fere with the due execution of this commission, but confirm what should be done under it. This, of course, did not bind him to confirm an unjust decision, and for that very reason Wolsey afterwards instructed Gardiner by a shameful artifice to endeavour to procure a reissue of the document in a form more to the king's purpose.
Meanwhile the French alliance had borne fruit in a joint declaration of war made by an English and a French herald to the emperor at Burgos on 22 Jan. 1528. On 13 Feb. Wolsey explained the causes of this war to a meeting in the Star-chamber; but it was very unpopular, and led not only to interruption of commerce, but also to serious industrial difficulties within the realm, the Suffolk clothiers having to dismiss their men because they had no vent for their cloths. In Flanders the state of matters was no less intolerable, and a truce, so far as England and Flanders were concerned, was agreed to from 1 May to the end of February following. In June the sweating sickness was rife in England, and Anne Boleyn caught it. But she soon recovered, and was anxious about the health of Wolsey, whom she said she loved next to the king for the daily and nightly pains he took in her behalf. The king himself added in his own hand a postscript to the letter. In July, however, Wolsey, having set aside, apparently for good reasons, a nominee of Anne's for the position of abbess of Wilton, incurred a rebuke from the king for taking steps to promote the prioress, of whose nomination he had disapproved. The reproof was expressed in the most friendly terms, but was nevertheless deeply felt, even when Wolsey was reassured of the king's favour.
Cardinal Campeggio, after a long and tedious journey through France, reached London in October suffering severely from gout. Yet the business for which he came, as Wolsey at once discovered, was entirely in his hands, and he allowed his colleague no control over it. He was instructed first to do his utmost to prevent the matter coming to a trial at all, either by persuading the king to forbear prosecuting it further or by inducing Catherine to enter a nunnery. He had also promised the pope not to pronounce sentence without communicating with him—a fact which, to Wolsey's dismay, he let fall at their first interview. Wolsey tried in vain to get hold of the secret commission he had brought, and wrote a host of complaints and remonstrances to Rome on the way in which he was treated by his colleague. His perplexities were increased by Catherine's production of a copy of the brief in Spain [see CATHERINE OF ARRAGON], and his ingenuity was taxed in vain either to get the original into the king's possession or to have it pronounced a forgery by the pope. Anne Boleyn, meanwhile, actually imputed to him the delay of the trial, and allied herself with her father and the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk to bring about his ruin.
To add to his agony, at the new year (1529) Clement VII fell ill and was expected to die—in which case his only hope, and that a poor one, was that through the readily promised aid of Francis he himself might be the new pope. He despatched to Gardiner and Brian at Rome a marked list of the whole college of cardinals, and bade them spare no expense to secure his election. But Clement slowly recovered, and was able to see ambassadors in March. On 21 April he wrote to the king that he could not declare the brief in Spain a forgery without hearing both sides. Meanwhile, Bishop Foxe of Winchester having died in September, that see was given to Wolsey in commendam on 6 April, and he soon after resigned that of Durham. But his fall was at hand. The long-deferred trial [already described under Catherine of Arragon] had to take place. The legatine court assembled on 18 June, and was prorogued by Campeggio on 23 July. Meanwhile at Rome on 13 July the cause had been revoked at Catherine's intercession.
Wolsey was now visibly in disgrace. The king, it is true, knew that he had done his utmost, and still for some weeks took his advice on many things, chiefly by letter through Gardiner. In fact the king actually paid him a visit at Tittenhanger in the beginning of August, and but for Anne Boleyn would have had more frequent intercourse with him. The lords, however, who had so long resented his ascendency, made use of Anne's influence to keep him at a distance from the court. Anticipating his fall, Lord Darcy had drawn up, even as early as 1 July, a long catalogue of his misdeeds, and similar lists were drawn up by others with a view to his impeachment. The cloud, however, had not yet burst when he accompanied Campeggio to take leave of the king at Grafton Regis, where they both arrived on Sunday, 19 Sept. (‘Greenwich’ is a misreading of ‘Grafton’ in Alward's letter printed in Ellis's Original Letters, i. i. 308). Many expected that the king would not speak with Wolsey, and were mortified to see that he received him as graciously as ever and had a long private
