“After my most hearty commendations to you, these shall be to give you thanks for the gentle and friendly letter which I received from you upon Sunday last, whereby I may well perceive, not only your continual diligence to further me in the King’s highness’s favour (which I take God to my judge is mine only comfort and treasure in this world), but also your wise and friendly counsel, in advertising me to eschew such things, whereby I might seem to give any other occasion than should be expedient for me; for the which your goodness, my lord, I think myself more bound to you than ever I did. For rather than I would willingly commit any jot contrary to the increasing of the King’s majesty’s favour, my most gracious and benign father, towards me, I would not only utterly eschew all occasions to the contrary (according to my bounden duty), but also suffer certain pain of body; for I take that for the chief part of my life in this world. Wherefore, concerning the lodging of strangers that you write to me of, although I fear it hath been reported to the worst, nevertheless, I will promise you, with God’s help from henceforth to refrain it so utterly, that of right, none shall have cause to speak of it; desiring you, my lord, for God’s sake to continue your goodness, both in exhorting me to follow such things as you think most convenient for me, and how I may eschew the contrary. For I confess the frailty of my youth to be such, that by negligence I may forget myself without the stay of your good counsel, which whensoever I shall hear, I trust to follow, and to the uttermost of my power, with God’s grace. To whose keeping I commit you, desiring him to reward you for your friendly part in this matter towards me, with all others in times past. From Richmond the 27th of May. “Your assured bounden friend during my life, “MARYE.”[221] Henry and Cromwell were both anxious to detach her from the Emperor, and they tried to do so by creating a misunderstanding between them, telling Mary that he had been wanting in zeal to promote her marriage. Hurtado de Mendoza was still in England, and Cromwell wrote to inform her that the ambassador extraordinary would pay her a visit with Chapuys, at the same time advising her to complain to them of the Emperor’s coldness on the subject of Don Loys’s suit. But Mary was not for an instant misled as to Cromwell’s intention, and her answer to his letter shows that she was learning how to deal with his unscrupulous policy. On the 24th August 1538, she wrote:— “MY LORD,