I cannot let the Inquisition. This is a thing that toucheth our faith.'
'What!' Wyatt said, 'the primacy of the Bishop of Rome?'
'Yea, marry,' the Emperor answered, 'shall we now come to dispute of tibi dabo claves. I would not alter my Inquisition. No; if I thought they would be negligent in their office, I would put them out, and put others in their rooms.'
All this was uttered with extraordinary passion and violence. Charles, who was usually so temperate, seemed to have lost his self-command. Wyatt went on to say that the Spanish preached slanders against England, and against the King especially, in their pulpits.
'As to that,' said the Emperor, 'preachers will speak against myself whenever there is cause. That cannot be let. Kings be not kings of tongues; and if men give cause to be spoken of, they will be spoken of.'
He promised at last, with rather more calmness, to inquire into the treatment of the merchants, if proper particulars were supplied to him.[1]
If alarm was really felt in the English Court at the Emperor's presence in Paris, Wyatt's report of this interview was not reassuring. Still less satisfactory was an intimation, which was not long in reaching England, that Francis or one of his ministers had betrayed to Charles a private article in the treaty of Calais, in 1532. Anticipating at that time a war with Spain,
- ↑ Sir Thos. Wyatt to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol. viii. p. 219, &c.
