It almost excites compassion even for Mary Tudor, when her passionate efforts to inspire him with affection are contrasted with his impassiveness.

Tyrant, bigot, murderess though she was, she was still woman, and she lavished upon her husband all that was not ferocious in her nature.

Forbidding prayers to be said for the soul of her father, hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in the blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine devotion.

It was a most singular contrast, Mary, the Queen of England and Mary the wife of Philip.

Small, lean and sickly, painfully near-sighted, yet with an eye of fierceness and fire; her face wrinkled by the hands of care and evil passions still more than by Time, with a big man's voice, whose harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent absences from England--she almost awakens compassion and causes a momentary oblivion of her identity.
Her subjects, already half maddened by religious persecution, were exasperated still further by the pecuniary burthens which she imposed upon them to supply the King's exigencies, and she unhesitatingly confronted their frenzy, in the hope of winning a smile from him.