Humble as were these petitions, they elicited no reply from Henry, and Mary waited in vain for a word of kindness. Gradually it was borne in upon her, that the favour which she so earnestly implored, and which seemed to her so simple and easy a thing for the King to grant, would only be bestowed at the price of a sacrifice too heavy for her conscience to bear. Her contrition for past offences must not only be general, and such as any child might express to any father, but circumstantial and precise, affecting the vital principles for which she had struggled for four years. On the 6th June, Chapuys told the Emperor, that in an interview with Cromwell, the Secretary had declared it to be absolutely necessary that Mary should write a letter, according to a draft which he (Cromwell) had prepared, “in the most honourable and reasonable form that could be”. He had, he said, by the King’s command, sent a very confidential lady to solicit the Princess to do this, and that to avoid scruple, he wished that Chapuys would write to her, and send one of his principal servants to persuade her to make no difficulties about writing the said letter, which he intended to have translated from English into Latin, that Chapuys might see that it was quite honourable. There was, Chapuys thought, “some bird-catching attempted,” and he warned Mary. But meanwhile Cromwell visited him at his lodging, and told him that the King and Queen were wonderfully well pleased at the letters which Mary had written, in which, however, the ambassador told Charles that there was nothing corresponding to Cromwell’s draft, nor anything that could prejudice her. Mary’s next two letters, the one addressed to the chief Secretary, the other to Henry, dated respectively the 7th and 8th June, were evidently written in an agony of suspense, and of that hope deferred which “afflicteth the soul”. “GOOD MR. SECRETARY, “I think so long to hear some comfort from the King’s grace my father, whereby I may perceive his Grace of his princely goodness and fatherly pity to have accepted my letter, and withdrawn his displeasure towards me, that nature moveth me to be so bold to send his Grace a token, which my servant this bearer hath to deliver to you, or to any other at your appointment, desiring you (for the love of God) to find some meanes by your wisdom and goodness, that the King may be so good and gracious Lord to me, as to send me a token; which I assure you, shall be one of my greatest worldly comforts, till it shall please his Grace to license me to come into his most desired presence; the sute whereof my full trust is in you, that you will not forgett, when you shall see the time convenient. And thus I commit you to God, whom I both do and shall dayly pray to reward you, for your great paines and labours taken at all times for me. “From Hownsdon the 7 day of June (1536).