transgressions with my repentance for the same, and thereupon to grant some little spark of my most humble suit and desire, which (God is my judge) I desire for no worldly respect, trusting in Almighty God, to use myself so from henceforth as your Grace shall have cause to think your mercy and pity well extended unto me. To whom I shall daily pray (as I am most bounden) to preserve your Highness, with the Queen, and shortly to send you issue, which shall be gladder tidings to me than I can express in writing. “From Hunsdon the xiii day of June. “Your most humble and obedient daughter and handmaid, “MARYE.“[185] It was clearly anticipated that Mary’s progress, by almost imperceptible degrees, from vague expressions of repentance to a definite surrender of her will for the future, would have prepared the victim for the final _coup_. Immediately after receiving the above transcript of Cromwell’s draft, Henry sent commissioners to Hunsdon, summoning her to accept the new statute, and to affix her signature to a statement, declaring her own illegitimacy, which had been drawn up with the most ruthless and humiliating detail. To Henry’s fury and Cromwell’s consternation Mary refused to sign. The Chief Secretary had pledged himself to reduce her to submission, and he knew by experience, that with his master, failure spelt treason, and he trembled accordingly. His answer to Mary’s appeals was brutal in the extreme, yet knowing as we do by the light of after events, that he was not only arrested, but condemned and executed for far less than complicity in Mary’s disobedience, we can scarcely wonder at his tone towards her. None, with the single exception perhaps of Cranmer, knew Henry so well as his chief minister, and to know him was with all time-servers to fear exceedingly. “MADAM [he wrote],