Those prospects were
already more than endangered, and would have been rather improved than
brought into further peril.

It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under
injuries so cruel ought to have pursued. She had a right to choose the
course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not
claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might have
demanded and exacted of one of its own children. We may regret, however,
what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity could
scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which the Queen
returned to the legate's request. She seems to have said that she was ready
to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same. It does not appear
whether the request was _formally_ made, or whether it was merely suggested
to her in private conversation. That she told the legates, however, what
her answer would be, appears certain from the following passage, sadly
indicating the "devices of policy" to which in this unhappy business
honourable men allowed themselves to be driven:--

"Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous difficulty,
and in nowise be conformable to enter religion[157] or take vows of
chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means of
high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to the
same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will condescend
so to do, unless that the King's Highness also do the semblable for his
part; the king's said orators shall therefore in like wise ripe and
instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the court of Rome,
if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king's succession, realm, and
subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his Grace should promise so to
enter religion on vows of chastity for his part, only thereby to conduce
the queen thereunto, whether in that case the Pope's Holiness may dispense
with the King's Highness for the same promise, oath, or vow, discharging
his Grace clearly of the same."[158]

The explanation of the queen's conduct lies probably in regions into which
it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged delicacy
and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been enacted behind
the scenes. From the significant hints which are let fall of the original
cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more diffi