She went to Hatfield, ostensibly to see Elizabeth, but as soon as she arrived, she sent a message to Mary inviting her to come and salute her as the queen she was. If Mary would do so, Anne promised that she would intercede with her father on her behalf. Without a moment’s hesitation, Mary replied that she knew no queen in England but her mother; but she would be much obliged if the Lady Anne Boleyn would be a means to the King in her favour. Anne tried again, sent a fresh message, but was again repulsed, whereupon she threatened “to break the haughtiness of this unbridled Spanish blood”.[120] But if Anne’s hatred increased from this moment, her power to influence Henry was visibly on the decline. Her very threats are henceforth indicative of her weakened hold on his inconstant mind. In the course of the year 1534, there was a question of his departure for France, and Anne was more than once heard to say, that when he had crossed the sea, and she remained in England as regent, she would use her authority to put Mary to death, either by starving her or otherwise. When her brother, Lord Rochford represented to her that this would anger the King, she replied that she did not care, even if she were burned alive for it afterwards. “The Princess,” adds Chapuys, “quite expects this, and thinking that she could not better gain Paradise than by such a death, shows no concern, trusting only in God, whom she has always served well, and does still better now. Having spoken to the Queen, by her advice, I will make remonstrances; but I know not if they will do any good.”[121] In a formal letter of protest, dated 7th June 1534, against the treatment she had received, in being declared illegitimate, and deprived of her title of Princess of Wales, Mary declared that she would not enter a convent, or take any such step at the will of her father, without the free consent of her mother. The strange mixture of firmness, self-reliance and sweetness in her behaviour at this time, was a source of wonder and admiration to all not utterly devoid of human pity, and even strangers were impressed with such conduct in a girl of eighteen, whose whole life appeared to be one perpetual lesson on the “uses of adversity”.