immense power was contemplated by the Castilians with hope as well as with fear.  He and he alone, they imagined, could avert that dismemberment of which they could not bear to think.  Perhaps he might yet be induced to violate the engagements into which he had entered with England and Holland, if one of his grandsons were named successor to the Spanish throne.  He, therefore, must be respected and courted.  But William could at that moment do little to hurt or to help.  He could hardly be said to have an army.  He could take no step which would require an outlay of money without the sanction of the House of Commons; and it seemed to be the chief study of the House of Commons to cross him and to humble him.  The history of the late session was known to the Spaniards principally by inaccurate reports brought by Irish friars.  And, had those reports been accurate, the real nature of a Parliamentary struggle between the Court party and the Country party could have been but very imperfectly understood by the magnates of a realm in which there had not, during several generations, been any constitutional opposition to the royal pleasure.  At one time it was generally believed at Madrid, not by the mere rabble, but by Grandees who had the envied privilege of going in coaches and four through the streets of the capital, that William had been deposed, that he had retired to Holland, that the Parliament had resolved that there should be no more kings, that a commonwealth had been proclaimed, and that a Doge was about to be appointed and, though this rumour turned out to be false, it was but too true that the English government was, just at that conjuncture, in no condition to resent slights.  Accordingly, the Marquess of Canales, who represented the Catholic King at Westminster, received instructions to remonstrate in strong language, and was not afraid to go beyond those instructions.  He delivered to the Secretary of State a note abusive and impertinent beyond all example and all endurance.  His master, he wrote, had learnt with amazement that King William, Holland and other powers,—­for the ambassador, prudent even in his blustering, did not choose to name the King of France,—­were engaged in framing a treaty, not only for settling the succession to the Spanish crown, but for the detestable purpose of dividing the Spanish monarchy.  The whole scheme was vehemently condemned as contrary to the law of nature and to the law of God.  The ambassador appealed from the King of England to the Parliament, to the nobility, and to the whole nation, and concluded by giving notice that he should lay the whole case before the two Houses when next they met.