Paul's, he stayed in Spain, where Charles retained him near his person, and appointed him his household priest. The paper might exist, and might have got through Puebla into Charles's desk.

5. Since Henry had consulted his confessor and his councillors, Catharine said she should consult Fisher and others, who might give her counsel, whether natives of the country or of foreign lands. These words alarmed the King, for if the Queen should have her way, all nations might become involved in what was properly an English question. Fisher supported her, though on a ground she had not dared to take; the absolute supremacy of the Holy See. A pope had given a dispensation for her union with the King. His seal was law. The facts were nothing; if a Pope had spoken, everything was done. Some echo of these words by Fisher reached the Cardinal's ear; and Wolsey, finding that his warnings were without effect, called on the Bishop to consult his books. Fisher was but too ready for a fight. On looking into such authorities as lie at hand,' he wrote, 'I find they differ very much; some holding that the thing is not lawful, others that it is. On full reflection, I see an easy answer to the first, and none at all to the second. It is not, I think, clearly forbidden by the divine law for a brother to marry the wife of a childless brother; and considering the plenary power give by Our Lord to the Pope, who can deny that the Pope can grant a dispensation for any serious cause? Even if the

arguments were balanced, my opinion would be that since it is the Pope's province to clear ambiguous passages of Scripture, his decision rules the question. I have no scruple in asserting that the dispensation lies within the papal power.'

6. Wolsey was not inclined to push the argument, that when God has spoken popes have no authority, too far. In heart, he was with Fisher, and his policy was to make a compromise, by which the marriage might be rendered void, without suggesting that the pontiff had been guilty of usurping power. He sought a middle term. One day he said to Sampson, ‘If there were no affinity,' contracted by the previous marriage, yet in that she was married in facie ecclesiæ, contracted per verba de præsenti, there did arise impedimentum publicæ honestatis, which is no less impedimentum ad dirimendum matrimonium than affinity, whereof the bull makes no express mention.' Wishing to find a flaw, not in the Pope, but in the bull, Wolsey was driven to quips and cranks which made the King suspect him. But a word from Henry pulled him up; for Wolsey, at the height of his renown, was conscious that the hand which struck down Buckingham could also send him headlong to the block. He was about to start for France, and make a match with either Marguerite or Renée, when warnings came to him through Father Wolman, one of the royal chaplains, that his master was displeased with him about the secret matter. In a moment, he was in the dust. 'At the

reverence of God, Sir, and most humbly prostrate at your feet, I beseech your Grace ... to conceive no opinions of me, but that in this matter, and in all other things that may touch your honour and surety, I shall be as constant as any living creature, not letting for any danger, obloquy, displeasure, or persecution; yea, and if all else fail and swerve, your Highness shall find me fast and constant.'

7. On his way to Dover, whither he rode in state with something like the following of a king, he pushed the business well. At Dartford, Warham came to meet him, and the two great primates held a long discourse. Warham was eighty years of age, a man of venerable face and eminent parts, whose chief desire on earth was to lay down his head in peace; yet in the hour of need, when Rome lay wrecked and broken by the hand of Charles, he left his books and prayers to add a final protest, as a Catholic prelate, to the many protests of his earlier years, against the great iniquity into which his country had been led by Spain. The Cardinal told Warham what the King had done, and what the Queen had said. The Primate wondered how, and through what persons, she had heard this news. He thought the King might cause her to reveal their names. Old age had neither dimmed his sight, nor quenched his fire. Noting his countenance, gesture and manner,' Wolsey wrote, 'I perceive he is not much altered from his first fashion; expressly affirming that, however displeasantly the Queen took

this matter, yet the truth and judgment of the law must have place.' The Cardinal spoke to him of Rome, and what the King was doing for the Pope. Warhain was much rejoiced. Such piety, he said, was honourable to the King, and serviceable to the divorce. Warham had always been in favour of a match with France.

CHAPTER VII.

A DECLARATION.

1527.

1. AFTER signing the treaty of Westminster, Rochford went to Paris, with the Bishop of Bath and Wells, to settle for the Cardinal's journey, and prepare a meeting of the kings. Rochford remained in France some months, and in his absence from the Court, his daughter's lover made to her a formal declaration of his honourable love and hope.

2. Anne's coldness to the King was natural in a woman of her years and training; though she saw in him, as every female saw in him, a handsome man, a splendid scholar, and a powerful prince. She never thought of him as of a man not free to wed. She had been taught to think he had that right. Her father was in Paris seeking a successor to the English queen. But Anne was suffering from a cross in love, and Henry, since his separation from his wife, was playing fast and loose, and there were stories in the ante-room about his ways of life. One tale concerned her cousin Bryan. Frank was in love with a lady in the Court, whom Henry much ad