letters from Mr, Secretar)*, as -well advising me to make my humble submission immediately to yourself; "which, because I durst not without your gracious licence presume to do before, I lately sent unto him as signifying that your most merciful heart and fatherly pity had granted me your blessing, with condition that I should persevere in that I had commenced and begun; and that I should not eftsoons offend your Majesty by tbe denial or refusal of any such articles and commandments, as it may please your Highness to address unto me, for tbe perfect trial of my heart, and inward affection for the perfect declaration of the bottom of my heart and stomach. " First, I acknowledge myself to have most unkindly and unnaturally offended your most excellent Highness, in that I have not submitted myself to your most just and virtuous laws, and for my offences therein, which I must confess were in me a thousand-fold more grievous than they could be in any other living creature, I put myself wholly and entirely to your gracious mercy, at whose hand I cannot receive that punishment for the same that I have deserved. " Secondly, to open mine heart to your Grace in these things which I have heretofore refused to condescend unto, and have now written with mine own hand, sending the same to your Highness herewith ; I shall never beseech your Grace to have pity and compassion of me if ever you shall perceive that 1 shall privily or apertly vary or alter from one piece of that I have written and subscribed ; or refuse to confirm, ratify, or declare, the same where your Majesty shall appoint me. "Thirdly, as I have, and shall, knowing your excellent learning, virtue, wisdom, and knowledge, put'my soul into your direction, and by the same hath and will in all things from henceforth direct my conscience ; so my body I do wholly commit to your mercy and fatherly pity, desiring no state, no condition, nor no meaner degree of living, but such as your Grace shall appoint me, knowledging and confessing that my state cannot be so vile, as either the extremity of justice would appoint unto me, or as mine offences have required or deserved. " And whatsoever your Grace shall command me to do, touching any of these points, either for things pnst, present, or to come, I shall as gladly do the same as your Majesty shall command me, Most humbly, therefore, beseeching your mercy, most gracious Sovereign, Lord, and benign Father, to have pity and compassion of your miserable and sorrowful child, and with the abundance of your inestimable goodness so to overcome mine iniquity towards God, your Grace, and your whole realm, as I may feel some sensible token of reconciliation, which, God is my judge, I only desire without other respect, to whom I shall daily pray for the preservation of your Highness, with the Queen's Grace, and that it may please him to send you issue. " From Hunsdon, this Thursday, at eleven of the clock at night. " Your Grace's most humble " and Obedient Daughter " and Handmaid, " MAUY," Slavishly humble and servile as this epistle was in tone and spirit, the royal despot did not condescend to reply to it. In fact, it being the policy of Cromwell, whose son's wife was tbe sister of Jane Seymour, to prevent the chance of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth becoming rivals in the succession to that Queen's progeny, he resolved, by working upon the despotic disposition of the King, and by only relaxing, not destroying, the rigour of the broken-spirited Mary's restraint, to make that Princess fully acquiesce in her own illegitimization— a difficult game, but one which the crafty secretary worked out with skill and success. In her next letter, dated the first of June, Mary congratulated the King and Jane Seymour—with Jane she had been for some time previously on terms of acquaintanceship, if not friendship—on their recent marriage and at the same time she wrote to Cromwell, thanking him for obtaining permission for her to write to the King, and imploring him to continue his good offices till his Grace