During the months that passed between the formal betrothal in March and the coming of Philip, Mary grew more and more impatient, railing at her quarrelling Councillors, worried almost daily by Renard to hasten the execution of Elizabeth and Courtenay, and a prey to frequent hysterical attacks of wounded pride at what she considered the ungallant lack of eagerness on the part of her new husband to join her. She grew more faded and older with her anxiety, and this increased her distress,[47] for Elizabeth was young and beautiful, and the Queen knew that the love of the people for her was growing with the dread of Spanish Catholic intolerance. And yet the majority of the Council, not to mention the Parliament that was sitting, would never sanction the sacrifice of the Princess at the instance of the Imperial ambassador; and even the Lord Admiral and his fleet were suspected of a design to declare against the Queen unless his cousin, Princess Elizabeth, was well treated. Renard’s letters of the time reflect the distracted condition of affairs from day to day, no man knowing in which direction future safety or ruin to him might be encountered. “The Queen is reduced to such a state of perplexity that she is at a loss whose advice to adopt, knowing well that all is being done in favour of Lady Elizabeth.” Scurrilous ballads were flung about in public places, even in the Queen’s palace, bitterly lampooning the unhappy Mary and her lagging Spanish bridegroom. To make matters worse, when the French ambassador, Noailles, who was known to be the principal fomenter of all this trouble, went to take leave of Mary at Whitehall the day before she set out on her gradual approach to the coast to meet Philip at the end of May, an open wrangle took place between them, and the ambassador in a rage threatened to leave England immediately—a threat not at all distasteful to the Imperialists, because it brought nearer what they aimed at before all things—the breaking out of hostilities between England and France.