her success, had agreed to a course which had
probably been arranged in concert with him; but on the 6th, the day of
Edward's death, Renard and M. de Courieres arrived from Brussels. To
Renard, accustomed to countries where governments were everything and
peoples nothing, for a single woman to proclaim herself queen in the
face of those who had the armed force of the kingdom in their hands,
appeared like madness. Little confidence could be placed in her
supposed friends, since they had wanted resolution to refuse their
signatures to the instrument of her deposition. The emperor could not
move; although he might wish well to her cause, the alliance of
England was of vital importance to him, and he would not compromise
himself with the faction whose success, notwithstanding Scheyfne's
assurance, he looked upon as certain. Renard, therefore, lost not a
moment in entreating the princess not to venture upon a course from
which he anticipated inevitable ruin. If the nobility or the people
desired to have her for queen, they would make her queen. There was no
need for her to stir.[3] The remonstrance agreed {p.003} fully with
the opinion of Charles himself, who replied to Renard's account of his
conduct with complete approval of it.[4] The emperor's power was no
longer equal to an attitude of menace; he had been taught, by the
repeated blunders of Reginald Pole, to distrust accounts of popular
English sentiment; and he disbelieved entirely in the ability of Mary
and her friends to cope with a conspiracy so broadly contrived, and
supported by the countenance of France.[5] But Mary was probably gone
from Hunsdon before advice arrived, to which she had been lost if she
had listened. She had ridden night and day without a halt for a
hundred miles to Keninghal, a castle of the Howards on the Waveney
river. There, in safe hands, she would try the effect of an appeal to
her country. If the nation was mute, she would then escape to the Low
Countries.[6]

[Footnote 3: Avant nostre arrivee elle mist en
deliberation avec aulcungs de ses plus confidens ce
qu'elle debvroit faire, advenant la dicte morte; la
quelle treuva, que incontinant la dicte morte
decouverte, elle se debvoit publier royne par
lettres et escriptz, et qu'en ce faisant, elle
conciteroit plusieurs a se declairer pour la
m