in childbirth or had died immediately after it. The passionate hope of the

country that she might still produce a male child who would survive had

been constantly disappointed, and now could be entertained no longer. She

was eight years older than her husband. She had "certain diseases" which

made it impossible that she should be again pregnant, and Henry had for

two years ceased to cohabit with her. He had two children still

living--the Princess Mary, Catherine's daughter, then a girl of eleven,

and an illegitimate son born in 1519, the mother being a daughter of Sir

John Blount, and married afterwards to Sir Gilbert Talboys. By

presumptive law the Princess was the next heir; but no woman had ever sat

on the throne of England alone and in her own right, and it was doubtful

whether the nation would submit to a female sovereign. The boy, though

excluded by his birth from the prospect of the crown, was yet brought up

with exceptional care, called a prince by his tutors, and probably

regarded by his father as a possible successor should his sister go the

way of her brothers. In 1525, after the King had deliberately withdrawn

from Catherine, he was created Duke of Richmond--a title of peculiar

significance, since it had been borne by his grandfather, Henry VII.--and

he was granted precedence over the rest of the peerage. Illegitimacy was a

serious, but, it might be thought, was not an absolute, bar. The Conqueror

had been himself a bastard. The Church, by its habits of granting

dispensations for irregular marriages or of dissolving them on pleas of

affinity or consanguinity or other pretext, had confused the distinction

between legitimate and illegitimate. A Church Court had illegitimatised

the children of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Grey, on the ground of one of

Edward's previous connections; yet no one regarded the princes murdered in

the Tower as having been illegitimate in reality; and to prevent disputes

and for an adequate object, the Duke of Richmond, had he grown to manhood,

might, in the absence of other claims, have been recognised by Parliament.

But the Duke was still a child, and might die as Henry's other sons had

died; and other claims there were which, in the face of the bar sinister,

could not fail to be asserted. James V. of Scotland was next in blood,

being the son of Henry's eldest sister, Margaret. There were the Greys,

inheriting from the second sister, Mary. Outside the royal house there

were the still popular representatives of the White Rose, the Marquis of

Exeter, who was Edward IV.'s grandson; the Countess of Salisbury, daughter

of Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence, and sister of the murdered Earl

of Warwick; and Henry's life was the only obstacle between the collision

of these opposing pretensions. James, it was quite certain, would not be

allowed to succeed without a struggle. National rivalry forbade it. Yet it

was no less certain that he would try, and would probably be backed by

France. There was but one escape from convulsions which might easily be

the ruin of the realm. The King was in the flower of his age, and might

naturally look for a Prince of Wales to come after him if he was married

to a woman capable of bearing one. It is neither unnatural nor, under the

circumstances, a matter to be censured if he and others began to reflect

upon the peculiar character of his connection with Catherine of Aragon. It

is not sufficiently remembered that the marriage of a widow with her

husband's brother was then, as it is now, forbidden by the laws of all

civilised countries. Such a marriage at the present day would be held

ipso facto invalid and not a marriage at all. An irregular power was

then held to rest with the successors of St. Peter to dispense, under

certain conditions, with the inhibitory rules. The popes are now

understood to have never rightly possessed such an authority, and

therefore, according to modern law and sentiment, Henry and Catherine

never were husband and wife at all. At the time it was uncertain whether

the dispensing power extended so far as to sanction such a union, and when

the discussion rose upon it the Roman canonists were themselves divided.

