#the imperial lady/mistress only seems to have sent a message to princess mary . the implication was sympathy for coa but no attempt at

[fideidefenswhore]

Chapuys had taken up Catherine's cause upon his arrival in London after the recess of the court of Blackfriars. Until Anne's succession, her uncle often communicated with Chapuys, ingratiating himself with the diplomat in the hope that he might learn secret information concerning Charles V. In this context, the Duke [of Norfolk]'s statement that both Anne's father and he were opposed to the King's decision to marry her was significant because this information enabled the hostile ambassador to assume that Anne, presumably acting without family support, had bewitched Henry into divorcing Catherine. Following this assumption to its logical conclusion, Chapuys could then blame Anne instead of the King for the European crisis the marital dispute had created. Far from being a valid private account of the royal household, Chapuys's dispatches provide an intriguing history of what he thought, and of what others wanted him to think, about court politics. The fact is that after 1531, when Catherine of Aragon was rusticated, no major courtier was willing to plead with the king of her behalf and, with the break-up of her household, her support at court ceased to exist. Even Thomas More's continuation as Lord Chancellor rested on the assumption that King and Parliament could decide the succession, and when he resigned it was to defend a Church whose unity was under attack. In 1533, the King's councillors, including William, Lord Mountjoy, Catherine's own chamberlain, attempted to persuade her to accept the title of Princess Dowager.

Tudor Political Culture, Dale Hoak