in the same designs; and it will not
be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going
forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These
intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to
leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a
party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to
succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or
submit to be deposed.[442]

Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the unsuccessful.
State considerations lose their force after the lapse of centuries, when no
interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and we feel for the great
sufferers of history only in their individual capacity, without recalling
or caring for the political exigencies to which they were sacrificed. It is
an error of disguised selfishness, the counterpart of the carelessness with
which in our own age, when we are ourselves constituents of an interested
public, we ignore what it is inconvenient to remember.

Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the people
gathering to church in every parish through the English counties, read,
nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that the Lady
Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be
called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess Dowager, and
so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may suppose, was read with
varying comments; of the reception of it in the northern counties, the
following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby,
lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had
arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on
the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness
and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses,
which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the following
effect:--

Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the
proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not be
queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.

William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James said, I
will take none for queen but Queen Catherine--who the devil made Nan
Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for queen--and he the said
Wil