The day after this entertainment (7th January, 1554), Egmont wrote an urgent letter to Prince Philip, praying him to hasten his coming to claim his bride. The treaty, he says, has now been agreed to with only a word or two changed, and will be signed in two days. It is clear from this letter that Egmont foresaw the trouble that was looming. The nobility, he said, had received them better than he had expected. “But as for the people, they are uncertain. We will advise the Queen to raise forces to prevent any hostile movement, which would not be extraordinary, for these people are very unstable.... It is of the utmost importance that your Highness should come without delay. I hear that the French are arming strongly in Normandy and Brittany.... I beseech you humbly to consider how urgent it is that you come hither at once, for many reasons which I hope to lay before you verbally soon. Besides this, I should like your Highness to know that the Emperor has not provided us with a sou to spend on necessary presents. More can be done here with money than anywhere else in the world.”[29] The hollow affectation of keeping the Queen’s marriage secret could not be continued after the treaty was signed, and on the 13th January Gardiner, with the best countenance he could command, made an oration in the Presence Chamber of the Palace of Westminster before the assembled lords and courtiers, declaring the Queen’s intention to marry the Prince of Spain “in most godly, lawful matrimonye: and further that she should have for her joynter xxxᵐⁱˡ duckets by the yere, with all the Lowe Countries of Flanders; and that the issue betweene them two lawfully begotten shoulde yf there be any, be heir as well to the Kingdom of Spayne as also to the sayde Lowe Country.” He declared, farther, that “we were much bounden to thancke God that so noble, worthye and famouse a prince would vouchsaff so to humble himself in this maryadge to take upon him rather as a subject than otherwise: and that the Quene should rule all things as nowe: and that there should be of the Council no Spanyard, nether should have rule or office in the quenes house or elsewhere in England nor have custody of any fortes or castells.”[30] Gardiner made the best of it; but the bare fact of the announcement being officially made set light to the tinder which Noailles and his allies had so carefully prepared. When, on the following day, Gardiner made a similar announcement to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, Noailles had seen enough to justify him in sending off a special courier post-haste to his master in France. “The nobles and commonalty declare,” he wrote, “that they will never tolerate the Prince of Spain for their King. They would rather die fighting against him than obey him, and will defend their liberties by force before they will submit to such servitude. They are making ready to rise in arms any day and expel this Queen, who they now see is unworthy