sador was still better satisfied. Elizabeth had been
sent for, and was on her way to London. A rupture with France seemed
inevitable, and as to clemency, there was no danger of it. "The
queen," he said, "had told him that Anne of Cleves was implicated;"
but for himself he was sure that the two centres of all past and all
possible conspiracies were Elizabeth and Courtenay, and that when
their heads, and the heads of the Greys, were once off their
shoulders, she would have nothing more to fear. The prisoners were
heretics to a man; she had a fair plea to despatch them, and she would
then settle the country as she pleased;[249] "The house of Suffolk
would soon be extinct."

[Footnote 248: _Rolls House MSS._]

[Footnote 249: Renard to Charles V., February 12:
_Rolls House MSS._]

The house of Suffolk would be extinct: that too, or almost that, had
been decided on. Jane Grey was guiltless of this last commotion; her
name had not been so much as mentioned among the insurgents; but she
was guilty of having been once called queen, and Mary, who before had
been generously deaf to the emperor's advice, and to Renard's
arguments, yielded in her present humour. Philip was beckoning in the
distance; and while Jane Grey lived, Philip, she was again and again
assured, must remain for ever separated from her arms.

{p.111} Jane Grey, therefore, was to die--her execution was resolved
upon the day after the victory; and the first intention was to put her
to death on the Friday immediately approaching. In killing her body,
however, Mary desired to have mercy on her soul; and she sent the
message of death (February 9) by the excellent Feckenham, afterwards
Abbot of Westminster, who was to bring her, if possible, to obedience
to the Catholic faith.

Feckenham, a man full of gentle and tender humanity, felt to the
bottom of his soul the errand on which he was despatched. He felt as a
Catholic priest--but he felt also as a man.

On admission to Lady Jane's room he told her that she was to die the
next morning, and he told her, also, for what reason the queen had
selected him to communicate the sentence.

She listened calmly. The time was short, she said; too short to be
spent in theological discussion; which, if Feckenham would permit, she
would decline.

Believing, or imagining that he ought to believe, that, if she died
unreconciled, she was lost, Feckenham hurried back to t