The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is certain that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her mother’s “cause” or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of her father.  To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally difficult; and the government might have been in serious embarrassment had not a series of discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other, explained the mystery of these proceedings, and opened a view with alarming clearness into the under-currents of the feeling of the country.

Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to the correspondence between Catherine and the pope.  Perhaps, too, he knew how assiduously she had importuned the emperor to force Clement to a decision.[639] No effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere with her hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny before they could be admitted to her presence.  She was the mistress of her own court and of her own actions; and confidential agents, both from Rome, Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and repassed with reciprocal instructions and directions.

The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the course of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October, or the beginning of November,[640] two friars were reported as having been at Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to escape observation.  Secret agents of the government, who had been “set” for the purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding “many wiles and cautells by them invented to escape,” the suspected persons were arrested and brought before Cromwell.  Cromwell, “upon examination” could gather nothing from them of any moment or great importance; but, “entering on further communication,” he said, “he found one of them a very seditious person, and so committed them to ward.”  The king was absent from London, but had left directions that, in the event of any important occurrence of the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for; but Cranmer not being immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as, he said, “it is undoubted that they (the monks) have intended, and would confess, some great matter, if they might be examined as they ought to be—­that is to say, by pains.”

The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether they were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but we may naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the events which immediately followed.  In the middle of November we find a commission sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Latimer, ravelling out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole was disentangled, it appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary, and a large and formidable party in the country, the king, on the faith of a pretended revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that his death, either by visitation of God or by visitation of man, was daily expected; and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was immediately looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.