The Spanish Ministry had been willing that the Pope’s sentence should be revised by a General Council. Why, Chapuys asked, might not the King consent also to refer the case to the Council? The King knew that he was right. He had once been willing—why should he now refuse? A Council, it had been said, would be called by the Pope, and would be composed of clergy who were not his friends; but Chapuys would undertake that there should be no unfair dealing. Were the Pope and clergy to intend harm, all the Princes of Christendom would interfere. The Emperor would recommend nothing to which the King would not be willing to subscribe. The favourable verdict of a Council would restore peace in England, and would acquit the Emperor’s conscience. The Emperor, as matters stood, was bound to execute the sentence which had been delivered, and could not hold back longer without a hope of the King’s submission.
Cromwell admitted the reasonableness of Chapuys’s suggestion. The Emperor was showing by the advances which he had commenced that he desired a reconciliation. A Council controlled by the princes of Europe might perhaps be a useful instrument. Cromwell promised an answer in two days.
Then, after a pause, he returned to the subject of which he had spoken before:—In a matter of so much consequence to the world as the good intelligence of himself and the King of England, he said that the Emperor ought not to hesitate on account of the Queen and the Princess. They were but mortal. If the Princess was to die, her death would be no great misfortune, when the result of it would be the union and friendship of the two Princes.[313] He begged Chapuys to think it over when alone and at leisure. He then went on to inquire (for Chapuys had not informed him that the Emperor had already made up his mind to an arrangement) whether the ladies’ business might not be passed over silently in the new treaty, and be left in suspense for the King’s life. A General Council might meet to consider the other disorders of Christendom, or a congress might be held, previously appointed jointly by the King and the Emperor, when the ladies’ rights might be arranged without mystery. Then once more, and, as Chapuys thought, with marked emphasis, he asked again what harm need be feared if the Princess were to die. The world might mutter, but why should it be resented by the Emperor?[314]
Chapuys says that he replied that he would not dwell on the trouble which might arise if the Princess suddenly died in a manner so suspicious. God forbid that such a thing should be! How could the Emperor submit to the reproach of having consented to the death of his cousin, and sold her for the sake of a peace?
Chapuys professed to believe, and evidently wished the Emperor to believe, that Cromwell was seriously proposing that the Princess Mary should be made away with. A single version of a secret conversation is an insufficient evidence of an intended monstrous crime. We do not know in what language it was carried on. Cromwell spoke no language but English with exactness, and Chapuys understood English imperfectly. The recent and alarming illness of the Princess, occasioned by restraint, fear, and irritation, had made her condition a constant subject of Chapuys’s complaints, and Cromwell may have been thinking and speaking only of her dying under the natural consequences of prolonged confinement. Chapuys’s unvarying object was to impress on the Emperor that her life was in danger. But Cromwell he admitted had been uniformly friendly to Mary, and, had foul play been really contemplated, the Emperor’s Ambassador was the last person to whom the intention would have been communicated.
The conversation did not end with Chapuys’s answer. Cromwell went on, he said (still dwelling on points most likely to wound Charles), to rage against popes and cardinals, saying that he hoped the race would soon be extinct, and that the world would be rid of their abomination and tyranny. Then he spoke again of France, and of the pressure laid on Henry to join with the French in a war. Always, he said, he had dissuaded his master from expeditions on the Continent. He had himself refused a large pension which the French Government had offered him, and he intended at the next Parliament to introduce a Bill prohibiting English Ministers from taking pensions from foreign princes on pain of death.
Men who have been proposing to commit murders do not lightly turn to topics of less perilous interest.
Some days passed before Chapuys saw Cromwell again; but he continued to learn from him the various intrigues which were going on. Until the King was sure of his ground with Charles, the French faction at the court continued their correspondence with Francis. The price of an Anglo-French alliance was to be a promise from the French King to support Henry in his quarrel with Rome at the expected Council, and Chapuys advised his master not to show too much eagerness for the treaty, as he would make the King more intractable.
The Emperor’s way of remedying the affairs of England could not be better conceived, he said, provided the English Government met him with an honest response, provided they would forward the meeting of the Council, and treat the Queen and Princess better, who were in great personal danger. This, however, he believed they would never do. The Queen had instructed him to complain to the Emperor that her daughter was still left in the hands of her enemies, and that if she was to die it would be attributed to the manner in which she had been dealt with; the Queen, however, was satisfied that the danger would disappear if the King and the Emperor came to an understanding; and, if she could be assured that matters would be conducted as the Emperor proposed, he would be able to persuade her to approve of the whole plan.
Chapuys never repeated his suspicion that danger threatened Mary from Cromwell, and, if he had really believed it, he would hardly have failed to make further mention of so dark a suggestion. He was not scrupulous about truth: diplomatists with strong personal convictions seldom are. He had assured the King that a thought had never been entertained of an armed interference in England, while his letters for many months had been full of schemes for insurrection and invasion. He was eager for the work to begin. He was incredulous of any other remedy, and, if he dared, would have forced the Emperor’s hand. He depended for his information of what passed at the court upon Anne Boleyn’s bitterest enemies, and he put the worst interpretation upon every story which was brought to him. Cromwell, he said, had spoken like Caiaphas. It is hardly credible that Cromwell would have ventured to insult the Emperor with a supposition that he would make himself an accomplice in a crime. But though I think it more likely that Chapuys misunderstood or misrepresented Cromwell than that he accurately recorded his words, yet it is certain that there were members of Henry’s Council who did seriously desire to try and to execute both Mary and her mother. Both of them were actively dangerous. Their friends were engaged in a conspiracy for open rebellion in their names, and, under the Tudor princes, nearness of blood or station to the Crown was rather a danger than a protection. Royal pretenders were not gently dealt with, even when no immediate peril was feared from them. Henry VII. had nothing to fear from the Earl of Warwick, yet Warwick lay in a bloody grave. Mary herself executed her cousin Jane Grey, and was hardly prevented from executing her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth, in turn, imprisoned Catherine Grey, and let her die as Chapuys feared that Mary was now about to die. The dread of another war of succession lay like a nightmare on the generations which carried with them an ever-present memory of the Wars of the Roses.