Those who maintained the widest view of the papal faculty yet agreed that

such a dispensation could only be granted for urgent cause, such as to

prevent foreign wars or internal seditions, and no such cause was alleged

to have existed when Ferdinand and Henry VII. arranged the marriage

between their children. The dispensation had been granted by Pope Julius

with reluctance, had been acted upon after considerable hesitation, and

was of doubtful validity, since the necessary conditions were absent. The

marriages of kings were determined with little reference to the personal

affection of the parties. Between Henry and Catherine there was probably

as much and as little personal attachment as there usually is in such

cases. He respected and perhaps admired her character; but she was not

beautiful, she was not attractive, while she was as proud and intractable

as her mother Isabella. Their union had been settled by the two fathers to

cement the alliance between England and Spain. Such connections rest on a

different foundation from those which are voluntarily entered into between

private persons. What is made up for political reasons may pardonably be

dissolved when other reasons of a similar kind require it; and when it

became clear that Catherine could never bear another child, that the

penalty threatened in the Levitical law against marriages of this precise

kind had been literally enforced in the death of the male offspring, and

that civil war was imminent in consequence upon the King's death, Henry

may have doubted in good faith whether she had ever been his wife at

all--whether, in fact, the marriage was not of the character which

everyone would now allow to attach to similar unions. Had there been a

Prince of Wales, the question would never have arisen, and Henry, like

other kings, would have borne his fate. But there was no prince, and the

question had risen, and there was no reason why it should not. There was

no trace at the outset of an attachment to another woman. If there had

been, there would be little to condemn; but Anne Boleyn, when it was first

mooted, was no more to the King than any other lady of the court. He

required a wife who could produce a son to secure the succession. The

powers which had allowed an irregular marriage could equally dissolve it,

and the King felt that he had a right to demand a familiar concession

which other sovereigns had often applied for in one form or another, and

rarely in vain.



Thus as early as 1526 certainly, and probably as much as a year before,

Cardinal Wolsey had been feeling his way at Rome for a separation between

Henry and Catherine. On September 7 in that year the Bishop of Bath, who

was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal of the arrival

there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent had spoken to

the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that there would

be difficulties about it. The "blessed divorce"--benedictum divorcium

the Bishop calls it--had been already under consideration at Rome. The

difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the time

obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably

referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the

Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released

at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had

reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages

for the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half

German, remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of

Italy; and Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury

which the world believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines

of the New World, seemed advancing to universal empire.



France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary enemy of

England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of

Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established

alliance. She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as a

link in the confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times

were changing. Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through

English influence; but Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger

to Europe than France had been. The Italian princes were too weak to

resist the conqueror of Pavia. Italy once conquered, the Papacy would

become a dependency of the empire, and, with Charles's German subjects in

open revolt against it, the Church would lose its authority, and the

organisation of the Catholic world would fall into hopeless decrepitude.

So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of English ministers. He

believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the best defence of order

and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a change of partners.

England held the balance between the great rival powers. If the English

alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the Emperor could

be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised. Wolsey was

utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an unnatural one. Charles, busy

with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with suspicious

forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were

disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by

plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and

ravished nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been

as little spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was

another inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's

master meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to

Clement as perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded,

and desperate condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution

was possible. To the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering

to its fall, and Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might

precipitate the catastrophe. To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal

offence to the Spanish nation by agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of

Aragon was to ask him to sign his death-warrant. No wonder, therefore,

that he found difficulties. Yet it was to France and England that Clement

had to look for help in his extremities. The divorce perhaps had as yet

been no more than a suggestion, a part of a policy which was still in its

infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more convenient season. Meantime

he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally

he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See

in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he

said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been

devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of

Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The

Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last,

but they would open them too late. So piteous was the entreaty that Henry

when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears. Clement had not been

idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to oppose Bourbon;

he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend himself. He was

called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war with the most

Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless the Western

powers interfered the end would come.



If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with France. The

change of policy was ill understood, and was not popular among Henry's

subjects. The divorce as yet had not been spoken of. No breath of such a

purpose had gone abroad. But English sentiment was imperial, and could

endure with equanimity even the afflictions of a pope. The King was more

papal than his people; he allowed Wolsey to guide him, and negotiations

were set on foot at once for a special treaty with France, one of the

conditions of which was to be the marriage of the Princess Mary--allotted

like a card in a game--either to Francis or to one of his sons; another

condition being that the English crown should be settled upon her should

Henry die without a legitimate son. Sir John Russell was simultaneously

despatched to Rome with money to help the Pope in paying his troops and

garrisoning the city. The ducats and the "kind words" which accompanied

them "created incredible joy," encouraged his Holiness to reject unjust

conditions which had been offered, and restored him, if for the moment

only, "from death to life." If Russell described correctly what he saw

in passing through Italy, Clement had good cause for anxiety. "The

Swabians and Spaniards," he wrote, "had committed horrible atrocities.

They had burnt houses to the value of two hundred million ducats, with all

the churches, images, and priests that fell into their hands. They had

compelled the priests and monks to violate the nuns. Even where they were

received without opposition they had burned the place; they had not spared

the boys, and they had carried off the girls; and whenever they found the

Sacrament of the Church they had thrown it into a river or into the vilest

place they could find. If God did not punish such cruelty and wickedness,

men would infer that He did not trouble Himself about the affairs of this

world."

The news from Italy gave a fresh impulse to Wolsey's policy and the

Anglo-French Alliance, which was pushed forward in spite of popular

disapproval. The Emperor, unable to pay, and therefore unable to control,

his troops, became himself alarmed. He found himself pressed into a course

which was stimulating the German revolt against the Papacy, and he

professed himself anxious to end the war. Inigo de Mendoza, the Bishop of

Burgos, was despatched to Paris to negotiate for a general pacification.

From Paris he was to proceed to London to assure Henry of the Emperor's

inalienable friendship, and above all things to gain over Wolsey by the

means which experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart.

The great Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was

several years in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the

arrears should be immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be

secured to him on the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make

him a further grant of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish

bishoprics. No means was to be spared to divert the hostility of so

dangerous an enemy.



Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large schemes which

he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions Francis I. was

as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were brightening.

Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by creating six

new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition of these

sacred offices. A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its

head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's

defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were

refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the

marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret

projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with

Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with

Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and

probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in

Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's

marriage with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the

discussion of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired

whether it was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate.



Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the "Foreign and Domestic

Calendar of State Papers," doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the

kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the

best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during

subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris,

and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly

appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in

the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various

repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that the

Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was made of his name,

and impossible equally to suppose that he would have allowed his name to

be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was unquestionably the first person

to bring the question publicly forward. It is likely enough, however, that

his introduction of so startling a topic had been privately arranged

between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the further steps which were

immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this time been finally

resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration of the balance

of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever were alleged

for similar separations. The Pope's hesitation, it might be assumed, would

now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon England and

France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse than they

were.



The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken

entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under

consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had

reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by

the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred

to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she

was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of

Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained

that she was kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting

herself to the utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to

arrest Wolsey's policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the

divorce she had not heard a word. It was to come upon her like a

thunderstroke.



Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out of place of the

two persons who were to play the principal parts on the stage, as they

were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador in

England. Of Catherine his account is brief.



"The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and very

religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved by

the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five years

old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and one

daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives."



On the King, Falieri is more elaborate.



"In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise

and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the

superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is;

his head bald like Caesar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English

custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well,

tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent

well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with

the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated

also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his

childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and

writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is

kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he

is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two

masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable,

giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and

cripples."



Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous

pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws

had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European

world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of

decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If

the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English

courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had

he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the

Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have

been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of

itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the

difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first

entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.



On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he

called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham

sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having

stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage,

enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of

his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King

assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced and

considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon lawyers

must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled bishops.

The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged Bishop of

Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly that the

marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient.



These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy which had hitherto

been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and her friends learnt

now for the first time the measure which was in contemplation. Mendoza,

writing on the day following the York Place meeting to the Emperor,

informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable authority, that

Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to divorce the

Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself to speak

of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been invited to

sign a declaration that, being his brother's widow, she could not be the

wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take part

against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal

Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken

against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet

had been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might

be kept as private as possible.



That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify Henry at Charles's

expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the German Emperor

were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and England were the

only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week before the

meeting of Wolsey's court he had experienced in the most terrible form

what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that same

month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm. The

city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through the

streets on mules' backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns were

abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may have

been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy

persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days

were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently

conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo,

looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have

appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the

final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider

it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been

animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic

Christendom. Charles himself is not likely to have intended the

humiliation of the Holy See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings,

and Wolsey's policy was not without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles's

Minister at Genoa, and Lope de Soria's opinions, freely uttered, may have

been shared by many a Catholic besides himself. On the 25th of May, a

fortnight after the storm, he wrote to his master the following noticeable

letter:--



"The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God, who permits

his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other Christian

princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust wars

which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom, the

faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated.... Should the Emperor think that

the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope's temporal

power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I cannot but

remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious action,

to reform the Church; so that the Pope's authority be confined exclusively

to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to Caesar,

since by right what is God's belongs to God, and what is Caesar's to Caesar.

I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the

Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that

time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a

remedy to that evil."



Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who could

recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes and

Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles

himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria's words might have been

dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment

placed himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would

have been different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this

might be what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything

most objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical

administration of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles

was the surest method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was

an incident in the situation, but not the least important. Catherine

represented the Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to

make the breach with her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon

himself to assure the King that after the last outrage the Pope would

agree to anything that France and England demanded of him, and would trust

to his allies to bear him harmless. That the divorce was a thing

reasonable in itself to ask for, and certain to be conceded by any pope

who was free to act on his own judgment, was assumed as a matter of

course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the English agent at Rome, was instructed to

obtain access to Clement in St. Angelo, to convey to him the indignation

felt in England at his treatment, and then to insist on the illegality of

the King's relations with Catherine, on the King's own scruples of

conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects that there should be a male

heir to the crown. The "urgent cause" such as was necessary to be produced

when exceptional actions were required of the popes was the imminence or

even certainty of civil war if no such heir was born.



Catherine meanwhile had again communicated with Mendoza. She had spoken to

her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was impossible, had told

her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a separation was

necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears and

reproaches. The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a

matter where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her

gently, till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in

the matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis,

and consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence

of the Pope's imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself

helpless, might become a puppet in the Emperor's hands. Under such

circumstances he could not be trusted by other countries with the

spiritual authority attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed

for some interim arrangement by which France and England were to

constitute themselves into a separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its

head as Archbishop of Rouen. Mendoza says that this proposal had been

actually made to Wolsey by the French Ambassador. In Spain it was even

believed to be contemplated as a permanent modification of the

ecclesiastical system. The Imperial Councillors at Valladolid told the

Venetian Minister that the Cardinal intended to separate the Churches of

England and France from that of Rome, saying that as the Pope was a

prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that even if the Emperor released

him, he still would not be free unless his fortresses and territory now in

the Emperor's hands were restored to him. Wolsey had reason for

anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the Emperor insisting

that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey's Legatine powers.



In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it soon became

known throughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The nation

generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their hereditary

friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen, but did not

touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an injured

wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he should

not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to a

project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the

most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand

men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join

them. He saw Wolsey--he reasoned with him, and when he found reason

ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give.

Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He

spoke of the Papacy: "how the chair was now in the Emperor's hands, and

the Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation."

The glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been

Wolsey's highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had

served the Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still

trusted that the Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church.

Mendoza's answer was not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that

both the spiritual and temporal powers were now centred in his master, and

he advised Wolsey, if he desired an arrangement, to extend his journey

from France, go on to Spain, and see the Emperor in person. It was

precisely this centering which those who had charge of English liberties

had a right to resent. Divorce or no divorce, they could not allow a power

possessed of so much authority in the rest of Christendom to be the

servant of a single prince. The divorce was but an illustration of the

situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza contemplated would reduce England

and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the Empire.