This account seems better supported than that in Ablancourt's Memoirs, that the chancellor chiefly pushed the Portuguese alliance.

The secret transactions of the court of England could not be supposed to be much known to a French resident at Lisbon: and whatever opposition the chancellor might make, he would certainly endeavor to conceal it from the queen and all her family; and even in the parliament and council would support the resolution already taken.

Clarendon himself says, in his Memoirs, that he never either opposed or promoted the Portuguese match.
When the matter was laid before the council, all voices concurred in approving the resolution; and the parliament expressed the same complaisance.

And thus was concluded, seemingly with universal consent, the inauspicious marriage with Catharine, a princess of virtue, but who was never able, either by the graces of her person or humor, to make herself agreeable to the king.

The report, however, of her natural incapacity to have children, seems to have been groundless, since she was twice declared to be pregnant.[*] * Lord Lansdowne's Defence of General Monk.