struggle. Mary herself was
made soon after to send a fine emerald to her betrothed with a grand
message to the effect that when they came together she would be able to
know (_i.e._ by the clearness or otherwise of the gem) "whether his
Majesty do keep himself as continent and chaste as, with God's grace, she
will." As at this time the Emperor was a man of twenty-five, whilst his
bride had not reached ten years, the cases were hardly parallel; and
within three months (in July 1525) Charles had betrothed himself to his
cousin of Portugal. The treaty that had been so solemnly sworn to on the
high altar at Windsor only three years before, had thus become so much
waste-paper, and Katharine's best hopes for her child and herself were
finally defeated. A still greater trial for her followed; for whilst
Wolsey was drawing nearer and nearer to France, and the King himself was
becoming more distant from his wife every day, the little Princess was
taken from the loving care of her mother, and sent to reside in her
principality of Wales.[37] Thenceforward the life of Katharine was a
painful martyrdom without one break in the monotony of misfortune.

Katharine appears never to have been unduly jealous of Henry's various
mistresses. She, one of the proudest princesses in Christendom, probably
considered them quite beneath her notice, and as usual adjuncts to a
sovereign's establishment. Henry, moreover, was far from being a generous
or complaisant lover; and allowed his lady favourites no great social and
political power, such as that wielded by the mistresses of Francis I. Lady
Tailebois (Eleanor Blount) made no figure at Court, and Mary Boleyn, the
wife of William Carey, a quite undistinguished courtier, who had been
Henry's mistress from about 1521,[38] was always impecunious and sometimes
disreputable, though her greedy father reaped a rich harvest from his
daughter's attractions. Katharine evidently troubled herself very little
about such infidelity on the part of her husband, and certainly Wolsey had
no objection. The real anxiety of the Queen arose from Henry's ardent
desire for a legitimate son, which she could not hope to give him; and
Wolsey, with his eyes constantly fixed on the Papacy, decided to make
political capital and influence for himself by binding France and England
so close together both dynastically and politically as to have both kings
at his bidding before the next Pope was elected. The first idea was the
betr