ion for personal ambition of her own.

[Sidenote: Reginald Pole.]

[Sidenote: The Marquis of Exeter.]

[Sidenote: The Nevilles.]

[Sidenote: The strength of the White Rose faction.]

If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the
light of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a
material change. Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king
upon the divorce. He was in suspicious connexion with the pope, and
having been required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused
obedience. His mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness
of Exeter, we now find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated
her prophecies and her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought
at any time of reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was
ready to build a throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined
supporters of her father's family. The power which she could wield might
at any moment become formidable. She had two sons in England, Lord
Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole. Her cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, a
grandson himself of Edward IV.,[213] was, with the exception of the Duke
of Norfolk, the most powerful nobleman in the realm; and he, to judge by
events, was beginning to look coldly on the king.[214] We find her
surrounded also by the representatives of her mother's family,--Lord
Abergavenny, who had been under suspicion when the Duke of Buckingham
was executed, Sir Edward Neville, afterwards executed, Lord Latimer, Sir
George and Sir William Neville, all of them were her near connexions,
all collateral heirs of the King-maker, inheriting the pride of their
birth, and resentfully conscious of their fallen fortunes. The support
of a party so composed would have added formidable strength to the
preaching friars of the Nun of Kent; and as I cannot doubt that the Nun
was endeavouring to press her intrigues in a quarter where disaffection
if created would be most dangerous, so the lady who ruled this party
with a patriarchal authority had listened to her suggestions; and the
repeated interviews with her which, were sought by the Marchioness of
Exeter were rendered more than suspicious by the secresy with which
these interviews were conducted.[215]

[Sidenote: Examination on suspicion, of Sir William and Sir George
Neville.]

These circumstances explain the arrest, to which I alluded above, of Sir
William and Sir George Neville, brothers of Lord