golden rose by Clement VII. He was also still highly popular at home; for his subjects did not impute their heavy taxation to him. One thing indeed he did at this time, which was disagreeable to his own Queen. He had a bastard son six years old, whom in June, 1525, he created Duke of Richmond, assigning him at the same time a special household and lands as if for a legitimate Prince. But this, apparently, did not greatly abate his popularity; and it seems to have been partly to conciliate public opinion that Wolsey, in that year, handed over to the King the magnificent palace he 'had built at Hampton Court as too grand to belong to a subject
It was on March 17, 1526, that Francis was released and reached Bayonne. That same day he took the English Ambassador Tayler in his arms, expressing warm gratitude to Henry, and soon after he dispatched de Vaulx once more to England with his ratifications of the Treaties of the Moor. On May 22, after Francis had reached Cognac, ambassadors of the Pope, the Venetians, and the Duke of Milan made an alliance with the French King against the Emperor.
Henry, who had confirmed his own treaty with Francis at Greenwich on April 29, was not a party to this League of Cognac; but he was strongly solicited to join it by the Italian Powers. Indeed, a special place was reserved for him in the treaty itself as Protector and Conservator of the alliance if he chose to join it, with a principality in Naples as an additional attraction. But he and Wolsey only dallied with the confederates, insisting on various modifications of the treaty, while the others were already committed to hostilities in Italy. Meanwhile the confederacy moved on to its ruin, which was completed at the Sack of Rome.
Francis naturally desired to obtain from the Emperor the best terms he could for redeeming his sons. Wolsey, however, had from the first endeavoured to keep him from any kind of agreement, assuring him that he was in no wise bound by the Treaty of Madrid, and hinting that a match with the Princess Mary would be more suitable for him than one with the Emperor's sister Eleanor, whom by that treaty he had engaged to marry, And though the bait did not take immediately-for Francis, as his own ministers said, was ready to marry the Emperor's mule to recover his sons-the Emperor still insisted on such intolerable conditions that Francis at last desired an offensive alliance with England by which he might either dictate terms or redeem his sons by war. An embassy with this view headed by de Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, came to England in February, 1527. The ambassadors were long in negotiation with Wolsey, who insisted first on a new treaty of perpetual peace, with a heavy tribute from France, and after all his demands were conceded coolly told them that, if the Emperor would not release the Princes without Francis marrying Eleanor, the King recommended him to do so. Three treaties were at last signed on April 80, and, after the Bishop of
