endeavours to effect a separation. Through prisoners taken in the late campaign, through diplomatists connected with England or the Empire, he offered terms severally to the two powers. To Henry he wrote with his own hand, as to an old and dear friend, from whom he could not endure to be divided; while to the Pope he was believed at least to have petitioned for absolution for his offences, in having sustained so long an intercourse with an excommunicated heretic;[1] he entreated him certainly to intercede with the Emperor, empowering Cardinal Farnese to admit on his behalf that the fault of the war had rested with himself, and declaring that, if Charles would make a separate peace, he might name his own conditions.
Farnese eagerly undertook the commission. He had an interview first with the Queen Regent at Brussels; and afterwards, accompanied with the Duke of Guise, he had an audience with the Emperor. He delivered his message, speaking both in the name of Francis and of the Supreme Pontiff. But Charles, if he was sincere in his account of his own language, replied peremptorily that he would make no peace except in the spirit of the treaty which he was sworn to observe. As to the Pope, he could not sufficiently marvel at him. It was no part of his duty to intercede for one who had brought
- ↑ 'The French King, as I understand, hath demanded the Bishop to be absolved of his trespass committed in joining leagues and practices with your Majesty in times past against the rites and laws of the Roman Church, which all men note to be of ridiculous lightness and impudency, considering him to be an open Turk with his adherents.'—Harvel to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol ix. p. 582.
