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Catherine three days after her arrest she went completely out of her mind with the horror of the situation. She was, however, very carefully tended in order that she might afterwards be put upon her trial and brought to condign punishment. The queen, too, still remained untried at Sion House, while her guilt was prejudged by the sentences already executed upon Dereham and Culpepper.

She remained untried even when another batch of prisoners, including Lord William Howard, Robert Davenport, Catherine Tylney, and several others of less note, was brought up at the Guildhall three weeks later, and condemned of misprision for concealing what they knew. These received their sentence on 22 Dec., which was perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods to the king. The Duchess of Norfolk was pardoned her life, confessing that she had done wrong in breaking up Dereham's coffers; and perhaps she saved herself even from very extreme treatment by revealing to the lord privy seal and Mr. Secretary Wriothesley the place where she had hidden a sum of 800l. Ultimately she received a complete pardon and was released from her confinement on 5 May 1542 (see, iii. 172). But for the present she was kept close. So many were involved in the charge of concealing Catherine's misconduct that there was no room in the ordinary prisons, and special arrangements were made for receiving them in the king's and queen's lodgings. They were visited in their cells by the Duke of Suffolk, the Earls of Southampton, Sussex, and Hertford, and other members of the privy council.

Yet it was to show his clemency, according to current report, that Henry did not bring Catherine to trial until parliament met (Chapuys to Charles V, 3 Dec., in The Pilgrim, p. 159). In other words, he would not appear of his own accord to break his promise of pardon to her. On 16 Jan. 1542 parliament met at Westminster, and on the 21st a bill of attainder against the queen and Lady Rochford was read for the first time. The names of the Duchess of Norfolk, Lord William Howard, and others were also included in the bill as guilty of misprision. The second reading, however, was postponed for an unusual time. On the 28th the lord chancellor declared to the house certain reasons why it should not be hastily proceeded with; the queen was not a mere private person, and her cause ought to be thoroughly weighed; and he suggested that a deputation from both houses should wait upon her and encourage her to speak boldly whatever she had to say in her own defense. The deputation was agreed to, subject to the king's approval, but on the Monday following (30 Jan.) the chancellor explained that it had been put off by advice of the council, who thought it more important that they should petition his majesty, first, not to take his misfortune too heavily, considering how the weal of the whole realm depended upon him; secondly, that they might confirm in parliament the attainder of Culpepper and Dereham; thirdly, that parliament should be free to proceed to judgment in the case of the queen and her other confederates that the matter might no longer hang in doubt; fourthly, that afterwards the king might give his assent to what was done by commission under the great seal without words or ceremony which would renew his pain; and, fifthly, that if any had offended the statutes in speaking freely of the queen, they should have the benefit of a general pardon.

All this seems very much like a roundabout way of relieving the king from the imputation of breach of faith for bringing Catherine to the block after he had promised to spare her life.

A curious point as to parliamentary practice in those days arises from a study of the different evidences bearing upon this case. Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, writing to Charles V on 29 Jan., says that 'the resolution of the peers will be laid before the representatives of the people in two days;' and in the paragraph immediately following he adds:—'At the very moment I was writing the above I was informed that the commons house had this morning come to the same resolution about the queen and the ladies as the bishops and peers have done, and the queen, it is to be feared, will be soon sent to the Tower.' What Chapuys refers to as 'the resolution' of the peers seems to have been the first reading of the bill; and the question suggests itself, whether a bill once read in the lords could have gone down to the lower house and passed through the different stages there before it came before the peers again for a second reading. Unfortunately, we have no journals of the House of Commons at that date; but the interval that elapsed before the second reading in the lords rather favours the supposition.

The bill was read there a second time on 6 Feb., and a third time on the day following. Before the royal assent was given the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Southampton waited on the queen and obtained from her a very pitiful confession, accompanied by a prayer that her crime might not be visited