opinion, the original dispensation really was void, that Julius had no faculty to dispense in such a case. The Pope suggested that the affair might be suspended for two years. It might then, perhaps, drop and be forgotten. He enquired whether, if the King consented to plead by proxy before him, the Emperor would agree to any accommodation. Should the case go on, it might last fifteen or twenty years. All the Cardinals, said Mai, nay, the Pope himself, would like to put off the affair entirely, to avoid trouble.[1] The Court of Rome had, in fact, discovered at last that matters were really serious, that Henry would not be played with, and that the quarrel must be peaceably settled. Mai and Ortiz were furious. They insisted on immediate action. Delay, they said, would be injurious to the Queen. Their orders were to urge the Pope to proceed and pass sentence, whether the parties appeared or not. They hinted that very soon there would be no more trouble from England; they had been told, and they believed, that, with the clergy on Catherine's side, a Papal decree would end the whole business.
Their confidence was shaken and their activity rudely arrested by the news of the Præmunire and the demand for the submission of the English clergy. Too well the meaning of it was understood. On Chapuys and the Nuncio it fell like a thunderbolt. They held an anxious consultation, and they agreed on the least wise measure which they could possibly have adopted. The Nuncio, as representing the majesty of the Holy See, determined to go himself to Convocation, and exhort the Bishops to uphold the Church and resist the King and the House of Com-
- ↑ Mai to Covos, Feb. 13, 1531.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. part 2, p. 59.
