“I would have been a suter to you before this time, to have been a mean for me to the King’s grace my father, to have obtained his Grace’s blessing and favour; but I perceived that nobody durst speak for me, as long as that woman lived which now is gone, whom I pray our Lord of his great mercy to forgive. Wherefore, now she is gone, I am the bolder to write to you, as she which taketh you for one of my chief friends. And, therefore, I desire you, for the love of God, to be a suitor for me to the King’s grace, to have his blessing, and licence to write unto his grace, which shall be a great comfort for me, as God knoweth, who have you evermore in his holy keeping. Moreover, I must desire you to accept mine evil writing. For I have not done so much this two year and more, nor could not have found the meanes to do it at this time, but by my Lady Kingston’s being here. “At Hounsdon, the 26 of May (1536). “By your loving friend “MARYE.”[177] The series of letters which follow on this simple, natural effusion are of so painful a character, that were it not necessary for the clear understanding of the impending crisis in Mary’s life, to print them here entire, the temptation would be great to pass them over with a general indication of their contents. But the matter is one that may not be dealt with superficially, and the text of the somewhat discursive correspondence which passed between Mary, Cromwell and Henry is indispensable if we would estimate the extent of the mental torture the Princess was called upon to undergo, at the very time when she hoped that her worst trials were over. Her father’s tyranny, far from having exhausted its resources, culminated in an act so brutal, that it removes him for ever beyond the pale of humanity. It is a question whether, in all Mary’s sad and troubled life, the saddest moment was not now approaching. Gradually, the bright, eager tone of her letters dies down, and, in place of the hopeful strain, is one of abject grovelling at Henry’s feet. The later letters of the series are, indeed, written either from Cromwell’s dictation, or are copied from his drafts, but the pen is Mary’s; and the fact that she was now brought to renounce, at least formally, her birthright, her pious faith in her mother’s honour and dignity, together with all that she held most dear, places her in a position than which there could hardly be a more painful. But nothing short of this total abandonment of herself to his despotic will would satisfy the “most Christian, prudent, victorious and politic prince,” her father.[178] Cromwell’s answer to the above letter has not been preserved, but its tenor may be inferred by another from the Princess Mary, dated the 30th May:— “MASTER SECRETARY,