On Friday, 13th July, a soft breeze from the south enabled the fleet to sail, whilst a dense crowd upon the shore sent up fervent prayers for the safety of the Prince, who in a pure spirit of martyrdom was thus going to “our new realm of England for the exaltation of our holy faith and the good of Christendom.” Others there were on the shore who shouted insults, taunts, and challenges to all the Frenchmen alive; for with England at the bidding of the Emperor, the poorest beggar in Spain knew that France was powerless against him. The slight swell that at first somewhat upset unaccustomed stomachs, was succeeded on the morning of Saturday by a dead calm and a motionless sea, which, whilst it comforted the landsmen, made the seamen look blank; for, as they said, it might delay the fleet for a month. But the next day, Sunday, a delightful fair wind sprang up, and the long trail of vessels stretched across the tranquil Bay until Ushant, the land of the enemy, loomed up to starboard on Monday afternoon. On Wednesday morning in the Channel a fleet of galleons was sighted, which it was feared might be Frenchmen, but which turned out to be the Flemish escort sent by the Emperor, with several ships of the English navy. Thus accompanied, the Spaniards sailed up to Southampton Water on Thursday, 19th July, and at four o’clock in the afternoon anchored amidst the royal salute from the thirty English and Flemish ships assembled to receive the Queen’s new Consort.[43] Things had not been going very smoothly in England in the meanwhile. Mary’s Council was profoundly disunited, Paget and the Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, being at bitter feud with each other; and Mary herself was angry and distrustful with Gardiner and his adherents, who, she feared, quite without reason, were secretly favouring Elizabeth and the Wyatt prisoners. On one occasion, late in March, a number of members of the Council, even Paget being amongst them out of enmity to Gardiner, took the bold course of entering the Queen’s oratory after vespers, and told her that it was now time for clemency, and that if any more noble blood was shed it would no longer be justice but cruelty. The bloody-minded advice, they said, of others should not be followed—meaning by this Gardiner, who was absent, and Renard, who was never tired of urging severity upon Mary. The Queen, taken by surprise, at once pardoned six of the gentlemen of Kent implicated in Wyatt’s rising who had been condemned to death. Poor Mary was beset on every side by warring counsels, with Renard telling her that for her own and her husband’s safety she must strike hard, and her Council in revolt at what they considered the cruelty inculcated by Gardiner, and at one time she consented to Renard’s plan for a _coup d’état_ which should practically make her supreme. The Lord Admiral (Howard), Pembroke, Derby, Shrewsbury, and Sussex were to be employed in distant parts of the realm;