mnly swore on her
conscience that she had only slept with young Arthur seven nights, _e che
da lui resto intacta e incorrupta_;[64] and this assertion, _as far as it
goes_, we may accept as the truth, seeing the solemn circumstances under
which it was made. But when Campeggio again urged Katharine to get them
all out of their difficulty by retiring to a convent and letting the King
have his way, she almost vehemently declared that "she would die as she
had lived, a wife, as God had made her." "Let a sentence be given," she
said, "and if it be against me I shall be free to do as I like, even as my
husband will." "But neither the whole realm, nor, on the other hand, the
greatest punishment, even being torn limb from limb, shall alter me in
this, and if after death I were to return to life, I would die again, and
yet again, rather than I would give way." Against such firmness as this
the poor, flaccid old churchman could do nothing but hold up his hands
and sigh at the idea of any one being so obstinate.

A day or two afterwards Wolsey and Campeggio saw the Queen again formally.
She was on this occasion attended by her advisers, and once more heard,
coldly and irresponsively, the appeals to her prudence, her worldly
wisdom, her love for her daughter, and every other feeling that could lead
her to cut the gordian knot that baffled them all. "She would do nothing
to her soul's damnation or against God's law," she said, as she dismissed
them. Whether it was at this interview, or, as it seems to me more likely,
the previous one that she broke out in violent invective against Wolsey
for his enmity towards the Emperor, we know not, but the storm of bitter
words she poured upon him for his pride, his falsity, his ambition, and
his greed; her taunts at his intrigues to get the Papacy, and her burning
scorn that her marriage, unquestioned for twenty years, should be doubted
now,[65] must have finally convinced both Wolsey and Campeggio that if
Henry was firm Katharine was firmer still. Campeggio was in a pitiable
state of mind, imploring the Pope by every post to tell him what to do. He
and Wolsey at one time conceived the horrible idea of marrying the
Princess Mary to her half brother, the Duke of Richmond, as a solution of
the succession difficulty, and the Pope appears to have been inclined to
allow it;[66] but it was soon admitted that the course proposed would not
forward, but rather retard, the King's second marriage, and that