uniform, went forth from the gates to receive him. Twenty-eight
triumphal arches, which alone, according to the thrifty chronicler, had
cost 26,800 Carolus guldens, were erected in the different streets and
squares, and every possible demonstration of affectionate welcome was
lavished upon the Prince and the Emperor. The rich and prosperous city,
unconscious of the doom which awaited it in the future, seemed to have
covered itself with garlands to honor the approach of its master. Yet
icy was the deportment with which Philip received these demonstrations of
affection, and haughty the glance with which he looked down upon these
exhibitions of civic hilarity, as from the height of a grim and
inaccessible tower. The impression made upon the Netherlanders was any
thing but favorable, and when he had fully experienced the futility of
the projects on the Empire which it was so difficult both for his father
and himself to resign, he returned to the more congenial soil of Spain.
In 1554 he had again issued from the peninsula to marry the Queen of
England, a privilege which his father had graciously resigned to him.
He was united to Mary Tudor at Winchester, on the 25th July of that year,
and if congeniality of tastes could have made a marriage happy, that
union should have been thrice blessed. To maintain the supremacy of
the Church seemed to both the main object of existence, to execute
unbelievers the most sacred duty imposed by the Deity upon anointed
princes, to convert their kingdoms into a hell the surest means of
winning Heaven for themselves. It was not strange that the conjunction
of two such wonders of superstition in one sphere should have seemed
portentous in the eyes of the English nation. Philip's mock efforts in
favor of certain condemned reformers, and his pretended intercessions in
favor of the Princess Elizabeth, failed entirely of their object. The
parliament refused to confer upon him more than a nominal authority in
England. His children, should they be born, might be sovereigns; he was
but husband of the Queen; of a woman who could not atone by her abject