until I perish, I shall always be his wife and Queen!" Such was the daily burthen of her song.

4. One window of her chamber looked into the deer-park; another towards the gates, above which rose the village spire. Her bed-room, private room, and state room were in line, occupying one wing of the castle; and a masked passage through the wall led her to a gallery in the private chapel, where she sat unseen while mass was said below by her domestic priests. She sewed and told her beads, and listened to her maidens' songs. Had her heart been still, she might have lived in peace, but Catharine was too proud and angry to appease her mind with household cares.

5. From day to day she was expecting news from Rome. Why was the Pontiff silent? Why, having sealed the interdict, was he not giving it vital force? Lady Exeter and Lady Salisbury told her the interdict was strong enough to do her work without an army to enforce the Pontiff's curse. Let that curse of Rome be launched; the King would fall without a blow; and Mary, as a daughter of the Church, would be saluted Queen. Such were the tales she heard, and Catharine in her misery believed these tales. She was a recluse, trusting to the secret letters of such women for her news. When Lady Willoughby tried to see her, Cromwell put her off with civil words. A royal license was required. Could she not have that leave to see her mistress ere she died? Cromwell assured her he would do his best. His Highness must be moved at a convenient time. Lady Willoughby was fret

History of two Queens. VI.

7

ting at the Barbican for that permission to go down and see her friend.

6. In her seclusion, Catharine heard of holy men being done to death. These holy men she took for martyrs and confessors in her cause. Why were her friends abroad so slack? While Paul was silent, Parliament was passing bills, and Cranmer printing Bibles. Every day the breach with Rome was widening. Charles had some excuse. The Moors were fighting hard in Africa; the Turks were storming up the Danube; and an army was a costly thing to move; but Paul, she thought, had only to pronounce a curse, and leave the execution of his bull in English hands. "Once more," she wrote to Paul, "as an obedient daughter of the Roman Church, I pray your Holiness to think of me, my husband, and my child. You know what they are doing in this country; and with what offence to God and to yourself. Unless a cure be quickly found, the remedy will come too late. The constant will be slain; the feeble will be smitten; the indifferent will be lost. I know no man on whom the martyrdom of holy men, and the ruin of lost souls, ought to lie so heavily as on you. I write for the discharge of my conscience . . . and so I end, in expectation of a remedy from God and from your Holiness. May it come quickly! The hour will soon be past." These words were Catharine's last appeals to Rome.

7. Some holy men, and some men far from holy, were in trouble for her sake. Forest, after his expulsion from Greenwich, hid himself in London

from his French superior, till he should find a chance of recovering his lost ground by some great act of service and obedience to his chief. That chance he made. Hearing that Latimer was about to preach, Forest went to hear and interrupt the bold divine. A row ensued. Forest was arrested on the spot, and, being an old offender, was examined by the Council. To the question, asked by Cromwell, how he reconciled the oaths of allegiance he had sworn with his new opinions, he replied, with much effrontery, that those oaths were taken by his outer, not his inner man. The friar was lodged in Newgate; tried under the Act of Supremacy, he was condemned to die, unless he changed his mind once more. On hearing of this sentence, Catharine wrote to him in Newgate; praying him, not without some fear, to bear his cross and win his martyr's crown. "Since you have always shown yourself ready to give good counsel to others, you will know very well what to do, and that you are called to bear witness for the love of Christ and the truth of His Catholic faith. If you will hold up against the few brief torments which have been prepared for you, you will receive, as you well know, eternal gains. I should esteem a man bereft of sense and reason, who, to save himself some passing pains on earth, would lose his great reward in heaven." This letter seemed to nerve the friar, who answered that in three days he must die. Her heart was wrung for him; but it was wrung in vain; for when the day of execution came, he took the proffered oaths and robbed the hangman of his fee.

CHAPTER IV.

Asleep.

1536.

1. CHAPUYS tarried for a month before he took the road. For Mary's sake he wished to hear from Catharine's dying lips a declaration of the fact, so much disputed by the lawyers, whether she had been Prince Arthur's wife. But winter had set in. The ways were rough with snow, the fords were choked with ice. Catharine was not reported worse, nor was any person, save her Spanish physician, aware that she was near the end.

2. Bedyngfeld, listening at her door for news, heard nothing to alarm him for her state of health. Things kept their usual course. The invalid lay in her own room; Blanche and Isabel passed in and out; the doctor came and the confessor stayed. They spoke in Spanish to each other and in English to the chamberlain. Such matters had been going on for months. There seemed no need for Chapuys to ride down until the question of Mary going or not going with him was decided by the King. But Lady Willoughby pressed for her permission with a warmer zeal. Her license had not come, and Cromwell hinted that a verbal message was enough. She feared duplicity. "Without I have a letter of his grace or else of you, to show the officers of my

mistress's house, my license shall stand to no effect." Cromwell put her off once more: and Lady Willoughby, unable to procure a written passport, acted on the secretary's hint.

3. New Year's morning found her in the saddle at the Barbican. The ride was long, the air inclement, the track a waste. Unused to riding, she was thrown to the ground and badly bruised. Still she pressed on. Some persons on the road dissuaded her from going forward; telling her the good old Queen was dead; but neither icy winds, nor smarting wounds, nor fatal news, sufficed to turn her back. Long after dark, a noise of hoofs was heard before the Castle gates. Bedyngfeld went down to see the new arrival, but the Spanish lady was unknown to him by sight. She gave her name and told her errand. He required to see her warrant for admission. Fearing to say she had no papers, Lady Willoughby pointed to her hurts, her freezing limbs, her chattering teeth, and begged him, for love of Jesus and for Christian charity, to lift her in, and set her by the fire. What was he to do? Cromwell's commands were strict. No person was to pass those gates without a written license. Yet, in that wild country, on that winter night, could he repel this faint and pleading woman from his gate? Stonely Priory stood a mile off; with a brook to cross, a hill to climb. His heart gave way, the door swung back, and Lady Willoughby was carried in; but here the chamberlain meant to stop; since he might have to pay for breach of Cromwell's orders with his head. When