of each forbade him to be the first in volunteering insignificant
concessions. France had conquered Savoy and part of Piedmont, and had
pushed forward its northern frontier to Marienbourg and Metz: the
emperor held Lombardy, Parma, and Naples, and Navarre was annexed to
Spain. The quarrel might have easily been ended by mutual restitution;
yet the Peace of Cambray, the Treaty of Nice, and the Peace of Crepy,
lasted only while the combatants were taking breath; and those who
would attribute the extravagances of human folly to supernatural
influence might imagine that the great discord between the orthodox
powers had been permitted to give time for the Reformation to strike
its roots into the soil of Europe. But a war which could be carried on
only by loans at sixteen per cent. was necessarily near its
conclusion. The apparent recovery of England to the church revived
hopes which the Peace of Passau and the dissolution of the Council of
Trent had almost extinguished; and, could a reconciliation be effected
at last, and could Philip obtain the disposal of the military strength
of England in the interests of the papacy, it might not even yet be
too late to lay the yoke of orthodoxy on the Germans, and, in a
Catholic interpretation of the Parable of the Supper, "compel them to
come in."

Mary, who had heard herself compared to the Virgin, and Pole, who
imagined the Prince of Spain to be the counterpart of the Redeemer of
mankind, indulged their fancy in large expectations. Philip was the
Solomon who was to raise up the temple of the Lord, which the emperor,
who was a man of war, had not been allowed to build: and France, at
the same time, was not unwilling to listen to proposals. The birth of
Mary's child was expected in a few weeks, when England would, as a
matter of course, become more decisively Imperialist, and Henry, whose
{p.208} invasion of the Netherlands had failed in the previous
summer, was ready now to close the struggle while it could be ended on
equal and honourable terms.

A conference was, therefore, agreed upon, in which England was to
mediate. A village in the Calais Pale was selected as the place of
assembly, and Pole, Gardiner, Paget, and Pembroke were chosen to
arrange the terms of a general peace, with the Bishop of Arras, the
Cardinal of Lorraine, and Montmorency. The time pitched upon was that
at which, so near as the queen could judge, she would herself bring
into the world the offspring which was