event of the King's present marriage being unfruitful, but left her to deserve it and empowered the King to name his own successor.
Chapuys, however, was able to console himself with the reflection that the Bastard, as he called Elizabeth, was now out of the question. The Duke of Richmond was ill—sinking under the same weakness of constitution which had been so fatal in the Tudor family and of which he, in fact, died a few weeks later. The prevailing opinion was that the King could never have another child. Mary's prospects, therefore, were tolerably "secure. I must admit," Chapuys wrote on the 8th of July, "that her treatment improves every day. She never had so much liberty as now, or was served with so much state even by the little Bastard's waiting-women. She will want nothing in future but the name of Princess of Wales,[1] and that is of no consequence, for all the rest she will have more abundantly than before."
Mary, in fact, now wanted nothing save the Pope's pardon for having abjured his authority. Chapuys had undertaken that it would be easily granted. The Emperor had himself asked for it, yet not only could not Cifuentes obtain the absolution, but he did not so much as dare to speak to Paul on the subject. The absolution for the murder of an Archbishop of Dublin had been bestowed cheerfully and instantly on Fitzgerald. Mary was left with perjury on her conscience, and no relief could be had. There appeared
- ↑ Chapuys to Charles V., July 8, 1536.—Spanish Calendar, vol. v. part 2, p, 221. In using the words, "Princess of Wales," Chapuys adds a curious fact, if fact it be—"Nowhere that I know of," he says, "is the title of Princess given to a King's daughter as long as there is hope of male descent. It was the Cardinal of York who, for some whim or other of his own, broke through the rule and caused Henry's daughter by Catherine to be called 'Princess of Wales.'"
