ight be cruel,
but they were unavoidable.

Mary was not with her mother. It had been held desirable to remove her
from an influence which would encourage her in a useless opposition; and
she was residing at Beaulieu, afterwards New Hall, in Essex, under the
care of Lord Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury. Lord Hussey was a
dangerous guardian, he was subsequently executed for his complicity in
the Pilgrimage of Grace, the avowed object of which was the restoration
of Mary to her place as heir-apparent. We may believe, therefore, that
while under his surveillance she experienced no severe restraint, nor
received that advice with respect to her conduct which prudence would
have dictated. Lord Hussey, however, for the present enjoyed the
confidence of the king, and was directed to inform his charge, that for
the future she was to consider herself not as princess, but as the
king's natural daughter, the Lady Mary Tudor. The message was a painful
one; painful, we will hope, more on her mother's account than on her
own; but her answer implied that, as yet, Henry VIII. was no object of
especial terror to his children.

[Sidenote: She replies haughtily and violently.]

"Her Grace replied," wrote Lord Hussey to the council in communicating
the result of his undertaking,[188] that "she could not a little marvel
that I being alone, and not associate with some other the king's most
honourable council, nor yet sufficiently authorized neither by
commission nor by any other writing from the King's Highness, would
attempt to declare such a high enterprise and matter of no little weight
and importance unto her Grace, in diminishing her said estate and name;
her Grace not doubting that she is the king's true and legitimate
daughter and heir procreate in good and lawful matrimony; [and] further
adding, that unless she were advertised from his Highness by his writing
that his Grace was so minded to diminish her estate, name, and dignity,
which she trusteth his Highness will never do, she would not believe
it."

[Sidenote: She writes to the king in a similar tone.]

Inasmuch as Mary was but sixteen at this time, the resolution which she
displayed in sending such a message was considerable. The early English
held almost Roman notions on the nature of parental authority, and the
tone of a child to a father was usually that of the most submissive
reverence. Nor was she contented with replying indirectly through her
guardian. She wrote h