Whatever French gold or interest could effect to alarm people at the idea of the coming of a Spanish Consort was done. Stories of the terrible rule of the Inquisition in Spain, and of the pride and cruelty of Spaniards generally, were spread industriously by the agents of Noailles, and by the day fixed for the Queen’s state procession to Westminster, the 30th of September, 1553, London was almost in a panic of fear. The Queen had come in with promises of toleration, and already the zeal of the Churchmen and her own had belied her people’s hope for religious peace. Parliament had been summoned for the 5th October, specially for the purpose of restoring England to the orthodox Church; Cardinal Pole was known to be coming to the land of his fathers as the Legate of the Pope to receive the submission of England to the Power which King Henry had flouted so contemptuously; and already the dungeons in the Tower were being filled by the prelates of the newer ritual. All the dazzling magnificence that accompanied the passage of the Queen through London from the Tower to Westminster, on the last day of September—all the official greetings, the frequent pageants at the street corners, and the wonder of the multitude at the rare show of sumptuous garb—could not banish the dread thought amidst the crowd that, perhaps, all this bravery was only a prelude to a Spanish domination over England. The nobles who rode in Mary’s train and filled the great Court offices in her household had most of them been enriched by the plunder of the monastic lands, and had their own reasons for dreading a return of the old order in its extreme form; though they did not know as yet that the Spanish Consort, whose advent they feared so much, would be the great modifying influence in their favour. Frenchmen and Venetians joined the alarmed Englishmen in their apprehensions of the coming change, but the few Spaniards in London were jubilant. One Spanish resident,[21] who described the splendid show for the benefit of a noble patron in Spain, thus writes with reference to the match: “If the Lord vouchsafed us to behold this glorious day, what great advantage would befall our Spain in holding the Frenchmen in check, by the union of these kingdoms with his Majesty’s dominions. And were it only to preserve the States of Flanders, surely the Emperor and son must greatly desire it, for, as your Lordship knows well, the day that the Emperor dies the Low Countries will be in peril of attack from the French or of a German invasion under French auspices, help from Spain being so remote, and Flanders itself not being free from suspicion of revolt on the ground of religion or from the disaffection of the people towards Spaniards. It would be most advantageous, too, to Spain, for should aught happen to the Prince’s son (Don Carlos), the son born here would be King of both countries, which would be a good thing for the English too.... All the Catholics here