'Considering,' wrote the King to them, 'how highly such contempt and rebellion done by our daughter and her servants doth touch not only us, and the surety of our honour and person, but also the tranquillity of our realm; and not minding to suffer the pernicious example hereof to spread far abroad, but to put remedy to the same in due time, we have given you commandment to declare to her the great folly, temerity, and indiscretion that she hath used herein, with the peril she hath incurred by reason of her so doing. By these her ungodly doings hitherto she hath most worthily deserved our high indignation and displeasure, and thereto no less pain and punition than by the order of the laws of our realm doth appertain in case of high treason, unless our mercy and clemency should be showed in that behalf. [If, however, after] understanding our mind and pleasure, [she will] conform herself humbly and obediently to the observation of the same, according to the office and duty of a natural daughter, and of a true and faithful subject, she may give us cause hereafter to incline our fatherly pity to her reconciliation, her benefit and advancement.'1

The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is certain that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her mother's 'cause' or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of her father. To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally difficult; and the Government might have been

Instructions to the Earls of Oxford, Essex, and Sussex, to remonstrate with the Lady Mary: Rolls House MS.

in serious embarrassment had not a series of discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other, explained the mystery of these proceedings, and opened a view with alarming clearness into the under-currents of the feeling of the country.

Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to the correspondence between Catherine and the Pope. Perhaps, too, he knew how assiduously she had importuned the Emperor to force Clement to a decision.1 No effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere with her hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny before they could be admitted to her presence.

She was the mis

On the 15th of November, | need my pressing. But I see delay Queen Catherine wrote to the Em- to be so calamitous, my own life is peror, and after congratulating him so unquiet and so painful, and the on his successes against the Turks, opportunity to make an end now so she continuedconvenient, that it seems as if God of his goodness had brought his Holiness and your Majesty together to bring about so great a good. I am forced to be importunate, and I implore your Highness for the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, that in return for the signal benefits which God each day is heaping on you, you will accomplish for me this great blessing, and bring his Holiness to a decision. Let him remember what he promised you at Bologna. The truth here is known, and he will thus destroy the hopes of those who persuade the King my Lord that he will never pass judgment.'-Queen Catherine to Charles V.: MS. Simancas, November 15, 1533.

And as our Lord in his mercy has worked so great a good for Christendom by your Highness's hands, so has he enlightened also his Holiness; and I and all this realm have now a sure hope that, with the grace of God, his Holiness will slay this second Turk, this affair between the King my Lord and me. Second Turk, I call it, from the misfortunes which, through his Holiness's long delay, have grown out of it, and are now so vast and of so ill example that I know not whether this or the Turk be the worst. Sorry am I to have been compelled to importune your Majesty so often in this matter, for sure I am you do not

VOL. II.

tress of her own Court and of her own actions; and confidential agents, both from Rome, Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and repassed with reciprocal instructions and directions.

The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the course of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October, or the beginning of November,' two friars were reported as having been at Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to escape observation. Secret agents of the Government, who had been 'set' for the purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding 'many wiles and cautells by them invented to escape,' the suspected persons were arrested and brought before Cromwell. Cromwell, 'upon examination, could gather nothing from them of any moment or great importance;' but, entering on further communication,' he said, 'he found one of them a very seditious person, and so committed them to ward.' The King was absent from London, but had left directions that, in the event of any important occurrence of the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for; but Cranmer not being immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as, he said, 'it is undoubted that they (the monks) have intended, and would confess, some great matter, if they might be examined as they ought to be -that is to say, by pains.'

The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do

Letter to the King, giving an account of certain Friars Observants who had been about the Princess Dowager: Rolls House MS.

not know whether they were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but we may naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the events which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a commission sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Latimer, ravelling out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole was disentangled, it appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary, and a large and formidable party in the country, the King, on the faith of a pretended revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that his death, either by visitation of God or by visitation of man, was daily expected; and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was immediately looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.

The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell him that he should lose his power and authority. She had not specified the manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against him. The form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said that he should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a providential judgment, she left to conjecture; 1 and the period within which his punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at one month

December.

1 We remember the northern pro- | interpreted as meaning that 'the phecy, 'In England shall be slain King's Grace should die by the hands the decorate Rose in his mother's of priests.'-Vol. i. cap. 4belly,' which the monks of Furness

or at six.1 She had attempted no secrecy with these prophecies; she had confined herself in appearance to words; and the publicity which she courted having prevented suspicion of secret conspiracy, Henry quietly accepted the issue, and left the truth of the prophecy to be confuted by the event. He married. The one month passed; the six months passed; eight-nine months. His child was born and was baptized, and no divine thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless verbal thunder, from a poor old man at Rome. The illusion, as he imagined, had been lived down, and had expired of its own vanity.

But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance. It is remarkable that, hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to be, they were not without a half-belief that some supernatural intervention was imminent; but the career on which they had entered was too fascinating to allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed them. They were swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the Reformation, and allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to victory or to destruction.

The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published like the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions were known.'

Statutes of the Realm, 25 | Canterbury, to Cromwell: SuppresHenry VIII. cap. 12. State Papers sion of the Monasteries, p. 20. relating to Elizabeth Barton: Rolls House MS. Prior of Christ Church,

2 Thus Cromwell writes to Fisher: My Lord, [the outward evi