lanche of ruin, strove as
best they might to avert such a catastrophe. Every courier who went to the
Emperor from England carried alarmist rumours that Katharine and Mary were
to be put out of the way; and the ladies, in a true spirit of martyrdom,
awaited without flinching the hour of their sacrifice. Cromwell himself
darkly hinted that the only way out of the maze of difficulty and peril
was the death of Katharine; and in this he was apparently right. But at
this distance of time it seems evident that much of the threatening talk,
both of the King's friends and those of the Catholic Church in England,
was intended, on the one hand to drive Katharine and her daughter into
submission, and prevent them from continuing their appeals for foreign
aid, and on the other to move the Emperor to action against Henry. So, in
the welter of political interests, Katharine wept and raged fruitlessly.
The Papal decree directing the execution of the deprivation of Henry,
though signed by the Pope, was still held back; for Charles could not
afford to invade England himself, and was determined to give no excuse for
Francis to do so.

Though there is no known ground for the then prevailing belief that Henry
was aiding nature in hastening the death of his first wife, the long
unequal combat against invincible circumstances was doing its work upon a
constitution never robust; and by the late autumn of 1535 the
stout-hearted daughter of Isabel the Catholic was known to be sick beyond
surgery. In December 1535 Chapuys had business with Cromwell, and during
the course of their conversation the latter told him that he had just
sent a messenger to inform the King of Katharine's serious illness. This
was the first that Chapuys had heard of it, and he at once requested leave
to go and see her, to which Cromwell replied that he might send a servant
to inquire as to her condition, but that the King must be consulted before
he (Chapuys) himself could be allowed to see her. As Chapuys was leaving
Whitehall a letter was brought to him from Katharine's physician, saying
that the Queen's illness was not serious, and would pass off; so that
unless later unfavourable news was sent Chapuys need not press for leave
to see her. Two days afterwards a letter reached him from Katharine
herself, enclosing one to the Emperor. She wrote in the deepest
depression, praying again, and for the hundredth time, in words that, as
Chapuys says, "would move a stone to compas