Jan. 20.bishop of York, was despatched to Bologna to lay Henry's remonstrances before the Emperor, who was come at last in person to enjoy his miserable triumph, and receive from the Pope the Imperial crown. Sir Nicholas Carew who had been sent forward a few weeks previously, described in piteous language the state to which Italy had been reduced by him. Passing through Pavia, the English emissary saw the children crying about the streets for bread, and dying of hunger; the grapes in midwinter rotting on the vines, because there was no one to gather them; and for fifty miles scarcely a single creature, man or woman, in the fields. 'They say,' added Carew, 'and the Pope also showed us the same, that the whole people of that country, withDec. 12. divers other places in Italia, with war, famine,
and pestilence, are utterly dead and gone.'[1] Such had been the combined work of the vanity of Francis and the cold selfishness of Charles; and now the latter had arrived amidst the ruins which he had made, to receive his crown from the hands of a Pope who was true to Italy, if false to all the world besides, and whom, but two years before, he had imprisoned and disgraced. We think of Clement as the creature of the Emperor, and such substantially he allowed himself to be; but his obedience was the obedience of fear to a master whom he hated, and the Bishop of Tarbès, who was present at the coronation, Feb. 24.and stood at his side through the ceremony, saw him trembling under his robes with emotion, and heard him sigh bitterly.[2]