be settled on the Duke of Richmond.[1] Richmond was personally liked. He resembled his father in appearance and character, and the King himself was supposed to favour this solution. With the outer world the favourite was the Princess Mary, Both she and her mother were respected for a misfortune which was not due to faults of theirs, and the Princess was the more endeared by the danger to which she was believed to have been exposed through the machinations of Anne. The new Queen was her strongest advocate, and the King's affection for her had not been diminished even when she had tried him the most. He could not have been ignorant of her correspondence with Chapuys: he probably knew that she had wished to escape out of the realm, and that the Pope, who was now suing to him, had meant to bestow his own crown upon her. But her qualities were like his own, tough and unmalleable, and in the midst of his anger he had admired her resolution. Every one expected that she would be restored to her rank after Anne's death. The King had apparently been satisfied with her letter to him. Cromwell was her friend, and Chapuys, who had qualified her submission, was triumphant and confident. He was led to expect that an Act would be introduced declaring her the next heir—nay, he had thought that such an Act had been passed. Unfortunately for him the question of her acknowledgment of the Act of Supremacy was necessarily revived. Had she or had she not accepted it? The Act had been imposed, with the Statute of Treasons attached, as a test of loyalty to the Reformation. It was impossible to place her nearest to the throne as long as she refused
- ↑ Chapuys to Charles V., June 6, 1536.—Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol. x. p. 441.
