to follow the clue of the Nun’s confession, and to extend their inquiries.  The Countess of Salisbury was mentioned as one of the persons with whom the woman had been in correspondence.  This lady was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV.  Her mother was a Neville, a child of Richard the Kingmaker, the famous Earl of Warwick, and her only brother had been murdered to secure the shaking throne of Henry VII.  Margaret Plantagenet, in recompense for the lost honours of the house, was made Countess of Salisbury in her own right.  The title descended from her grandfather, who was Earl of Salisbury and Warwick; but the prouder title had been dropped as suggestive of dangerous associations.  The Earldom of Warwick remained in abeyance, and the castle and the estates attached to it were forfeited to the Crown.  The countess was married after her brother’s death to a Sir Richard Pole, a supporter and relation[659] of the king; and when left a widow she received from Henry VIII. the respectful honour which was due to the most nobly born of his subjects, the only remaining Plantagenet of unblemished descent.  In his kindness to her children the king had attempted to obliterate the recollection of her brother’s wrongs, and she had been herself selected to preside over the household of the Princess Mary.  During the first twenty years of Henry’s reign the countess seems to have acknowledged his attentions with loyal regard, and if she had not forgotten her birth and her childhood, she never connected herself with the attempts which during that time were made to revive the feuds of the houses.  Richard de la Pole, nephew of Edward IV.,[660] and called while he lived “the White Rose,” had more than once endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the eastern counties; but Lady Salisbury was never suspected of holding intercourse with him; she remained aloof from political disputes, and in lofty retirement she was contented to forget her greatness for the sake of the Princess Mary, to whom she and her family were deeply attached.  Her relations with the king had thus continued undisturbed until his second marriage.  As the representative of the House of York she was the object of the hopes and affections of the remnants of their party, but she had betrayed no disposition to abuse her influence, or to disturb the quiet of the nation for personal ambition of her own.

If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the light of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a material change.  Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king upon the divorce.  He was in suspicious connection with the pope, and having been required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused obedience.  His mother, and his mother’s attached friend, the Marchioness of Exeter, we now find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated her prophecies and her plans.  It does not seem that the countess thought at any time of reviving her own pretensions;