had played as a child, carrying with her the affectionate remembrance of every English heart, and welcomed by her own people as an injured saint.  Nor again can we suppose that the possible injury of her daughter’s prospects from the birth of a prince by another marriage could have seemed of so vast moment to her.  Those prospects were already more than endangered, and would have been rather improved than brought into further peril.

It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under injuries so cruel ought to have pursued.  She had a right to choose the course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might have demanded and exacted of one of its own children.  We may regret, however, what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity could scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which the Queen returned to the legate’s request.  She seems to have said that she was ready to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same.  It does not appear whether the request was formally made, or whether it was merely suggested to her in private conversation.  That she told the legates, however, what her answer would be, appears certain from the following passage, sadly indicating the “devices of policy” to which in this unhappy business honourable men allowed themselves to be driven:—­

“Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous difficulty, and in nowise be conformable to enter religion[157] or take vows of chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means of high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to the same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will condescend so to do, unless that the King’s Highness also do the semblable for his part; the king’s said orators shall therefore in like wise ripe and instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the court of Rome, if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king’s succession, realm, and subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his Grace should promise so to enter religion on vows of chastity for his part, only thereby to conduce the queen thereunto, whether in that case the Pope’s Holiness may dispense with the King’s Highness for the same promise, oath, or vow, discharging his Grace clearly of the same."[158]

The explanation of the queen’s conduct lies probably in regions into which it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged delicacy and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been enacted behind the scenes.  From the significant hints which are let fall of the original cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more difficult to endure than the ordinary trial of married women, the transfer of a husband’s affection to some fairer face; and a wife whom so painful a misfortune had failed to crush would be likely to have been moved