Nevertheless, there was no real danger from an invasion, unless it was accompanied with an insurrection at home, or with a simultaneous attack from Scotland; and while of the first there appeared upon the surface no probability, with Scotland a truce for a year had been concluded on the 1st of October.[634] The king, therefore, had felt himself reasonably secure.  Parliament had seemed unanimous; the clergy were submissive; the nation acquiescent or openly approving;[635] and as late as the beginning of November, 1533, no suspicion seems to have been entertained of the spread of serious disaffection.  A great internal revolution had been accomplished; a conflict of centuries between the civil and spiritual powers had been terminated without a life lost or a blow struck.  Partial murmurs there had been, but murmurs were inevitable, and, so far as the government yet knew, were harmless.  The Scotch war had threatened to be dangerous, but it had been extinguished.  Impatient monks had denounced the king from the pulpits, and disloyal language had been reported from other quarters, which had roused vigilance, but had not created alarm.  The Nun of Kent had forced herself into the royal presence with menacing prophecies; but she had appeared to be a harmless dreamer, who could only be made of importance by punishment.  The surface of the nation was in profound repose.  Cromwell, like Walsingham after him, may perhaps have known of the fire which was smouldering below, and have watched it silently till the moment came at which to trample it out; but no symptom of uneasiness appears either in the conduct of the government or in the official correspondence.  The organisation of the friars, the secret communication of the Nun with Catherine and the Princess Mary, with the papal nuncio, or with noble lords and reverend bishops, was either unknown, or the character of those communications was not suspected.  That a serious political conspiracy should have shaped itself round the ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all appearance had not occurred as a possibility to a single member of the council, except to those whose silence was ensured by their complicity.

So far as we are able to trace the story (for the links of the chain which led to the discovery of the design’s which were entertained, are something imperfect), the suspicions of the government were first roused in the following manner: 

Queen Catherine, as we have already seen, had been called upon, at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, to renounce her title, and she had refused.  Mary had been similarly deprived of her rank as princess; but either her disgrace was held to be involved in that of her mother, or some other cause, perhaps the absence of immediate necessity, had postponed the demand for her own personal submission.  As, however, on the publication of the second marriage, it had been urged on Catherine that there could not be two queens in England, so on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, an analogous argument required the disinheritance of Mary.  It was a hard thing; but her mother’s conduct obliged the king to be peremptory.  She might have been legitimatised by act of parliament, if Catherine would have submitted.  The consequences of Catherine’s refusal might be cruel, but they were unavoidable.