the See of Rome was to be insisted upon;[1] the Admiral of France held out more than hopes that, although not to be demanded as a preliminary, it would follow as a consequence.[2] As before, when the Spanish treaty was in contemplation, there was a provision that Mary's illegitimacy should be corrected by Act of Parliament.[3] The only point remaining to be settled, it seemed, was the dowry, and here no great difficulty was anticipated. But the shadowy nature of the prospect disclosed itself when the French ambassador communicated the expectation of his Government on the point of money. It was nothing more than a relmquishment of the entire arrears which were owing to England, and a transfer of the two pensions as a marriage portion to the Duke of Orleans.
Seeing that the sum so quietly asked for amounted to a million crowns, the pension to a hundred and fifty thousand annually, and that the largest dowry for which
- ↑ 'To know from his Highness whether his Highness's commissioners shall press the ambassador to bind the King his master to relinquish wholly the Bishop of Rome, or that he shall not meddle with the said Bishop in anything concerning the treaty of this marriage.'—Privy Council Memoranda: Rolls Souse MS.
- ↑ Paget saying to him that England never would return to the Pope—virtue and vice could not agree together—'Call you him vice?' the Admiral replied. 'He is the very devil; I trust once to see his confusion. Everything must have a beginning. I think ere it be long; the King my master will convert all the abbeys of his realm into the possession of his lay gentlemen, and so forth by little and little, if you will join us, to overthrow him altogether. Why may we not have a patriarch here in France?'—Paget to Henry VIII.: Burnet's Collectanea.
- ↑ State Papers, vol. viii. p. 676, &c.
