be your Majesty's ruin. He had done much for you, and you little for him; and when Pope, and Emperor, and all the world would have had him to overrun you and your realm, he withheld himself, and stayed them all.'[1] Paget said his heart 'throbbed with anger,' at this most audacious speech. Francis owed his release from a Spanish prison to Henry's interference; he owed the recovery of his children to Henry's money; and he had repaid him with promises, broken as easily as they were made; with intrigues in Scotland, ceaseless and mischievous; with the breach of a series of engagements which had run parallel to the quarrel with the Papacy; and now, at last, with the repudiation of his debts. If England was not invaded in 1539, her escape was not due to the King of France, but to the cannon which guarded the English shores, and the nerve with which English conspiracies had been crushed. Henry had ample cause of quarrel with every Catholic sovereign in Europe, had he cared to insist upon it. Francis believed that he would have God and the world against him, and that his ruin was near. Francis was an un-
- ↑ La Planche, one of the French council, told Paget that James in his letter had complained that Henry went about without good cause to oppress him. 'To this,' said Paget, 'I answered, 'If the Scottish King had complained, I think he played the curst cat that scratted and cried, for I knew your Majesty to be of such virtue and knowledge that you would not make war upon him, being your nephew, without occasion.' 'Of one thing you may be sure,' quoth he, 'that a king of France will never suffer a king of Scotland to be oppressed:' which words were out or he was aware; and to amend the matter, he added, 'no more than a King of England will suffer an Emperor or a French King to be overcome one of another, but to keep them in an equality.''—Paget to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol. ix. p. 179.
