the King could reasonably demand.[1] Limiting, like a man of business, the advantages which he had to offer to the present world, the Pope suggested that Henry, in connection with himself, might now become the arbiter of Europe and prescribe terms to the Empire as well as to France. For himself and for his office he said he had no ambition. The honour and the profit should alike be for England. An accession of either to the pontificate might prove its ruin.[2] He lauded the King's early character, his magnanimity, his generous assistance in times past to the Holy See, his devotion to the Catholic faith. Forgetting the Holy League, glossing over the Bull of Deposition as an official form which there had been no thought of enforcing, he ventured to say that for himself he had been Henry's friend from the beginning. He had urged his predecessor to permit the divorce; at Bologna he had laboured to persuade the Emperor to consent to it.[3] He had sent a red hat to the Bishop of Rochester only that he might have the benefit of his assistance at the approaching
- ↑ 'Dicerem in ipso me adeo bonum animum reperisse ut procul dubio vestra Majestas omnia de ipso sibi polliceri possit.'—Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.: MS. Cotton. Vitellius, B 14, fol. 215.
- ↑ Neque ea cupiditate laborare ut suas fortunas in immensum augeat aut Pontificates fines propaget unde accidere posset ut ab hâc … institutâ ratione recederet.—Ibid. The MS. has been injured by fire—words and paragraphs are in places wanting. In the present passage it is not clear whether Paul was speaking of the Papal authority generally, or of the Pontifical States in France and Italy.
- ↑ Causâ vero matrimonii et in consistoriis et publice et privatim apud Clementem VII. se omnia quæ [potuerit pro] vestrâ Majestate egisse; et Bononiæ Imperatori per [horas] quatuor accurate persuadere conatum fuisse.—Ibid.
