childless in the previous October. The settlement which had been made in the treaty of Cambray had thus been rendered nugatory; and Francis desired the duchy for his second son, the Duke of Orleans, who, in right of his wife, Catherine de' Medici, would inherit also the dukedoms of Florence and Urbino. If the Emperor was acting in good faith, if he had no intention of escaping from his agreement when the observance of it should no longer be necessary, he was making no common sacrifice in acquiescing in a disposition the consequence of which to the House of Austria he so clearly foresaw.[1] He, however, seemed for the present to have surrendered himself to the interests of the Church;[2] and, in return for the concession, Francis, who had himself advised Henry VIII. to marry Anne Boleyn,—Francis, who had declared that Henry's resistance to the Papacy was in the common interest of all Christian princes,—Francis, who had promised to make Henry's cause his own, and, three years previously, had signed a treaty, offensive and defensive, for the protection of France and England against Imperial and
- ↑ 'The Duke of Orleans is married to the niece of Clement the Seventh. If I give him Milan, and he he dependent only on his father, he will be altogether French … he will be detached wholly from the confederacy of the Empire.'—Speech of Charles the Fifth in the Consistory at Rome: State Papers, vol. vii. p. 641.
- ↑ Charles certainly did give a promise, and the date of it is fixed for the middle of the winter of 1535–6 by the protest of the French Court, when it was subsequently withdrawn. 'Your Majesty,' Count de Vigny said, on the 18th of April, 1536, 'promised a few months ago that you would give Milan to the Duke of Orleans, and not to his brother the Duke of Angoulesme.'—Ibid.: State Papers, vol. vii.
