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 Catherine were concluded Henry held another meeting with the emperor at Gravelines, and brought him and his aunt, Margaret of Savoy, to Calais, where the queen received them. Two years later war was declared against France, and the emperor paid a second visit to England, when he was feasted and entertained with great magnificence at Canterbury, London, and Windsor.

In 1521, the year between the emperor's first and second visit to England, occurred the arrest and execution of the Duke of Buckingham, and it is not improbable that Shakespeare followed a true tradition when he represented Catherine as present at the examination of that unfortunate nobleman's surveyor, pleading for something like fair play to the accused. The fact, as regards Catherine, seems to rest on no other authority; but there is distinct evidence that Buckingham's servants were examined by the king himself, before the apprehension of their master, very much in the way that the surveyor is examined by Henry in the play; so that we may not unreasonably believe the whole scene to be substantially true. Sir Thomas More reports in 1524 how Catherine rejoiced to hear of the success of her countrymen the Spaniards in Italy, and Bishop Longland writes to Wolsey at the beginning of the following year how he had explained to her by the king's desire the cardinal's magnificent scheme for setting up a new college at Oxford. The bishop also told her that she was to be specially mentioned in the prayers of the college chapel, for which she desired him to give Wolsey her cordial thanks.

Her constant obedience to her husband had won for her such universal esteem that he himself could not but share that sentiment, though he had now lost all other feeling for her. That he had been untrue to her years before we know, perhaps very early in their married life. Possibly the birth of the Princess Mary did something to restore his lost affection, but only for a time. He was becoming a perfect libertine. On 15 June 1525, much to Catherine's distress, he created his natural son Henry Fitzroy duke of Richmond, and gave him precedence of all the nobility of England, even of the Princess Mary. He was a child of six years, the son of one Elizabeth Blount, whom the king afterwards married to Sir Gilbert Tailbois. The king bestowed much care upon his education, and sent him into Yorkshire as viceroy or president of the north. About the same time his half-sister Mary, whom the king, in default of legitimate male issue, seemed disposed to recognise as Princess of Wales, was sent in like manner to Ludlow, with a household and a council to keep rule upon the Welsh marches. But her household was inferior to that of the duke.

Indications exist that some secret steps had been taken by Henry towards getting his marriage declared invalid as early as 1526. All that was said afterwards officially as to the origin of the king's scruples, and the doubts of Mary's legitimacy said to have been suggested by the Bishop of Tarbes, is unworthy of serious refutation. The bishop's own report of his conferences with Wolsey upon Mary's proposed marriage to Francis I shows clearly that no such objection ever entered his mind. A totally different objection occurred to him—that the king might still have a legitimate son; and Wolsey was taking pains to convince him that this was highly improbable, while he knew quite well that the king was privately seeking to invalidate his marriage and thus make his daughter illegitimate. In May a collusive suit was instituted by Wolsey as legate, who with great secresy summoned the king to appear before him at his house at Westminster for having cohabited with his brother Arthur's wife. A formal complaint, he said, had been preferred to him, and he called upon Henry to say what he could in his defence. The king handed in a written reply, and the cardinal declared that the case was one of considerable difficulty, on which he required to take counsel with some learned theologians—among others with the bishops of Rochester, Lincoln, and London. The proceedings were never resumed—probably for a reason which has not hitherto been suggested, though the fact is absolutely certain. The queen and the Spanish ambassador, somehow or other, had got wind of them before they were a day old (Cal. State Papers, Spanish, iii. (pt. ii.) 193).

The king saw that he must take a different course, and on 22 June informed Catherine that he had come to the conclusion that they must separate. He begged her to keep the matter secret meanwhile, as if it was against her interest to divulge it. His strategy was useless. The news got abroad, and became, in the words of the Spanish ambassador, 'as notorious as if it had been proclaimed by the public crier' (ib. 276). Still Catherine had not a friend who could aid her against the king, unless she could inform the emperor how she was situated, and great pains were taken that she should not speak to the Spanish ambassador except in the presence of Wolsey. She dissembled her anxieties; her 'merry visage,' as one observer notes, 'returned, not less than was wont,' and cordiality towards