y
some fatherly regard, refused to be nagged by his wife into the murder of
his daughter, and even relinquished the meeting with Francis rather than
leave England with Anne in power.

In the meanwhile Katharine's health grew worse. Henry told the French
ambassador in January, soon after Suffolk's attempt to administer the
first oath to her, that "she was dropsical and could not live long": and
his enemies were ready with the suggestion--which was probably
unfounded--that she was being poisoned. She shut herself up in her own
chamber, and refused to eat the food prepared by the new servants; what
little food she took being cooked in her own room by her one maid. Early
in the summer (May) she was removed from Buckden to Kimbolton Castle,
within the miasmic influence of the fens, and there was no attempt to
conceal the desire on the part of the King and those who had brought him
to this pass that Katharine should die, for by that means alone, it
seemed, could foreign intervention and civil war be averted. Katharine
herself was, as we have seen, full of suspicion. In March Chapuys reported
that she had sent a man to London to procure some old wine for her, as she
refused to drink the wine provided for her use. "They were trying," he
said, "to give her artificial dropsy." Two months later, just after the
stormy scene when Lee and Tunstall had endeavoured to extort from the
Queen the oath to the new Act of Succession, Chapuys in hot indignation
suddenly appeared at Richmond, where the King was, to protest against such
treatment. Henry was intensely annoyed and offended, and refused to see
the ambassador. He was master, he said, in his own realm; and it was no
good coming to him with such remonstrances. No wonder that Chapuys
concluded, "Everybody fears some ill turn will be done to the Queen,
seeing the rudeness to which she is daily subjected, both in deeds and
words; especially as the concubine has said that she will not cease till
she has got rid of her; and as the prophecies say that one Queen of
England is to be burnt, she hopes it will be Katharine."[120]

Early in June Katharine urged strongly that Chapuys should travel to
Kimbolton to see her, alleging the bad condition of her health as a
reason. The King and Cromwell believed that her true object in desiring an
interview was to devise plans with her nephew's ambassador for obtaining
the enforcement of the papal censure,[121] which would have meant the
subversion of