present miseries. Cromwell undertook that the utmost care and vigilance should be observed that hurt should not befall them. The Princess, he said, he loved as much as Chapuys himself could love her, and nothing that he could do for them should be neglected; but the Ambassador and the Emperor's other agents were like hawks who soared high to stoop more swiftly on their prey. Their object was to have the Princess declared next in succession to the crown, and that was impossible owing to the late statutes.
Chapuys reported what had passed to his master, but scarcely concealed his contempt for the business in which he was engaged. "I cannot tell," he wrote, "what sort of a treaty could be made with this King as long as he refuses to restore the Queen and Princess, or repair the hurts of the Church and the Faith, which grow worse every day. No later than Sunday last a preacher raised a question whether the body of Christ was contained, or not, in the consecrated wafer. Your Majesty may consider whither such propositions are tending."[1]
A still more important conversation followed a few days later. It can hardly be doubted, in the face of Chapuys's repeated declaration that both Catherine and her daughter were in personal danger, that Anne Boleyn felt her position always precarious as long as they were alive, and refused to acknowledge her marriage. She perhaps felt that it would go hard with herself in the event of a successful insurrection. She had urged, as far as she dared, that they should be tried under the statute; but Henry would not allow such a proposal to be so much as named to him. Other means, however, might be found to make away
- ↑ Chapuys to Charles V., March 7, 1535.—Spanish Calendar, vol. v. pp. 413–422.
