602
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 20.
reckoned to consist the only hope, comfort, and safeguard of Christendom.'[1]
Until the treaty had been ratified by the Emperor in person (which was done with all ceremony and solemnity in Spain, on the 3ist of March), Marchit was not publicly announced; but Paget was recalled from France; a secret of so much importance was virtually none; and Francis, who, like the rest of the world, had, in spite of his pretended suspicions, been really incredulous, was alarmed when the fact broke upon him, and regretted that he had been committed by his minister to extreme measures. Marillac was superseded in haste; as an evidence of pacific intentions, a mild and moderate successor, M. Dorthe, was sent over in his place; and when Paget appeared at Court to present his letters of revocation, they were received with the utmost unwillingness, and the King condescended to explanations and apologies. If any better motive could be imagined to have influenced Francis than fear- ↑ State Papers, vol. ix. p. 361. The Catholic clergy were sensible of their danger even in a remote parish of an English county. 'Master Lovell, Priest of Sturmiston parish in Dorsetshire, came by chance into an alehouse, where he sat in communication with two honest men of the wars between the Emperor and the King of France, and the Pope taking the King of France's part. Whereat he said he should have God's blessing and his that took the King of France's part and the Pope's, and wished himself to be under the Pope's feet to be sure of his Holy Father's blessing, and said if he had his blessing he cared not whose curse he had. For he said that he was sure that, if our Holy Father the Pope and the King of France, after their deaths, came not to heaven, that God is not in heaven; and that if our King's Grace and the Emperor, after their departing, went not to hell, the devil is not in hell.'—Miscellaneous Depositions: Rolls House MS. A 2, 30, fol. 29.
