LITMIR.BIZ

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Mary's first and only love; for the emperor was too old to have touched aught but her vanity, and Courtenay was too frivolous to have excited any other than a temporary feeling. This devotion to Philip, according to some accounts, was ill requited by his gallantries. The Venetian ambassador says of him, that "he well deserved the tenderness of his wife, for he was the most loving and the best of husbands." But it seems probable that the Italian, in his estimate of the best of husbands, adopted the liberal standard of his own country.[125]

      PHILIP'S INFLUENCE.

      About the middle of November, parliament was advised that the queen was in a state of pregnancy. The intelligence was received with the joy usually manifested by loyal subjects on like occasions. The emperor seems to have been particularly pleased with this prospect of an heir, who, by the terms of the marriage treaty, would make a division of that great empire which it had been the object of its master's life to build up and consolidate under one sceptre. The commons, soon after, passed an act empowering Philip, in case it should go otherwise than well with the queen at the time of her confinement, to assume the regency, and take charge of the education of her child during its minority. The regency was to be limited by the provisions of the marriage treaty. But the act may be deemed evidence that Philip had gained on the confidence of his new subjects.

      The symptoms continued to be favorable; and, as the time approached for Mary's confinement, messengers were held in readiness to bear the tidings to the different courts. The loyal wishes of the people ran so far ahead of reality, that the rumor went abroad of the actual birth of a prince. Bells were rung, bonfires lighted; Te Deum was sung in some of the churches; and one of the preachers "took upon him to describe the proportions of the child, how fair, how beautiful and great a prince it was, as the like had not been seen!" "But for all this great labor," says the caustic chronicler, "for their yoong maister long looked for coming so surely into the world, in the end appeared neither yoong maister nor yoong maistress, that any man to this day can hear of."[126]

      The queen's disorder proved to be a dropsy. But, notwithstanding the mortifying results of so many prognostics and preparations, and the ridicule which attached to it, Mary still cherished the illusion of one day giving an heir to the crown. Her husband did not share in this illusion; and, as he became convinced that she had no longer prospect of issue, he found less inducement to protract his residence in a country which, on many accounts, was most distasteful to him. Whatever show of deference might be paid to him, his haughty spirit could not be pleased by the subordinate part which he was compelled to play, in public, to the queen. The parliament had never so far acceded to Mary's wishes as to consent to his coronation as king of England. Whatever weight he may have had in the cabinet, it had not been such as to enable him to make the politics of England subservient to his own interests, or, what was the same thing, to those of his father. Parliament would not consent to swerve so far from the express provisions of the marriage treaty as to become a party in the emperor's contest with France.[127]

      Nor could the restraint constantly imposed on Philip, by his desire to accommodate himself to the tastes and habits of the English, be otherwise than irksome to him. If he had been more successful in this than might have been expected, yet it was not possible to overcome the prejudices, the settled antipathy, with which the Spaniards were regarded by the great mass of the people, as was evident from the satirical shafts, which, from time to time, were launched by pamphleteers and ballad-makers, both against the king and his followers.

      These latter were even more impatient than their master of their stay in a country where they met with so many subjects of annoyance. If a Spaniard bought anything, complains one of the nation, he was sure to be charged an exorbitant price for it.[128] If he had a quarrel with an Englishman, says another writer, he was to be tried by English law, and was very certain to come off the worst.[129] Whether right or wrong, the Spaniards could hardly fail to find abundant cause of irritation and disgust. The two nations were too dissimilar for either of them to comprehend the other. It was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that Philip's followers learned that their master had received a summons from his father to leave England, and join him in Flanders.

      The cause of this sudden movement was one that filled the Castilians, as it did all Europe, with astonishment—the proposed abdication of Charles the Fifth. It was one that might seem to admit of neither doubt nor delay on Philip's part. But Mary, distressed by the prospect of separation, prevailed on her husband to postpone his departure for several weeks. She yielded, at length, to the necessity of the case. Preparations were made for Philip's journey, and Mary, with a heavy heart, accompanied her royal consort down the Thames to Greenwich. Here they parted; and Philip, taking an affectionate farewell, and commending the queen and her concerns to the care of Cardinal Pole, took the road to Dover.

      After a short detention there by contrary winds, he crossed over to Calais, and on the fourth of September made his entry into that strong place, the last remnant of all their continental acquisitions that still belonged to the English.

      Philip was received by the authorities of the city with the honors due to his rank. He passed some days there receiving the respectful courtesies of the inhabitants, and, on his departure, rejoiced the hearts of the garrison by distributing among them a thousand crowns of gold. He resumed his journey, with his splendid train of Castilian and English nobles, among whom were the earls of Arundel, Pembroke, Huntington, and others of the highest station in the realm. On the road, he was met by a military escort sent by his father; and towards the latter part of September, 1555, Philip, with his gallant retinue, made his entry into the Flemish capital, where the emperor and his court were eagerly awaiting his arrival.[130]

      EMPIRE OF PHILIP

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      WAR WITH THE POPE.

      Empire of Philip.—Paul the Fourth.—Court of France.—League against Spain.—The Duke of Alva.—Preparations for War.—Victorious Campaign.

      1555, 1556.

      Soon after Philip's arrival in Brussels took place that memorable scene of the abdication of Charles the Fifth, which occupies the introductory pages of our narrative. By this event, Philip saw himself master of the most widely extended and powerful monarchy in Europe. He was king of Spain, comprehending under that name Castile, Aragon, and Granada, which, after surviving as independent states for centuries, had been first brought under one sceptre in the reign of his father, Charles the Fifth. He was king of Naples and Sicily, and duke of Milan, which important possessions enabled him to control, to a great extent, the nicely balanced scales of Italian politics. He was lord of Franche Comté, and of the Low Countries, comprehending the most flourishing and populous provinces in Christendom, whose people had made the greatest progress in commerce, husbandry, and the various mechanic arts. As titular king of England, he eventually obtained an influence, which, as we shall see, enabled him to direct the counsels of that country to his own purposes. In Africa he possessed the Cape de Verd Islands and the Canaries, as well as Tunis, Oran, and some other important places on the Barbary coast. He owned the Philippines and the Spice Islands in Asia. In America, besides his possessions in the West Indies, he was master of the rich empires of Mexico and Peru, and claimed a right to a boundless extent of country, that offered an inexhaustible field to the cupidity and enterprise of the Spanish adventurer. Thus the dominions of Philip stretched over every quarter of the globe. The flag of Castile was seen in the remotest latitudes—on the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the far-off Indian seas—passing from port to port, and uniting by commercial intercourse the widely scattered members of her vast colonial empire.

      The Spanish army consisted of the most formidable infantry in Europe; veterans who had been formed under the eye of Charles the Fifth and of his generals, who had fought on the fields of Pavia and of Muhlberg, or who, in the New World, had climbed the Andes with Almagro and Pizarro, and helped these bold chiefs to overthrow the dynasty of the Incas. The navy of Spain and Flanders combined far exceeded that of any other power in the number and size of its vessels; and if its supremacy might be contested by England on the "narrow seas," it rode the undisputed mistress of the ocean.

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