Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/326

306 still more as a latitudinarian; he could form no party, and the Queen made use of him only to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in turn she would use Gardiner to destroy the Protestants; and thus the two great factions in the State neutralized each other's action in a matter in which both were equally anxious; and Mary, although with no remarkable capacity, without friends and ruined, if at any moment she lost courage, was able to go her own way in spite of her subjects.

The uncertainty was, how long so anomalous a state of things would continue. The marriage being once decided on, Mary could think of nothing else, and even religion sank into the second place. Reginald Pole, chafing the Imperial bridle between his lips, vexed her, so Renard said, from day to day, with his untimely importunities; the restoration of the mass gave him no pleasure so long as the Papal legate was an exile; and in vain the Queen laboured to draw from him some kind of approval. He saw her only preferring carnal pleasures to her duty to heaven; and, indifferent himself to all interests save those of the See of Rome, he was irritated with the Emperor, irritated with the worldly schemes to which he believed that his mission had been sacrificed. He talked angrily of the marriage. The Queen heard, through Wotton the ambassador at Paris, that he had said openly, it should never take place; while Peto,