from dealing with the cause. The Cardinal, he said, lay under suspicion of ill-will towards Catharine, and the Emperor required to have her case removed into a Roman court.

6. Charles was advised by one of his most crafty servants to buy the Cardinal as the cheapest way of getting out of his trouble. This crafty servant was a Savoyard, named Eustace Chapuys, whom the Emperor had found in Ghent. He was a learned man; supple as an Italian of the plains, tenacious as a Switzer of the Alps. "The King's purpose,' said Chapuys, 'in entering on a league with France, is simply to get his money, which François will agree to pay. Either the Dauphin or the Duke of Orleans will marry the English princess. If the Dauphin marries her, Henry will have his bastard son, of whom he is extremely fond, declared his successor. To prevent an alliance so fatal to Spain, the Cardinal must be gained over; his pension of nine thousand crowns a-year must be paid, augmented by twelve or fourteen thousand crowns, to be secured on the best bishopric in Castille. If Wolsey were secured, the Emperor might make excuses for breaking off the match with Mary.' Chapuys advised that English jealousy of France should be excited. Most of all, he said, the Emperor ought to work on England's desire of being regarded as mistress of the sea. Charles acted on this crafty counsel; writing a letter in his smoothest vein to Wolsey when the Cardinal returned from France.

7. But Charles had still more powerful means of acting on his uncle and his pontiff. The Franciscan Order was a state within the state, a church

within the church. In every country, from the Tiber to the Thames, the members of this Order were entrenched as preachers to the poor and as confessors to the rich. They stood above the ordinary codes, being free to wander up and down the world, unquestioned by the civil magistrate, and even by the local bishop; knowing no master save their General, and obeying no law except their Founder's rule. Their General was an absolute prince. In ordinary times this General ostentatiously obeyed and served the holy chair; but he was always conscious of his power, and when the Church, in his opinion, seemed to be in danger, he was strong enough to make conditions with the Pope. Father Quiñones, General of this Order, was a Spanish subject, bound to Charles, not only by his birth and family, but by a proud and passionate love for Spain. Quiñones thought the Church of Spain had kept the sacred dogmas in a purer state than that of Rome. Rome, he believed, had lost her way on many points-to wit, on that of the Immaculate Conception, one of those dogmas which his fraternity had always held, and he was urging in the ears of a reluctant Pope. For some time past Quiñones had been used by Charles to terrify the Sacred College, under the pretence of seeking to restore a state of peace. The Emperor wanted peace, but

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only on his own conditions, which the General was employed to urge with the authority of a man who by a single word could set ten thousand preaching friars to agitate the world. Quiñones' power might be employed in London with as much effect as in Toledo and in Rome.

8. In crossing from Italy to Spain, Quiñones had the good or evil fortune to be captured by a Barbary crew, who jerked out one of his teeth, slapped his feet with rods, and held him to a ransom of four thousand ducats. Spain hastened to release the holy man, who entered Valladolid in all the glory of a suffering saint. No man was humoured more by Charles. Unless your Majesty does your duty to the Pope, you will no longer be called the Emperor, but Luther's captain,' said Quiñones; and the Emperor bowed to this rebuke a patient head. Calling the General to his closet, Charles desired him to depart at once for England, carrying instructions for Mendoza in his pocket, with such further details and commands as could not well be written out. Quiñones was to feel his ground in London. Having the Franciscan orders, whether male or female, Minorite or Clare, observant or conventual, at his elbow, he could work unseen, and choose his time and means for striking a decisive blow. On leaving England, he was to make for Rome, to seek the Pontiff in his prison of St. Angelo, and in the Emperor's name forbid his Holiness to take a second step in this affair.

9. Quiñones carried out his mission with the

zeal of an ascetic called by Providence to support his Church against the wickedness of her enemies and the weakness of her friends. Like other Spaniards of his Order, he regarded Spain as necessary to the Church, and any service done to Spain as so much glory gained for Christ. He came to London, where he roused the members of his Order into action; after which he went to Rome, not only as a friar entitled to advise the Pope, but as ambassador from the Emperor with full authority to treat of peace. Clement was a prisoner, and Quiñones had the power to set him free. Charles left the matter in Quiñones' hands, and the ascetic friar forbade the Pontiff to concede a single point affecting Catharine till the Emperor gave him leave to act.

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CHAPTER II.

THE PONTIFF.

1527-28.

1. WHILE Clement was a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo, calling on England to set him free, Anne Boleyn was at Hever with her stepmother, Lady Rochford, who preferred her garden and her home, like Lady Wyat, to the glare and bustle of a court. Anne, too, delighted in her home and garden, and the ardours of a royal suitor failed to draw her from her castle in the Weald of. Kent.

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2. The time seems to me so very long since I last heard from you, and about you,' the King wrote to her, 'that the great love I bear you forces me to send the bearer of this note, that I may learn something about your health and wishes; the more so as since we parted I am told have changed the opinion in which I then left and that you will neither come to court with my lady your mother, nor in any other way. If this report be true I am very much surprised by it, since I cannot call to mind anything that I have done to offend you; and it seems to me a very small return

VOL. IV.

you,

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