Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/409

Rh, war had now become more certain than ever. With this impression, the Princess still kept her mind fixed on escaping out of the country, and continued to press Chapuys to take her away. She had infinite courage; a Flemish ship was hovering about the mouth of the Thames ready to come up, on receiving notice, within two or three miles of Gravesend. The house to which she had been removed was forty miles from the place where she would have to embark; it was inconvenient for the intended enterprise, and was, perhaps, guarded, though she did not know it. She thought, however, that, if Chapuys would send her something to drug her women with, she could make her way into the garden, and the gate could be broken open. "She was so eager," Chapuys said, "that, if he had told her to cross the Channel in a sieve, she would venture it;" the distance from Gravesend was the difficulty: the Flemish shipmaster was afraid to go higher up the river: a forty miles' ride would require relays of horses, and the country through which she had to pass was thickly inhabited. Means, however, might be found to take her down in a boat, and if she was once out of England, and under the Emperor's protection, Chapuys was convinced that the King would no longer kick against the pricks.

Mary herself was less satisfied on this point. Happy as she would be to find herself out of personal danger, she feared her father might still persist in his heresies, and bring more souls to perdition; "she would, therefore, prefer infinitely," she said, "the general and total remedy so necessary for God's service." She wished Chapuys to send another messenger to the Emperor, to stir him up to activity. But Chapuys, desperate of rousing Charles by mere entreaties, encouraged her flight out of the country as