fe, and to him lawfully married; and in that point I will
abide till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, hath made
thereof a determination and a final ending."[334] The learned councillors
retired with their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more
dignified; but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in
defence of her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers
would she abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to
it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request
was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency,
and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the
court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king
to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her
again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had
been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had
belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.[335]
Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better
result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a
large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she
was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her
as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those
whom sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a
partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and as
the measures against the church became more stringent, and a separation
from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful
political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a
right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her
allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of
the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not
slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old
faith, and to whom the measures of the government appeared a sacrilege.
Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a
correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of the continent into
connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of
Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenay