from which the private hearts of all men had fallen away; and it depended for its very life upon the support which the Courts of Europe would condescend to extend to it. Among these Governments, therefore, distracted as they were by mutual hostility, the Pope was compelled to make his choice; and the fatality of his position condemned him to quarrel with the only prince on whom, at the outset of these complications, he had a right to depend.
In 1512, France had been on the point of declaring her religious independence; and as late as 1525, Francis entertained thoughts of offering the patriarchate to Wolsey.[1] Charles V., postponing his religious devotion for the leisure of old age, had reserved the choice of his party, to watch events and to wait upon opportunity; while, from his singular position, he wielded in one hand the power of Catholic Spain, in the other that of Protestant Germany, ready to strike with either, as occasion or necessity recommended. If his Spaniards had annexed the New World to the Papacy, his German lanzknechts had stormed the Holy City, murdered cardinals, and outraged the Pope's person: while both Charles and Francis, alike caring exclusively for their private interests, had allowed the Turks to overrun Hungary, ta conquer Rhodes, and to collect an armament at Constantinople so formidable as to threaten Italy itself, and the
- ↑ Ellis, Third Series, vol. ii. p. 98. 'In the letters showed us by M. de Buclans from the Emperor, of the which mention was made in ciphers, it was written in terms that the French king would offer unto your Grace the papalite of France vel Patriarchate, for the French men would no more obey the Church of Rome.'—Lee to Wolsey.
