1534.]
THE LAST EFFORTS AT DIPLOMACY.
103
of means, or for any pretence or cause, so help you God and all saints.'[1]
With this last resolution the House rose, having sat seventy-five days, and despatched their business swiftly. April 7.A week later, the news arrived from Rome that there too all was at length over; that the cause was decided, and decided against the King. The history of the closing catastrophe is as obscure as it is strange, and the account of the manner in which it was brought about is unfortunately incomplete in many important particulars. The outline only can be apprehended, and that very imperfectly.
April.On the receipt in Paris of the letter in which Henry threatened to organize a Protestant confederacy, Du Bellay, in genuine anxiety for the welfare of Christendom, had volunteered his services for a final effort. Not a moment was to be lost, for the courts at Rome were already busy with the great cause; but the King's evident reluctance to break with the Catholic powers,- ↑ Lords' Journals, vol. i. p. 82. An Act was also passed in this session 'against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome.' We trace it in its progress through the House of Lords. (Lords' Journals, Parliament of 1533–4.) It received the royal assent (ibid.), and is subsequently alluded to in the 10th of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the Act against payment of Peter's Pence, for in the Lords' Journals the two Acts are separately mentioned. It received the royal assent on the 30th of March, while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the 7th of April. It contained, also, an indirect assertion that the King was Head of the English Church, according to the title which had been given him by Convocation. (King's Proclamation: Foxe, vol. v. p. 69.) For some cause or other, the Act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.
