Chapuys describes Lady Salisbury’s execution in the Tower, in presence of the Lord Mayor and about 150 persons. He says that when informed of her sentence she found it very strange, not knowing her crime; but she walked to the space in front of the Tower where there was no scaffold, but only a small block, and there commended her soul to God. She desired those present to pray for the King, Queen, Prince and Princess. The ordinary executioner being absent, a “blundering garçonneau” performed the office, who hacked her head and shoulders to pieces.[233] There is no trace in the public records of the immediate effect produced on Mary by these frightful occurrences, except that Chapuys reports to the Emperor that “the Princess has been very ill, and in some danger of her life, but thanks to God she is beginning to recover, and there is a hope that owing to the good diet prescribed by her physicians, and the great care her father, and her own servants take of her, she will soon recover completely”. She knew by experience, how slight a remark would suffice to place her own head in jeopardy, and acutely as she would feel the awful fate of her best friends, especially that of one to whom she owed next to her mother all her early training in that “virtue and goodness” of which even her father was proud, she dared not give utterance to the least word of sorrow, or even show a mournful countenance lest she should excite his wrath. When the strain became too great, the nervous tension ended in a complete break-down that must have been a relief. When we consider that even thoughts, sympathies and friendships were interpreted high-treason by this “western Turk,” and that Mary’s mental attitude was well-known to him, her hair-breadth escapes partake of the marvellous. In spite of her yielding to his every demand, he knew full well that his daughter had never given an interior consent to his new laws, and that in the eyes of Europe, he was on account of those same laws an object of derision. The only way in which he could claim respect for himself and for them was by becoming a terror. There is no doubt that Mary was still of value to him in playing off one of his allies against another, but at any moment it might suit his policy better to behead her, than to pretend to dispose of her in marriage. Cromwell, it is true, seemed to be her friend, but in the past, he had been the origin of her troubles, and it was evident to all, that his friendship would be as chaff before the wind, if she stood between him and the attainment of his purpose. It has been more than once pointed out by biographers of Cromwell, that he was not unnecessarily cruel, that he never sent any to the block from private passion, that he took no delight in bloodshed for its own sake. Neither was he accessible to any feeling of generosity or pity. All the thews and sinews of his make were of iron; humanity he esteemed a weakness, and altogether beside