ce. With the queen there would be no
difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the
only English statesman who listened with any show of favour.

[Footnote 127: "Elle jura que jamais elle n'avoit
senti esquillon de ce que l'on appelle amour, ny
entre en pensement de volupte, etc."--Renard to the
Bishop of Arras: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]

The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some
attempt, however, may be partially successful.

The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England,
liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the
only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union
practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential
family, titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in
possession of confiscated church property.

There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife
of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink
into a provincial dependency; while, again, there was the utmost
unwillingness to be again entangled in the European war; the French
ambassador insisted that the emperor only desired the marriage to
secure English assistance; and the council believed that, whatever
promises might be made, whatever stipulations insisted on, such a
marriage, sooner or later, would implicate them. The country was
exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state of unexampled
suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet and
public economy; there were attractions in the offer of a powerful
alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance; they
desired to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their
queen at home. With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while
Gardiner was loudly national.

{p.057} On the other hand, though Gardiner held the restoration of
the papal authority to be tolerable, yet he dreaded the return of
Pole, as being likely to supersede him in the direction of the English
Church;[128] the party who agreed with the chancellor about the
marriage, and about Pole, disagreed with him about the pope; while
Paget, who was in favour of the marriage, was with the lords on the
supremacy, and, as the Romanising views of the queen became notorious,
was inclining, with Arundel and Pembroke, towards the Protestants.