“After my most hearty commendations to you; forasmuch as I have always found your gentleness such as never refused to further my continual suites to you, it maketh me the bolder to use mine accustomed manner in writing to you, to be mean for me to the King’s Highness, for such things as I have need of, which at this time is this. It hath pleased the King’s majestie, my most gracious father, of his great goodness, to send me every quarter of this year, fourty pounds, as you best know; for you were always a mean for it as (I thank you) you be for all my other suits. And seeing this quarter of Christmas must needs be more chargeable than the rest, specially considering the house I am in, I would desire you, if your wisdom thought it most convenient, to be a suitor to the King’s said Highness (if it may so stand with his gracious pleasure) somewhat to increase that sum. And thus, my Lord, I am ashamed always to be a beggar to you; but that the occasion at this time is such, that I cannot chuse. Wherefore I trust in your goodness, you will accept it thereafter. And thus I commit you to God, desiring him to reward you for all your pains taken for me. “From Hownsdon, the 8 of December. “Your assured loving friend during my life, “MARYE.”[226] Soon after writing this letter, the whirligig of her father’s caprice placed her again at court, and from the beginning of the following year, she was the subject of one matrimonial scheme after another, Henry even pretending to go so far as to associate her with his own plans for a fourth marriage. In January 1539 Christopher Mont or Mount, a German agent in his service, was instructed to proceed to the court of the Duke of Saxony, and treat with Burgartus the Duke’s Vice-chancellor concerning a marriage, between the young Duke of Cleves and the Lady Mary. There is an amusing difference between Henry’s solemn, if hollow forms of negotiation with the first-rate powers of Europe, and the polite contempt with which he treats the petty German princes. If Burgartus desire “the picture of her face,” and say he wrote for it, Mont is to remind him that she is a King’s daughter, and that it was never seen, that the pictures of persons of such degree were sent abroad. Burgartus moreover has seen her, “and can testify of her proportion, countenance and beauty, and though she is only the King’s natural daughter, she is endued, as all the world knows, with such beauty, learning and virtue, that when the rest is agreed, no man would stick for any part concerning her beauty and goodness”.