On the 2nd December, in great state, Philip rode along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul’s, accompanied by the whole Court. From Lambeth Pole had gone by water to Paul’s Wharf, and thence in procession with crosses, banners, and censers to the Cathedral, where he awaited the King’s coming with the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. Side by side the King and Cardinal, with a glittering train, passed up the nave and out at the east end to St. Paul’s Cross, where, we are told, “with all the Lords of the Council and with such an audience of people as was never seen in that place before,”[84] fiery Gardiner preached a sermon upon the words of St. Paul, “Brethren, know ye, that it is time we arose from slumber”; in which he exhorted his hearers to shake off the evil dream of the past and salute the new dawn. But not exhortation alone occupied Gardiner’s oration, for he hinted that all the ruin and misery that England had suffered, “all the abominable heresies, synistrate and erroneous opinions, tumults and insurrections,” were owing to the “lack of restraint” that had permitted such evils without due punishment. For, once more into the hands of the priests, the rod had been delivered, and Gardiner had no mind that it should lie idle. The famous sermon was a threat to England, and the people who had spoken lightly of the Pope for the last twenty years looked askance not only at the Churchman who threatened, but at King Philip, whose furthest thought it was for the moment to light the fires of religious persecution in the country, the enmity and suspicion of which he was striving to lull to rest. We are told by Philip’s watchful gentleman-in-waiting that he enjoyed his dinner well after Gardiner’s sermon, but the gentleman-in-waiting saw the surface only. Philip was glad to have England back again within the fold, though that was not the end, but the means for him. Two days afterwards the long-delayed Spanish cane tourney, perhaps the only one ever held in England, was celebrated with great pomp in the tiltyard at Whitehall. For many weeks the bands of Spanish horsemen had been rehearsing the mimic battle, in which opposing forces dressed in splendid uniforms prance and caracol to within a few yards of each other at full speed, and then, launching cane javelins at their antagonists, wheel suddenly away. The Queen and her ladies were dressed in cloth of gold with solid sheet-gold coifs, all at the King’s expense, and the Queen must have been a blaze of magnificence in her rich brocade, her overgarment of crimson velvet lined with fur, and her dress covered entirely with precious stones and sheet gold spangles. Twelve thousand people, we are told, looked on, as band after band of Spaniards pranced into the arena, some in white velvet and gold, some in blue and silver, some in black and gold; and a great ball and supper wound up the entertainment.