The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

wisdom could say.
At this moment the situation of affairs in
England changed, and a prospect began to open up
of a European coalition against the Powers of
Spain and Austria. The "Spanish sleeping-cup," as
the English nation termed it, had been rudely
dashed from the lip of James I, and the monarch
saw that he had been practiced upon by Philip II.
The marriage with the Infanta of Spain was broken
off at the last moment; there followed a rapture
with that Power, and the English king, smarting
from the insult, applied to Parliament (February,
1624) for the means of reinstating Frederick in the
Palatinate by force of arms.[4] The Parliament,
who had felt the nation lowered, and the Protestant
cause brought into peril, by the truckling of the
king, heartily responded to the royal request, and
voted a liberal subsidy. Mansfeld and Brunswick
came over to London, where they met with a
splendid reception. A new army was provided for
them, and they sailed to begin operations on the
Rhine; but the expedition did not prosper. Before
they had struck a single blow the plague broke out
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