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 MARY THE FIRST. .363 tageous marriage before his divorce. Well aware that the very plea he meant to urge for the attainment of this divorce must, if allowed, destroy her claim to the crown by fixing the stigma of illegitimacy on her birth, it could only be for the purpose of imposing on some royal suitor for her hand that he caused her to assume the state in which she lived in Ludlow Castle, where she held a court suitable only to the heiress of the kingdom. How hard and selfish must his heart have been, who, to accomplish the imposition he contemplated, could, care- less of its consequences to his only child, elevate her to the high pinnacle of splendor only to hurl her, whenever it suited his convenience, to a state of dependence renderd doubly pain- ful and insupportable by the force of contrast. For nearly two years the Princess Mary held her court at Ludlow Castle, enacting, as far as one of her tender years could do, the stately part of queen, Henry during that period turning his thoughts to finding a husband for her. It is asserted that had not Francis the First been betrothed to Eleanor of Austria, he might have been induced by the repeated efforts of Henry to wed his daughter ; but Francis too well knew the character and fierte of the Emperor Charles the Fifth to risk incurring his enmity by breaking off his en- gagement with his sister. That Francis was well inclined towards an alliance with England may be judged by his desire that Mary should wed his son, the Duke of Orleans ; to effect which marriage negoti- ations were some months after entered into that occasioned fatal results to Queen Katharine and most painful ones to her daughter, by calling into question the validity of the marriage between Henry and Katharine, and the consequent illegitimacy of the Princess Mary. Whether there was any foundation for the statement that the Bishop of Tarbes, then ambassador from France to the English court, had ever doubted the legitimacy of Mary, may well be questioned, notwithstanding Speed's authority for it, when one reflects on how good an excuse such a doubt would furnish to Henry for seeking a divorce — a measure which he had long secretly contemplated and anxiously desired, and for which he was some time paving the way by hypocritical declarations to his confessor of scruples of conscience, never hinted at until his affection for Katharine was gone, and which, judging from Henry's character, he never really felt. No notion of forming an alliance between Mary and Henry, Duke of Orleans, was ever contemplated by Henry