tendom is in so great a strait. God in His
mercy has preserved you for this hour. Once more, therefore, as an
obedient child of the Holy See, I do entreat you to bear this realm in
special mind, to remember the King, my lord and husband, and my daughter.
Your Holiness knows, and all Christendom knows, what things are done here,
what great offence is given to God, what scandal to the world, what
reproach is thrown upon your Holiness. If a remedy be not applied shortly
there will be no end to ruined souls and martyred saints. The good will be
firm and will suffer. The lukewarm will fail if they find none to help
them, and the rest will stray out of the way like sheep that have lost
their shepherd. I place these facts before your Holiness because I know
not any one on whose conscience the deaths of these holy and good men and
the perdition of so many souls ought to weigh more heavily than on yours,
inasmuch as your Holiness neglects to encounter these evils which the
Devil, as we see, has sown among us.

"I write frankly to your Holiness, for the discharge of my own soul, as to
one who, I hope, can feel with me and my daughter for the martyrdoms of
these admirable persons. I have a mournful pleasure in expecting that we
shall follow them in the manner of their torments. And so I end, waiting
for the remedy from God and from your Holiness. May it come speedily. If
not, the time will be past. Our Lord preserve your Holiness's
person."[348]

On the same day and by the same messenger she wrote to Charles,
congratulating him on his African victory, and imploring him, now that he
was at liberty, to urge the Pope into activity. In other words, she was
desiring him to carry fire and sword through England, when if she herself
six years before would have allowed the Pope's predecessor to guide her
and had retired into "religion," there would have been no divorce, no
schism, no martyrs, no dangers of a European convulsion on her account.
Catherine, as other persons have done, had allowed herself to be governed
by her own wounded pride, and called it conscience.

Chapuys conveyed the Queen's arguments both to Charles and to Granvelle.
He again assured them that the Princess and her mother were in real danger
of death. If the Emperor continued to hesitate, he said, after his
splendid victories in Africa, there would be general despair. The
opportunity would be gone, and an enterprise now easy would then be
difficult, if not impossibl