But she knew how
narrow had been her escape; she had neither forgotten her danger, nor
ceased to resent her treatment. It was to the people of England, she
told the count, that she owed her real gratitude. The people had saved
her from destruction; the people had prevented her sister from
changing the settlement of the crown. She would be the people's queen,
and she would reign in the people's interest.

De Feria feared, from what she said, that "in religion she would not
go right." The ladies by whom she was surrounded were suspected; Sir
William Cecil, whose conformity was as transparent then as it is now,
would be her principal secretary; {p.316} and the count observed,
with a foreboding of evil, that "she had an admiration for the king
her father's mode of ruling;" and that of the legate she spoke with
cold severity.[659]

[Footnote 659: Report of the Count de Feria:
Tytler, vol. ii. p. 494. _Memorial of the Duchess
of Feria, MS._, quoted by Lingard.]

It is possible that Pole was made acquainted with Elizabeth's feelings
towards him. To himself personally, those feelings were of little
moment, for he, too, like the queen, was dying--dying to be spared a
second exile, and the wretchedness of seeing with his eyes the
dissolution of the phantom fabric which he had given the labours of
his life to build.

Yet what he did not live to behold he could not have failed to
anticipate. The spirit of Henry VIII. was rising from the grave to
scatter his work to all the winds; while he, the champion of Heaven,
the destroyer of heresy, was lying himself under a charge of the same
crime, with the pope for his accuser. Without straining too far the
licence of imagination, we may believe that the disease which was
destroying him was chiefly a broken heart. But it was painful to him
to lie under the ill opinion of the person who was so soon to be on
the throne of England; and possibly he wished to leave her, as a
legacy, the warning entreaties of a dying man.

Three days after De Feria's visit, therefore, Pole sent the Dean of
Worcester to Elizabeth with a message, the import of which is unknown;
and a short letter, as the dean's credentials, saying only that the
legate desired, before he should depart, to leave all persons
satisfied of him, and especially her grace.[660]

[Footnote 660: _Cotton. MS. Vespasian._ F. 3. The
letter is