ndifferent. The
strongest interest was felt in their fate, he said, and many
inconveniences would follow should harm befall them. The world would
certainly believe that they had met with foul play. The Emperor would be
charged with having caused it by neglecting to execute the Pope's
sentence, and it would be said also that, but for the expectations which
the Emperor had held out to them of defending their cause, they would
themselves have conformed to the King's wishes; they would then have been
treated with due regard and have escaped their present miseries. Cromwell
undertook that the utmost care and vigilance should be observed that hurt
should not befall them. The Princess, he said, he loved as much as Chapuys
himself could love her, and nothing that he could do for them should be
neglected; but the Ambassador and the Emperor's other agents were like
hawks who soared high to stoop more swiftly on their prey. Their object
was to have the Princess declared next in succession to the crown, and
that was impossible owing to the late statutes.

Chapuys reported what had passed to his master, but scarcely concealed his
contempt for the business in which he was engaged. "I cannot tell," he
wrote, "what sort of a treaty could be made with this King as long as he
refuses to restore the Queen and Princess, or repair the hurts of the
Church and the Faith, which grow worse every day. No later than Sunday
last a preacher raised a question whether the body of Christ was
contained, or not, in the consecrated wafer. Your Majesty may consider
whither such propositions are tending."[312]

A still more important conversation followed a few days later. It can
hardly be doubted, in the face of Chapuys's repeated declaration that both
Catherine and her daughter were in personal danger, that Anne Boleyn felt
her position always precarious as long as they were alive, and refused to
acknowledge her marriage. She perhaps felt that it would go hard with
herself in the event of a successful insurrection. She had urged, as far
as she dared, that they should be tried under the statute; but Henry would
not allow such a proposal to be so much as named to him. Other means,
however, might be found to make away with them, and Sir Arthur Darcy,
Lord Darcy's son, thought they would be safer in the King's hands in the
Tower than in their present residence. "The devil of a Concubine would
never rest till she had gained her object."

The air was thick w