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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
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