natural and necessary preparation for spiritual exaltation and triumph; and whilst he never flinched from inflicting suffering upon others, though naturally he was a tender-hearted man, he never spared himself in the same cause. Throughout his long life he made himself a martyr to what he conceived to be his duty; a slow, laborious, unimaginative, morbidly conscientious man, a good son, a good husband, and, according to his lights, a good father; kind and indulgent to his servants, patient under adversity and humble in success: indeed, a man endowed with most of the elements of righteousness; and yet with a sense of right so blunted by his zeal as to think that he might do God’s work with the weapons of the devil, and turn enemies into friends by fear. How these principles as applied to England ended in failure, it is the purpose of the present book to tell. CHAPTER II 1553-1554 The Coronation of Mary—Noailles _versus_ Renard—Mary accepts Philip—The marriage treaty—Alarm in London—Egmont’s missions—Wyatt’s rebellion—Attitude of Elizabeth—The coming of Philip—His voyage and arrival—His popular manners in England—Arrival at Winchester