his one absorbing study of the advancement of self, by ministering to the greed, vanity and caprice of his master. He at last came to understand Henry’s character better than his own, and could have foretold the doom that awaited him, if he had been able to estimate the extent of his own capacity to satisfy the tyrant. But for her tact and judgment, cultivated by Chapuys, Mary must inevitably, like innumerable others, even after her supreme sacrifice, have been crushed between these two millstones. Henry had concluded the negotiations for his marriage with Anne of Cleves, in the autumn of 1539, and the lady arrived in England before the end of the year. But the subject of Mary’s union with Anne’s brother having now been dropped, another aspirant to her hand appeared on the scene. This was Philip, Duke of Bavaria, nephew of the Count Palatine, whose wooing was surrounded with some little romance. The preliminaries for this proposed marriage went farther, and gave more promise of fulfilment than any of the various plans for the disposal of the Princess since her childhood. The object of Duke Philip’s visit to England was at first kept secret, although Marillac, the shrewd ambassador of Francis I., was not long in discovering it. “There is a talk,” he wrote to Montmorency, “of the marriage of this King’s eldest daughter with the young Duke of the house of Bavaria, but there seems no appearance of it, except that he will not give her to a powerful prince, lest he should afterwards raise some claim to this crown.”[234] Sir Thomas Wriothesley was sent to Hertford Castle, where Mary was then residing, to announce to her this new proposal. It does not appear whether she had any warning of his errand, Chapuys being then absent from England, and although her agreement to whatever marriage Henry might decide on for her was a foregone conclusion, Wriothesley’s account of the interview and her own answer to Cromwell are interesting documents. Wriothesley wrote as follows:—