ssed without opposition reasserting the extinction
of the Pope's authority, and another taking away the protection of
sanctuary from felonious priests. The succession was a harder problem. Day
after day it had been debated in the Council. Lord Sussex had proposed
that, as all the children of the King were illegitimate, the male should
be preferred to the female and the crown be settled on the Duke of
Richmond.[443] Richmond was personally liked. He resembled his father in
appearance and character, and the King himself was supposed to favour this
solution. With the outer world the favourite was the Princess Mary. Both
she and her mother were respected for a misfortune which was not due to
faults of theirs, and the Princess was the more endeared by the danger to
which she was believed to have been exposed through the machinations of
Anne. The new Queen was her strongest advocate, and the King's affection
for her had not been diminished even when she had tried him the most. He
could not have been ignorant of her correspondence with Chapuys: he
probably knew that she had wished to escape out of the realm, and that the
Pope, who was now suing to him, had meant to bestow his own crown upon
her. But her qualities were like his own, tough and unmalleable, and in
the midst of his anger he had admired her resolution. Every one expected
that she would be restored to her rank after Anne's death. The King had
apparently been satisfied with her letter to him. Cromwell was her friend,
and Chapuys, who had qualified her submission, was triumphant and
confident. He was led to expect that an Act would be introduced declaring
her the next heir--nay, he had thought that such an Act had been passed.
Unfortunately for him the question of her acknowledgment of the Act of
Supremacy was necessarily revived. Had she or had she not accepted it? The
Act had been imposed, with the Statute of Treasons attached, as a test of
loyalty to the Reformation. It was impossible to place her nearest to the
throne as long as she refused obedience to a law essential to the
national independence. To refuse was to confess of a purpose of undoing
her father's work, should he die and the crown descend to her. She had
supposed that "she was out of her trouble" while she had saved her
conscience by the reservation in her submission. Chapuys found her again
"in extreme perplexity and anger." The reservation had been observed. The
Duke of Norfolk, Lord Sussex, a Bishop, a