For the present he remained under the impression that by the great body of the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even with displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of a few courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo the wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess.  So he was assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected assured him, who were perhaps themselves deceived.  He had secured Ireland, and Scotland also in so far as James’s promises could secure it;[438] and he was not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he had tried his strength and proved his weakness.  He replied coldly to Hawkins, “That for the King of England’s amity he would be glad thereof, so the said king would do works according.  The matter was none of his; but the lady, whose rights had been violated, was his aunt and an orphan, and that he must see for her, and for her daughter his cousin."[439]

The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day; perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his intentions.  He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her.  After the coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen, no voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen’s spirit for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country, and flying with the Princess Mary to Spain.  The emperor sent to urge her to remain a little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her patience, an ample reparation for her injuries.  Whatever might appear upon the surface, the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the people, and “they were ready to join with any prince who would espouse her quarrel."[440] All classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure.  They were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck of their commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards insurrection.  The points on which he relied as the occasion of the disaffection betrayed the sources of his information.  He was in correspondence with the regular clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and through his Flemish subjects with merchants of London.  Among both these classes, as well as among the White Rose nobles, he had powerful adherents; and it could not have been forgotten in the courts, either of London or Brussels, that within the memory of living men, a small band of exiles, equipped by a Duke of Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire village, and in a month had revolutionised the kingdom.