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t possible to determine. It is clear that he was careful not to arouse the jealousy of the English by any parade of it.[124] One obvious channel of it lay in the queen, who seems to have doated on him with a fondness that one would hardly have thought a temper cold and repulsive, like that of Philip, capable of exciting. But he was young and good-looking. His manners had always been found to please the sex, even where he had not been so solicitous to please as he was in England. He was 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] [Sidenote: 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
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