perately to work upon Chapuys. He told him, before the address was despatched, that, as there seemed no other way of bringing the business to an end, he would sacrifice the greater part of what he owned in the world if God would be pleased to take to himself the Queen and his niece also,[1] for the King would never enjoy peace of mind till he had made another marriage, for the relief of his conscience and the tranquillity of the realm, which could only be secured by male posterity to succeed to the crown.
The King, Norfolk said, could not plead at Rome, which was garrisoned by a Spanish army, and the Pope would do the Emperor's bidding if it was to dance in the streets in a clown's coat; the Queen objected to a trial in England; but could not a neutral place be found with impartial judges? Might not the Cardinal of Liége be trusted, and the Bishop of Tarbes?
The blunt and honest Norfolk was an indifferent successor to the dexterous Cardinal. To wish that Catherine and Anne Boleyn were both dead was a natural, but not a valuable, aspiration. A neutral place of trial was, no doubt, desirable, and the Cardinal of Liége might be admissible, but de Tarbes would not do at all. "He had been one of the first," Chapuys remarked, "to put the fancy in the King's head."[2]
At Rome the diplomatic fencing continued, the Pope secretly longing to "commit some folly" and to come to terms with Henry, while the Imperial agents kept their claws fixed upon him. In October Mai reported that Henry's representatives were insisting that Clement should dissolve the marriage without legal process, on the ground that the kingdom must have an heir,
