Shrewsbury,[1] whom he afterwards married, and by the law he could not have formed a second engagement so long as the first was undissolved. And again, he himself, when subsequently examined before the privy council, denied solemnly on his oath that any contract of the kind had existed.[2] At the same time, we cannot suppose Cavendish to have invented so circumstantial a narrative, and Percy would not have been examined if there had been no reason for suspicion. Something, therefore, probably had passed between him and the young maid of honour, though we cannot now conjecture of what nature; and we can infer only that it was not openly to her discredit, or she would not have obtained the position which cost her so dear. She herself confessed subsequently, before Archbishop Cranmer, to a connection of some kind into which she had entered before her acquaintance with Henry. No evidence survives which will explain to what she referred, for the Act of Parliament which mentions the fact furnishes no details.[3] But it was of a kind which made her marriage with the King illegal, and illegitimatized the offspring of it; and it has been supposed, therefore, that, in spite of Lord Percy's denial, he had really engaged himself to her, and was afraid to acknowledge it.[4] This supposition,
- ↑ Thomas Allen to the Earl of Shrewsbury: Lodge's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 20.
- ↑ Earl of Northumberland to Cromwell: printed by Lord Herbert and by Burnet.
- ↑ 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7.
- ↑ Since these words were written, I have discovered among the Archives of Simancas what may perhaps be some clue to the mystery, in an epitome of a letter written to Charles V. from London in May, 1536:—
