arrangement) whether the
ladies' business might not be passed over silently in the new treaty, and
be left in suspense for the King's life. A General Council might meet to
consider the other disorders of Christendom, or a congress might be held,
previously appointed jointly by the King and the Emperor, when the ladies'
rights might be arranged without mystery. Then once more, and, as Chapuys
thought, with marked emphasis, he asked again what harm need be feared if
the Princess were to die. The world might mutter, but why should it be
resented by the Emperor?[314]

Chapuys says that he replied that he would not dwell on the trouble which
might arise if the Princess suddenly died in a manner so suspicious. God
forbid that such a thing should be! How could the Emperor submit to the
reproach of having consented to the death of his cousin, and sold her for
the sake of a peace?

Chapuys professed to believe, and evidently wished the Emperor to believe,
that Cromwell was seriously proposing that the Princess Mary should be
made away with. A single version of a secret conversation is an
insufficient evidence of an intended monstrous crime. We do not know in
what language it was carried on. Cromwell spoke no language but English
with exactness, and Chapuys understood English imperfectly. The recent and
alarming illness of the Princess, occasioned by restraint, fear, and
irritation, had made her condition a constant subject of Chapuys's
complaints, and Cromwell may have been thinking and speaking only of her
dying under the natural consequences of prolonged confinement. Chapuys's
unvarying object was to impress on the Emperor that her life was in
danger. But Cromwell he admitted had been uniformly friendly to Mary, and,
had foul play been really contemplated, the Emperor's Ambassador was the
last person to whom the intention would have been communicated.

The conversation did not end with Chapuys's answer. Cromwell went on, he
said (still dwelling on points most likely to wound Charles), to rage
against popes and cardinals, saying that he hoped the race would soon be
extinct, and that the world would be rid of their abomination and tyranny.
Then he spoke again of France, and of the pressure laid on Henry to join
with the French in a war. Always, he said, he had dissuaded his master
from expeditions on the Continent. He had himself refused a large pension
which the French Government had offered him, and he intended at the next
P