burning bishops, bathing herself in the blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine devotion.  It was a most singular contrast, Mary, the Queen of England and Mary the wife of Philip.  Small, lean and sickly, painfully near-sighted, yet with an eye of fierceness and fire; her face wrinkled by the hands of care and evil passions still more than by Time, with a big man’s voice, whose harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip’s coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent absences from England—­she almost awakens compassion and causes a momentary oblivion of her identity.

Her subjects, already half maddened by religious persecution, were exasperated still further by the pecuniary burthens which she imposed upon them to supply the King’s exigencies, and she unhesitatingly confronted their frenzy, in the hope of winning a smile from him.  When at last her chronic maladies had assumed the memorable form which caused Philip and Mary to unite in a letter to Cardinal Pole, announcing not the expected but the actual birth of a prince, but judiciously leaving the date in blank, the momentary satisfaction and delusion of the Queen was unbounded.  The false intelligence was transmitted every where.  Great were the joy and the festivities in the Netherlands, where people were so easily made to rejoice and keep holiday for any thing.  “The Regent, being in Antwerp,” wrote Sir Thomas Gresham to the lords of council, “did cause the great bell to rings to give all men to understand that the news was trewe.  The Queene’s highness here merchants caused all our Inglishe ships to shoote off with such joy and triumph, as by men’s arts and pollicey coulde be devised—­and the Regent sent our Inglishe maroners one hundred crownes to drynke.”  If bell-ringing and cannon-firing could have given England a Spanish sovereign, the devoutly-wished consummation would have been reached.  When the futility of the royal hopes could no longer be concealed, Philip left the country, never to return till his war with France made him require troops, subsidies, and a declaration of hostilities from England.

The personal appearance of the new sovereign has already been described.  His manner was far from conciliatory, and in this respect he was the absolute reverse of his father.  Upon his first journey out of Spain, in 1548, into his various dominions, he had made a most painful impression every where.  “He was disagreeable,” says Envoy Suriano, “to the Italians, detestable to the Flemings, odious to the Germans.”