of grief, or else the Concubine would kill her. Even if the Queen and Princess had taken the Emperor's advice and submitted, the Concubine, he thought, under colour of the reconciliation which would have followed, would have made away with them the more fearlessly, because there would then be less suspicion. He had not been afraid of the King. The danger was from the Concubine, who had sworn to take their lives and would never have rested till it was done. The King and his Mistress, however, had taken a shorter road. They were afraid of the issue of the brief of execution. With Catherine dead the process at Rome would drop, the chief party to the suit being gone. Further action would have to be taken by the Pope on his own account, and no longer upon hers, and the Pope would probably hesitate; while, as soon as the mother was out of the way, there would be less difficulty in working upon the daughter, whom, being a subject, they would be able to constrain.[1]
It was true that the threatened Papal brief, being a part and consequence of the original suit, would have to be dropped or recalled, Henry could not be punished for not taking back his wife when the wife was dead. To that extent her end was convenient, and thus a motive may be suggested for making away with her. It was convenient also, as was frankly avowed, in removing the principal obstacle to the reconciliation of Henry and the Emperor; but, surely, on the condition that the death was natural. Had Charles allowed Chapuys to persuade him that his aunt had been murdered, reconciliation would have been made impossible for ever, and Henry would have received the just reward of an abominable crime. Chapuys's object
- ↑ Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 21, 1536.—MS. Vienna; Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol. x. p. 47.
