Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/438

418 A fortnight after, he wrote again, replying more elaborately to the Emperor's charges. It was true, he admitted, that in his letters to the Queen he had dwelt more upon her religious duties than upon her marriage: it was true that he had been backward in his demonstrations of pleasure, because he was a person of few words. But, so far from disapproving of that marriage, he looked upon it as the distinct work of God; and when his nephew had come with complaints to him, he had forbidden him his presence. He had spoken of the rule of a stranger in England as likely to be a lesson to the people; but he had meant only that, as their disasters had befallen them through their own King Henry, their deliverance would be wrought for them by one who was not their own. When the late Parliament had broken up without consenting to the restoration of union, he had consoled the Queen with assuring her that he saw in it the hand of Providence; the breach of a marriage between an English king and a Spanish princess had caused the wound which a renewed marriage of a Spanish King and an English Queen was to heal.