“My Lord,
“After my most hearty commendations, I do in semblable manner thank you for your gentle and friendly letters. How I have proceeded, touching the counsel of the same for the matter declared by Mr. Wriothesley, because both by his relation and by my letters, to the King’s Majesty you shall perceive, I shall not trouble you with my vain words in writing: only this I will add, that howsoever I am in this kind of thing affected, his Highness in this, and all other things during my life shall find me his most humble and obedient daughter, subject and servant; and so I beseech you ever to say and answer for me. I shall not, God willing, disapprove your saying in the same, while the breath shall be in my body; as knows our Lord, who send you health.
“From Hertford Castle, the 17th of December, late at night. I beseech your lordship to pardon me that I write not this letter of mine own hand. I was something weary with the writing of the other letter, and upon trust of your goodness, I caused one of my men in this to supply the place of a secretary.
“Your assured loving friend during my life,
“Marye.”[236]
Henry’s sole object in this negotiation appears to have been to hoodwink the Emperor into a belief that he was again throwing himself on the side of the German Princes, and to secure this, he allowed matters to go further towards a conclusion than he had ever before suffered them to go. With a great pretence of secrecy, he took care that the French and Imperial ambassadors should know all about the affair. Marillac wrote on the 27th December, to say that the news he communicated to Montmorency on the 24th was confirmed “touching the marriage of the lady Mary with the Duke of Bavaria, who three or four days ago, as secretly as he could, went to visit her in a house of the Abbot of Westminster, in the gardens of the Abbey, a mile from this town, whither she had been brought. After having kissed her, which is an argument either of marriage or of near relationship, seeing that since the death of the late marquis, no lord of this kingdom has dared to go so far, the said Duke had a long conversation with her, partly in German, through an interpretator, and partly in Latin, of which she is not ignorant. Finally, they mutually declared, the said lord his resolution, taken with this King, to have her for wife, ‘pourveu que sa personne luy feust agréable,’ and the said lady her willingness to obey her father. He cannot say when the marriage will come off, but some think in fifteen or twenty days; others that the weddings of father and daughter will be on the same day, that is, as soon as the lady, who is at Calais arrives. She is only detained by the wind, which yesterday was not contrary.”[237]
The Duke presented his supposed fiancée with a cross of diamonds set with four pearls, and one great pearl pendant,[238] and there the matter ended for the moment. Anne of Cleves had landed at Deal, and Henry was taken up with the subject of his own marriage.
A letter in the Record Office from Henry VIII. to some person unnamed, commands him to prepare himself “and all other things meet and convenient, to bring unto us our entirely beloved daughters, the ladies Mary and Elizabeth, in such honourable sort as you can”. They were among the foremost to receive their father’s bride, and took part in the wedding festivities. These were however clouded by the royal bridegroom’s disappointment on seeing the lady. Reports of her beauty, and also of her want of beauty have been greatly exaggerated. Henry remarked to Cromwell that she was “nothing so fair as she had been reported,” that she was ”well and seemly, but nothing else”.[239] The wedding took place on the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, with marked reluctance on Henry’s part. He afterwards said that he would never have married her, “but for fear of making a ruffle in the world, and of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and the French King”.[240] But his discontent was kept secret for a time, although the day after his marriage he pointedly asked Cromwell, “What remedy?” Cromwell said he knew of none, and hoped for the best. He had been more facile in the case of Queen Katharine and of Anne Boleyn, but his ingenuity seemed to have forsaken him at the moment when it might have saved him from ruin. His fall was as swift and as unforeseen by himself, as that of any of the victims of his policy.
On the 11th June, the French ambassador wrote to Francis I.: “I have just been informed that Master Thomas Cramvel Keeper of the Privy Seal of this King, and his Vicar General in things spiritual, who since the death of the Cardinal had the principal management of the affairs of this kingdom and had lately been made Grand Chamberlain, was an hour ago led prisoner to the Tower of London, and all his goods seized and confiscated. Although this might be thought a private matter and of little importance, inasmuch as they have but reduced a personage thus to the condition from which they raised him, treating him only as they all say he deserved, nevertheless, considering the consequence of the matter, ... especially as regards the innovations in religion, of which the said Cramvel had been the principal author, the news seems to me of so much importance, that it ought to be communicated forthwith.” Later on he adds:—
“Sire, as I was on the point of closing this letter, a gentleman of the Court came to me from the King his master to tell me not to be surprised that Cramvel had been sent to the Tower, and that as the common, ignorant people as usual spoke of it variously, and in such a manner as to mislead one, I might think and write accordingly, he wished me to know the truth, and the reason why he had taken him all invested in authority as he was”. He goes on to say that the King, according to his own statement, wished to settle religious matters in England on a Catholic basis, and was opposed by Cromwell, who was in league with the German Lutherans, and working against his master and the Acts of Parliament; that he had betrayed himself, and said that he hoped to do away with the old preachers, so that the new ones would be listened to, adding that “the affair would soon be brought to such a pass, that the King with all his power would not be able to prevent it, but that his own party would be so strong that he would make the King descend to the new doctrines, even if he had to take arms against him, in which case, he reckoned that he would not be inferior but rather superior in power, and able to establish that which he had long proposed to do”.[241]