the
Spaniards who would form the retinue selected for their meekness. They
would meet with insolence from the English, which they would not
endure, if they had the spirit to resent it; their dispositions,
therefore, must be mild and forgiving.[189]

[Footnote 189: Renard to Charles V., December 11:
_Rolls House MSS._]

And yet Renard could not hide from himself, and the lords did not hide
from Mary, that their consent was passive only; that their reluctance
was vehement as ever. Bedford said, if he went to Spain, he must go
without attendance, for no one would accompany him. Lord Derby refused
to be one of the ambassadors, and with Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir
Edward Hastings told the queen that he would leave her service if she
persisted. The seditious pamphlets which were scattered everywhere
created a vague terror in the court, and the court ladies wept and
lamented in the queen's presence. The council in a body again urged
her to abandon her intention. The peers met again to consider the
marriage articles. Gardiner read them aloud, and Lord Windsor, a dull
Brutus, who till then had {p.084} never been known to utter a
reasonable word, exclaimed, amidst general applause, "You have told us
fine things of the queen, and the prince, and the emperor; what
security have we that words are more than words?" Corsairs from Brest
and Rochelle hovered in the mouth of the Channel to catch the couriers
going to and fro between Spain and London and Brussels, and to terrify
Philip with the danger of the passage. The Duke of Suffolk's brother
and the Marquis of Winchester had been heard to swear that they would
set upon him when he landed; and Renard began to doubt whether the
alliance, after all, was worth the risk attending it.[190] Mary,
however, brave in the midst of her perplexities, vowed that she would
relinquish her hopes of Philip only with her life. An army of spies
watched Elizabeth day and night, and the emperor, undeterred by Renard's
hesitation, encouraged the queen's resolution. There could be no
conspiracy as yet, Charles said, which could not be checked with
judicious firmness; and dangerous persons could be arrested and made
secure. A strong hand could do much in England, as was proved by the
success for a time of the late Duke of Northumberland.[191]

The advice fell in with Mary's own temperament; she had already been
acting in the spirit of it. A party of Protestants met