After a brief service of thanksgiving, Philip was taken to the house destined for his reception. The English guards and archers on duty and a crowd of English household servitors had been dressed by Mary’s directions in the red-and-yellow livery of Spain; and when Philip entered the rooms prepared for him, he found that here, too, his wife’s thoughtful prevision had been exercised; for the appointments and furniture were sumptuous, and upon the walls there hung royal draperies of gold-embroidered damask.[52] To the assembled English nobles Philip then delivered a dignified speech in Latin, saying that he had left his own land not to augment his possessions or his power, of which he had sufficient, but because God had called him to marry their Queen, with whom he intended to live here in harmony; and he promised his hearers that if they were faithful to her and to him, “he would be to them a right good and loving prince.” He was from the first all smiles and graciousness to the English, who were, indeed, agreeably surprised at his amiability when after his private supper he came out into the presence chamber and chatted unaffectedly and gaily with the gentlemen there. To bluff Lord Admiral Howard he said that he had come to England for his wedding unprovided with garb sufficiently sumptuous to do honour to their Queen, but he hoped that the velvet horse-cloth of the hackney the Queen had sent him might serve him to make a splendid vestment withal. The pledging of the company after supper in a draught of English beer, which the partial view of Froude presented as a repellant and unwilling concession, was a perfectly natural part of the whole of Philip’s behaviour. He had come to win the English by affability, and he was determined as much as possible to conform to English prejudices and to impress upon his Spanish followers the need for their doing likewise. Even the enemy, who records the action, does not hint at any demonstration of dislike or reluctance on the part of Philip to the politic course he took. So thoroughly, indeed, did he act up to his policy, that before he left Southampton his Spanish attendants were all scowling and grumbling in spite and jealousy that their Prince was preferring Englishmen to them, and that his service and safety were placed in the hands of foreigners to the exclusion of his own people. Though Philip had great ends to serve in drinking beer and sitting out gargantuan English feasts, at which his proud frugal countrymen scoffed, to the courtiers who accompanied him from Spain, it was as gall and wormwood to see the greatest Prince in Christendom thus curry favour with these rough islanders, whom they regarded as inferiors; and when, on Saturday, the Spaniards were all ordered to leave the church at Southampton before the service was over, in order that the Prince might come out attended only by Englishmen, they broke out into almost open protest, particularly when, as the rain was coming down in torrents and