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.Sometime during April Mary bowed to Philip's demands and summoned her sister to court.The King had every intention of forcing Elizabeth into marriage with Savoy himself, and made it clear that he meant to take her back to Brussels with him as a bride, but Elizabeth, fortified by the knowledge that the Council would never allow him to do so, flatly refused to agree.Philip then tried bargaining with her, offering to ensure that her right to succeed was acknowledged in return for her agreeing to marry, but this too failed to move her.Nor did the reassurance that Savoy would be happy to come and live in England with her, having no lands of his own.Mary was equally resistant to the match, refusing to be won over by her husband's arguments, which led him to accuse her of failing in her duty of obedience to him.At one point Mary capitulated, but changed her mind two days later, explaining that she could not make Elizabeth marry against her will or the will of the people, but Philip would not listen and ordered her to compel her sister to do as she was bid.Mary tried, but found the princess as adamant as before.'What I shall do hereafter I know not,' she told the Queen, 'but, I assure you upon my truth and fidelity, I am not at this time otherwise minded than I have declared unto you; no, though I were offered the greatest prince in all Europe.' Torn between relief and fear of what Philip might do, Mary dismissed Elizabeth from court.Later that month she visited her at Hatfield, where she was entertained by a bear baiting, a Latin play performed by the boys of St Paul's School, and a recital on the virginals by her accomplished sister.The Savoy marriage was not mentioned.When Mary returned, she and Philip presided over a chapter of the Order of the Garter at Whitehall and then visited Hampton Court for a few days' hunting, which were marred by tragedy: one of the courtiers was thrown from his horse and dashed his brains out against the privy garden wall.After that it was deemed best to return to London, where at the beginning of May a farewell ball was held in honour of the two Habsburg duchesses, who returned to Flanders immediately afterwards, having become 'very bored' in England.The Venetian ambassador in France reported, however, that the Queen, angry at the prolonged stay of her rival, had ordered her to leave.The King, meanwhile, who cannot have been feeling very well-disposed towards his wife, had obliged her to see each of her privy councillors in turn personally to persuade them of the necessity for England to go to war.She even threatened 'some with death, some with the loss of their goods and estates, if they did not consent to the will of her husband'.Then, in late May, to her terrible distress, the Queen learned that the Pope had excommunicated Philip and deprived Pole of his legatine status.In her anguish, she realised that she would have to choose between the obedience she owed her husband and that which she must render to Christ's Vicar on Earth.It was a heart-breaking decision, but Philip won.In the Queen's mind there could now be no question of England remaining neutral, and she harangued her councillors accordingly.At the same time, both she and Philip wrote to the Pope, protesting at his treatment of Pole, reminding him of all the good work the Cardinal had carried out in the cause of the Counter Reformation, and warning Paul that without him the welfare of the Catholic Church in England would be severly endangered.The Council wrote in similar vein, as did Pole, though his letter read more like a lecture on the duties of a pope than a plea for reinstatement.For a time, everyone thought that Paul would give in to pressure and restore Pole as legate.They could not know that on 31 May Cardinal Giovanni Morone, a close associate of Pole's, had been arrested in Rome by the Inquisition on a charge of suspected heresy, nor that the Pope had confided to the Venetian ambassador that he believed Pole to be guilty also.He knew he had no good reason for recalling the Cardinal, yet a charge of heresy would be regarded as sufficient cause for bringing him back.Back in England, the Queen was still trying to bully her councillors into supporting Philip, assuring them that the King would finance the war out of his own funds, but what really convinced them of the necessity for war was a minor French-backed invasion of Yorkshire by one Thomas Stafford, in whose veins ran some Plantagenet blood.This was easily dealt with, but it left the government feeling nervous and angry, and provoked a declaration of war on France on 7 June.On that same day, Norroy Herald was sent to the French court to throw down the gauntlet to Henry II.A jubilant Philip at once threw himself into preparations for an offensive, enthusiastically supported by young English noblemen eager for military glory and - in the case of pardoned offenders such as the Dudley brothers, Sir Peter Carew and Sir James Crofts - the chance of rehabilitation.The fleet was made ready, having been augmented on Philip's orders with two new ships, the 'Philip and Mary' and the 'Mary Rose', the latter being named after Henry VIII's famous warship which had sunk off Southampton in 1545.Finally, the King dispatched Ruy Gomez to Spain to bring to England a fleet of ships and £48,000 in gold to defray the government's expenses.For Mary, it was as if Philip was already gone from her, for she knew that when Gomez returned, her husband would sail away to war.In June, the Pope, ignoring Mary's pleas, sent a nuncio to England with the brief recalling Pole, and appointed Friar William Peto legate in the Cardinal's place.Mary knew Peto well: he had been her mother's confessor, as well as her own in childhood, and he had chosen exile after openly preaching against Henry VIII's nullity suit.He had returned to England after Mary's accession, and was now living in quiet retirement in the restored convent of the Observant Friars at Greenwich.He was, however, patently unsuited to becoming legate, being 'over eighty and of no ability whatever, but a good man and a Christian, who recognises his own shortcomings'.He was also a victim of senile dementia.Mary was furious at his appointment, and refused to allow the papal nuncio to enter England.To her mind, the Supreme Pontiff was showing himself to be motivated entirely by vindictiveness and envy, qualities that rode ill with his role as Christ's earthly representative.Nor would she allow Pole to leave England.He had not received his papers of recall, so could not be accused of disobedience to the Holy See.In Rome, however, the Pope had instructed the Inquisition to proceed against Pole on the grounds of heresy.This was preposterous, for while it was true that the Cardinal had openly supported reform within the Catholic Church, his orthodoxy had never yet been called into question, nor had he ever given any cause for it to be.But Paul believed Pole to be a secret agent working on Philip's behalf, and meant to destroy him.Sir Edward Carne, England's ambassador at the Vatican, warned Pole early in July that, if he once set foot in Rome, he would be arrested.The Cardinal responded by sending a representative, Dr Ormanetto, to plead his case with the Pope.At the same time, news came that Paul had appointed Peto a cardinal, but Peto, who was no keener to be legate than Mary was to have him, refused this honour, and returned his red hat to the Pope
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