IN THE MONTHS following ratification of the marriage articles, and preceding Charles's return (presumably with his Spanish bride), concerns about religion and politics simmered, and rumours of great changes circulated. Simonds D'Ewes recorded the popular refrain of contemporary news sources: “everye mans heart [is full] of feare of an ensuing toleration.” These anxieties were alleviated temporarily by the prince's miraculous return as a bachelor in October, an event that occasioned the outpouring of public relief and thanksgiving so well documented by Cogswell. Occasions of public rejoicing, however, could also become occasions of public debate, and several sermons used the opportunity and the discourse of thanksgiving to express relief, as well as to offer warnings and advice for the future. The anti-Spanish anti-popery that Charles's return unleashed combined with public rejoicing to forge “public, national, and common interests and purposes that rendered the public sphere genuinely public.” These two strands, in turn, were unexpectedly consolidated into the public interest by the Blackfriars incident, and the providential reading of history that it invited. At the same time, however, the debates earlier that year between the Jesuit John Percy and representatives of the Church of England illustrated, despite James's efforts at secrecy, that once a public sphere had emerged, its structures and procedures became available “not merely to members or agents of the state and their clients or dependents but also to others.”