tunately wrote a very
swift Latin. Thus, when going to fetch Katharine to her interview with
Privy Seal he had found Udal bursting with news of the Cleves embassy
and with the letters of the Duke of Cleves actually copied on papers
in his poke, Throckmorton had very swiftly advised with himself how to
act. He had set Udal very earnestly to writing a false letter from
Cleves to France--such a letter as Cleves might have written--and this
false letter, in the magister's Latin, he had placed now in his
master's hands, and, pacing up and down, Cromwell read from time to
time from the scrap of paper.

What Cleves had written was that he was fain to make submission to the
Emperor, and leave the King's alliance. What Cromwell read was this:
That the high and mighty Prince, the Duke of Cleves, was firmly minded
to adhere in his allegiance with the King of England: that he feared
the wrath of the Emperor Charles, who was his very good suzerain and
over-lord: that if by taxes and tributes he might keep away from his
territory the armies of the Emperor he would be well content to pay a
store of gold: that he begged his friend and uncle, King of France, to
intercede betwixt himself and the Emperor to the end that the Emperor
might take these taxes and tributes; for that, if the Emperor would
none of this, come peace, come war, he, the high and mighty Prince,
Duke of Cleves, Elector of the Empire, was minded to protect in
Germany the Protestant confession and to raise against the Emperor the
Princes and Electors of Almain, being Protestants. With the aid of his
brother-in-law the King of England he would drive the Emperor Charles
from the German lands together with the heresies of the Romish Bishop
and all things that pertained to the Emperor Charles and his religion.

Cromwell had listened to the reading of this letter in silence; in
silence he re-perused it himself, pacing up and down, and in between
phrases of his thoughts he read passages from it and nodded his head.

That this was a very dangerous enterprise Throckmorton was assured; it
was the first overt act of his that Privy Seal could discover in him
as a treachery. In a month or six weeks he must know the truth; but in
a month or six weeks Katharine must have so enslaved the King that
all danger from Cromwell would be past. And he trusted that the
security that Cromwell must feel would gar him delay striking at
Katharine by means of her cousin.

Cromwell said suddenly: