X.

Illness of Queen Catherine--Her physician's report of her health--Her last
letter to the Emperor--She sends for Chapuys--Interview between Chapuys
and Henry--Chapuys at Kimbolton--Death of Catherine--Examination of the
body--Suspicion of poison--Chapuys's opinion--Reception of the news at the
Court--Message of Anne Boleyn to the Princess Mary--Advice of Chapuys--
Unpopularity of Anne--Court rumours.

While the Pope was held back by the Cardinals, and the Great Powers were
watching each other, afraid to move, the knot was about to be cut, so far
as it affected the fortunes of Catherine of Aragon, in a manner not
unnatural and, by Cromwell and many others, not unforeseen. The agitation
and anxieties of the protracted conflict had shattered her health. Severe
attacks of illness had more than once caused fear for her life, and a few
months previously her recovery had been thought unlikely, if not
impossible. Cromwell had spoken of her death to Chapuys as a contingency
which would be useful to the peace of Europe, and which he thought would
not be wholly unwelcome to her nephew. Politicians in the sixteenth
century were not scrupulous, and Chapuys may perhaps have honestly thought
that such language suggested a darker purpose. But Cromwell had always
been Catherine's friend within the limits permitted by his duty to the
King and the Reformation. The words which Chapuys attributed to him were
capable of an innocent interpretation; and it is in the highest degree
unlikely that he, of all men, was contemplating a crime of which the
danger would far outweigh the advantage, and which would probably
anticipate for a few weeks or months only a natural end, or that, if he
had seriously entertained such an intention, he would have made a
confidant of the Spanish Ambassador. Catherine had been wrought during the
autumn months into a state of the highest excitement. Her letters to the
Pope had been the outpourings of a heart driven near to breaking; and if
Chapuys gave her Charles's last message, if she was told that it was the
Emperor's pleasure that she and her daughter must submit, should
extremities be threatened against them, she must have felt a bitter
conviction that the remedy which she had prayed for would never be
applied, and that the struggle would end in an arrangement in which she
would herself be sacrificed.

The life at Kimbolton was like the life at an ordinary well-appointed
English country-house. The establis