Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/437

Rh him to a definite course of action. The Emperor, so long as Solyman was unchecked upon the Danube, and Moorish corsairs swept the Mediterranean and ravaged the coasts of Italy, had shrunk from the cost and peril of a new contest.

A declaration of war, in revenge for the injuries of the divorced Queen, would indeed have been welcomed with enthusiasm by the gentlemen of Spain. A London merchant residing at Cadiz, furnished his Government with unwelcome evidence of the spirit which was abroad in the Peninsula.

'I have perceived,' wrote Mr Ebbes to Cromwell, 'the views and manners of these countries, and the favour that these Spaniards do bear towards the King's Grace and his subjects, which is very tedious in their hearts both in word and deed, with their great Popish naughty slanderous words in all parts. And truly the King's Grace hath little or no favour now. We be all taken in derision and hated as Turks, and called heretics, and Luterians, and other spiteful words; and they say here plainly they trust shortly to have war with England, and to set in the Bishop of Rome with all his disciples again in England.'

The affront to a Castilian princess had wounded the national honour; the bigotry of a people to whom alone in Europe their creed remained a passion, was shocked by the religious revolution with which that affront had been attended; and the English and Irish