according to the fashion of the country, the Princess sent us a present of wine and ale (which last is another beverage of theirs) and white bread. On the next day, which was the 6th, we returned to London to the house of our ambassador, where we remained two days, and then by boat went down the Thames, which is very broad, and covered with swans, and thus we got to Dover the passage port.”[79] [Illustration: KATHARINE OF ARRAGON. From a fine original in miniature by Holbein, formerly in Horace Walpole’s Collection at Strawberry Hill.] Another Italian visitor, the Venetian, Ludovico Falier, describes Mary at sixteen years old as “a very handsome, amiable and accomplished princess, in no respect inferior to her mother”. He remarks that Katharine was so much loved and respected, that the people were beginning to murmur against the King. “Were,” he continues, “the faction to produce a leader, it is certain that the English nation, so prone to innovation and change, would take up arms for the Queen, and by so much the more, were it arranged for the leader to marry the Princess Mary, although by English law females are excluded from the Crown.”[80] Another, Marin Giustinian, writing to the Signory, says: “The English King is not popular with his subjects, chiefly on account of his intention to divorce his wife, who is much loved, and they hold her daughter in very great account”.[81] A month later, the same writer was at Paris, and says:— “The English ambassador here, Sir John Wallop, does not approve the divorce; praising the wisdom, innocence, and patience of Queen Katharine, as also her daughter. He says that the Queen was beloved as if she had been of the blood royal of England, and the Princess in like manner.”[82] And from Lyons, on the 28th March 1533, he writes that a gentleman who has come from England has told Sir John Wallop, that “the King does not choose the Princess any longer to be styled Princess, but ‘Madam Mary,’ nor will he give her in marriage abroad; others say that he intends to make her a nun”. In August Marc Antonio Venier, in a despatch to the Signory from Rome, says that “letters from England announce that the Archbishop of Canterbury has pronounced a sentence in favour of Henry, prohibiting Katharine to be any longer named Queen, and is having it proclaimed throughout the realm, so that she may not be able to defend herself; and her daughter has been admonished not to interfere”.[83]