He made no attempt to encroach upon the sovereignty of
Mary. He advised her, as it was his duty to do, but he did not
interfere with the government of the country. No {p.ix} Spanish
troops were landed in England, even when war had broken out with
France, and the coasts of England were unguarded. Yet the morbid
suspicions of the people were not allayed. The Dudley plot and the
Stafford invasion were justified by their authors, not on the ground
of Mary's bloody persecutions, but because it was feared that Philip
was planning a _coup d'etat_. Mary's popularity began to wane with her
marriage; it sunk lower and lower till it almost disappeared when
England was dragged into a war with France in the interests of Spain.
St. Quintin and Gravelines for a time roused a feeble enthusiasm for
the war, but the loss of Calais finally extinguished the Queens
popularity. Mary is reported to have said that if her body were opened
Calais would be found written on her heart. Froude disbelieves the
report. But whether the story be apocryphal or not, there is no doubt
that the loss of Calais was accountable, if not for the death of the
Queen, for the permanent destruction of her fame.

Calais was called the "brightest jewel in the English crown." It was
the last relic of the French possessions of the Plantagenets. It was
the Gibraltar of the sixteenth century. It helped to make of the
narrow seas an English channel. It was a mart for English goods. It
afforded a foothold for Continental enterprises. To some extent it
linked England with her traditional allies, the old Burgundian
possessions in the Netherlands. By us, looking back over the chequered
story of the last three centuries, the loss of Calais is seen to have
been a blessing in disguise. England gained by it as she did by the
loss of Normandy under John, and of Hanover at the accession of Queen
Victoria. But to Mary's subjects it was a corroding humiliation.

"If Spain should rise suddenly into her ancient strength," Froude
truly remarks, "and tear Gibraltar from us, our mortification would be
faint, compared to the anguish of humiliated pride with which the loss
of Calais distracted the subjects of Mary."

It was the galling reflection that Calais was lost to the French in a
Spanish quarrel that crowned the poor Queen's obloquy. She had lost it
through wanton neglect. Had the warnings of Wentworth and Grey been
heeded, Calais might have been saved. Calais need never have been