independence both of policy and
action. In any case the marriage would save England from the grasp of
France, and restore it, as the Emperor hinted, to the obedience of the
Church. But the project was hardly declared when it was met by an
outburst of popular indignation. Gardiner himself was against a union
that would annul the national independence which had till now been the
aim of Tudor policy, and that would drag England helplessly in the wake
of the House of Austria. The mass of conservative Englishmen shrank from
the religious aspects of the marriage. For the Emperor had now ceased to
be an object of hope or confidence as a mediator who would at once
purify the Church from abuses, and restore the unity of Christendom; he
had ranged himself definitely on the side of the Papacy and of the
Council of Trent; and the cruelties of the Inquisition which he had
introduced into Flanders gave a terrible indication of the bigotry
which he was to bequeath to his House. The marriage with Philip meant,
it could hardly be doubted, a submission to the Papacy, and an undoing
not only of the religious changes of Edward but of the whole system of
Henry. Loyal and conservative as was the temper of the Parliament, it
was at one in its opposition to a Spanish marriage and in the request
which it made through a deputation of its members to the Queen that she
would marry an Englishman. The request was a new step forward on the
part of the Houses to the recovery of their older rights. Already called
by Cromwell's policy to more than their old power in ecclesiastical
matters, their dread of revolutionary change pushed them to an
intervention in matters of state. Mary noted the advance with all a
Tudor's jealousy. She interrupted the speaker; she rebuked the
Parliament for taking too much on itself; she declared she would take
counsel on such a matter "with God and with none other." But the
remonstrance had been made, the interference was to serve as a precedent
in the reign to come, and a fresh proof had been given that Parliament
was no longer the slavish tool of the Crown.

[Sidenote: Wyatt's rising.]

But while the nation grumbled and the Parliament remonstrated, one party
in the realm was filled with absolute panic by the news of the Spanish
match. The Protestants saw in the marriage not only the final overthrow
of their religious hopes, but a close of the religious truce, and an
opening of persecution. The general opposition to the m