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They knew he was planning something but could not discover what. While detained in London, Darcy sent an aged kinsman to Chapuys,probably Dr Marmaduke Waldby, a prebendary of Carlisle, who told the ambassador he was going to see the emperor and find out if he really meant to help them – if not, they would rise by themselves. Warned that such a mission might alert Henry’s government, the old man answered that once Darcy was back in the North Country there would be no need to worry. Yet when Lord Darcy finally went home he reluctantly decided that he could do nothing without imperial assistance.
    The Lady Mary was widely pitied for being disowned by her father and kept away from her mother. It was said that the new queen was constantly urging Henry to have the ‘Princess Dowager’ and her daughter put to death, and that she was humiliating Mary in all sorts of petty ways: ordering a lady-in-waiting to box her ears, trying to have her made a servant to the little Princess Elizabeth. Mary had become a key figure in the White Rose programme and a latent threat to the king.
    As it was, Henry grew increasingly irritated by Mary’s refusal to accept the Acts of Supremacy and Succession. At the end of 1535 Lady Exeter warned Chapuys that she had heard that the king was telling his councillors he was tired of all the trouble the princess dowager and her daughter were causing him, and meant to do something about it when Parliament met, which sounded as if he was thinking of getting rid of them by legal murder. It may have been no more than bluster, but it frightened their friends. ‘The Marchioness swears this is true as the Gospel and begs me to inform your Majesty and prays you to have pity on the ladies,’ reported Chapuys. 6
    Chapuys had grown devoted to the ex-queen and her daughter, and not merely because they were his master’s kindred. In dispatches he stressed how popular Queen Katherine remained, not only among the upper classes but with the common people, who were constantly risking their lives to cheer her. He invariably referred to Henry’s new consort as the ‘whore’ or the ‘concubine’ and called her daughter Elizabeth ‘the little bastard’. He himself was only too anxious for Emperor Charles to rescueKatherine and Mary, yet at the same time had grown nervous about recommending an invasion.
    Chapuys spent several days with the princess dowager at Kimbolton Castle, just before she died in January 1536 – expressing her sadness that she could not see her husband for a last farewell. Even her daughter was not allowed to visit her. The king and Queen Anne greeted the news of her death with unseemly delight, dressing in yellow as soon as they heard, instead of wearing mourning. ‘God be praised!’ cried Henry. ‘We are free from all suspicion of war’ – by which he meant that Charles V was unlikely to invade England now that his aunt was dead. No doubt the White Rose folk thought so too and that there was no longer even a faint hope of being rescued by the emperor.
    The King’s tournament fall took place shortly after this, making him more dangerous than ever. Despite her rejoicing at Katherine’s death, by now Anne Boleyn was terrified of him, and with reason. On 29 January she suffered another mis carriage, producing a stillborn male child. Not only had she lost her looks and grown painfully thin but, far worse, she had failed to bear the long-desired son and ensure the succession. Moreover, Henry had belatedly discovered, after their marriage, that she was really a rather horrible woman – vindictive, arrogant, domineering and vile-tempered. In any case, he had half fallen in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.
    Besides anatagonizing her uncle Norfolk and a whole host of other courtiers, Anne was stupid enough to make an enemy of Thomas Cromwell, who decided his survival depended on destroying her. Somehow, he learned she had not been a virgin when Henry married her and this