"The Pope," wrote Dr. Ortiz to the Emperor, "has committed the deprivation of the King of England and the adjudication of the realm to the Apostolic See as a fief of the Church to Cardinals Campeggio, Simoneta, and Cesis.

The delay in granting the executorials in the princ.i.p.al cause is wonderful. Although the deposition of the King was spoken of so hotly in the Consistory, and they wrote about it to all the Princes, they will only proceed with delay and with a monition to the King to be intimated in neighbouring countries. This is needless. His heresy, schism, and other crimes are notorious. He may be deprived without the delay of a monition.

If it is pressed, it is to be feared it will be on the side of France. It is a wonderful revenge which the King of France has taken on the King of England, to favour him until he has fallen into schism and heresy, and then to forsake him in it, to delude him as far as the gallows, and to leave him to hang. The blood of the saints whom that King has martyred calls to G.o.d for justice."[341]

Catherine, sick with hope deferred and tired of the Emperor's hesitation, was catching at the new straw which was floating by her. Ortiz must have kept her informed of the French overtures at the Vatican. She prayed the Regent Mary to use her influence with the French Queen. Now was the time for Francis to show himself a true friend of his brother of England, and a.s.sist in delivering him from a state of sin.[342]

Strange rumours were current in France and in England to explain the delay of the censures. The Pope had confessed himself alarmed at the completeness of Charles's success at Tunis. It was thought that the Emperor, fresh from his victories, might act on the advice of men like Lope de Soria, take his Holiness himself in hand and abolish the Temporal Power; that the Pope knew it, and therefore feared to make matters worse by provoking England further.[343]

Pope and Princes might watch each other in distrust at a safe distance; but to the English conspirators the long pause was life or death. Delays are usually fatal with intended rebellion. The only safety is in immediate action. Enthusiasm cools, and secrets are betrayed. Fisher's fate was a fresh spur to them to move, but it also proved that the Government knew too much and did not mean to flinch.

Chapuys tried Granvelle again. "Every man of position here," he said, "is in despair at the Pope's inaction. If something is not done promptly there will be no hope for the ladies, or for religion either, which is going daily to destruction. Things are come to such a pa.s.s that at some places men even preach against the Sacrament. The Emperor is bound to interfere.

What he has done in Africa he can do in England with far more ease and with incomparably more political advantage."[344]

Granvelle could but answer that Henry was a monster, and that G.o.d would undoubtedly punish him; but that for himself he was so busy that he could scarcely breathe, and that the Emperor continued to hope for some peaceful arrangement.

Cifuentes meanwhile kept his hand on Paul. His task was difficult, for his orders were to prevent the issue of the executorials for fear France should act upon them, while Catholic Christendom would be shaken to its base if it became known that it was the Emperor who was preventing the Holy See from avenging itself. Even with the Pope Cifuentes could not be candid, and Ortiz, working on Paul's jealousy and unable to comprehend the obstacle, had persuaded his Holiness to draw up "the brief of execution"

and furnish a copy to himself.[345]

"In the matter of the executory letters," Cifuentes wrote to Charles, "I have strictly followed your Majesty's instructions. They have been kept back for a year and a half without the least appearance that the delay proceeded from us, but, on the contrary, as if we were disappointed that they were not drawn when asked for. Besides his Holiness's wish to wait for the result of the offers of France, another circ.u.mstance has served your Majesty's purpose. There were certain clauses to which I could not consent, in the draft shown to me, as detrimental to the right of the Queen and Princess and to your Majesty's preeminence.

"Now that all hope has vanished of the return of the King of England to obedience, Dr. Ortiz, not knowing that you wished the execution to be delayed, has taken out the executory letters and almost despatched them while I was absent at Perugia. The letters are ready, nothing being wanted but the Pope's seal. I have detained them for a few days, pretending that I must examine the wording. They will remain in my possession till you inform me of your pleasure."[346]

The issue of the Pope's censures either in the form of a letter of execution or of a Bull of Deposition was to be the signal of the English rising, with or without the Emperor. Darcy and his friends were ready and resolved to begin. But without the Pope's direct sanction the movement would lose its inspiration. The Irish rebellion had collapsed for the want of it. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald had surrendered and was a prisoner in the Tower.

It was not the part of a child, however great her imagined wrongs, deliberately to promote an insurrection against her father. Henry II.'s sons had done it, but times were changed. The Princess Mary was determined to justify such of Henry's Council as had recommended the harshest measures against her. She wrote a letter to Chapuys which, if intercepted, might have made it difficult for the King to save her.

"The condition of things," she said, "is worse than wretched. The realm will fall to ruin unless his Majesty, for the service of G.o.d, the welfare of Christendom, the honour of the King my father, and compa.s.sion for the afflicted souls in this country, will take pity on us and apply the remedy. This I hope and feel a.s.sured that he will do if he is rightly informed of what is taking place. In the midst of his occupations in Africa he will have been unable to realise our condition. The whole truth cannot be conveyed in letters. I would, therefore, have you despatch one of your own people to inform him of everything, and to supplicate him on the part of the Queen my mother, and myself for the honour of G.o.d and for other respects to attend to and provide for us. In so acting he will accomplish a service most agreeable to Almighty G.o.d. Nor will he win less fame and glory to himself than he has achieved in the conquest of Tunis or in all his African expedition."[347]

Catherine simultaneously addressed herself to the Pope in a letter equally characteristic. The "brief of execution" was the natural close of her process, which, after judgment in her favour, she was ent.i.tled to demand. The Pope wished her to apply for it, that it might appear to be granted at her instance and not on his own impulse.

"Most Holy and Blessed Father," she wrote, "I kiss your Holiness's hands.

My letters have been filled with complaints and importunities, and have been more calculated to give you pain than pleasure. I have therefore for some time ceased from writing to your Holiness, although my conscience has reproached me for my silence. One only satisfaction I have in thinking of the present state of things: I thank unceasingly our Lord Jesus Christ for having appointed a vicar like your Holiness, of whom so much good is spoken at a time when Christendom is in so great a strait. G.o.d in His mercy has preserved you for this hour. Once more, therefore, as an obedient child of the Holy See, I do entreat you to bear this realm in special mind, to remember the King, my lord and husband, and my daughter.

Your Holiness knows, and all Christendom knows, what things are done here, what great offence is given to G.o.d, what scandal to the world, what reproach is thrown upon your Holiness. If a remedy be not applied shortly there will be no end to ruined souls and martyred saints. The good will be firm and will suffer. The lukewarm will fail if they find none to help them, and the rest will stray out of the way like sheep that have lost their shepherd. I place these facts before your Holiness because I know not any one on whose conscience the deaths of these holy and good men and the perdition of so many souls ought to weigh more heavily than on yours, inasmuch as your Holiness neglects to encounter these evils which the Devil, as we see, has sown among us.

"I write frankly to your Holiness, for the discharge of my own soul, as to one who, I hope, can feel with me and my daughter for the martyrdoms of these admirable persons. I have a mournful pleasure in expecting that we shall follow them in the manner of their torments. And so I end, waiting for the remedy from G.o.d and from your Holiness. May it come speedily. If not, the time will be past. Our Lord preserve your Holiness's person."[348]

On the same day and by the same messenger she wrote to Charles, congratulating him on his African victory, and imploring him, now that he was at liberty, to urge the Pope into activity. In other words, she was desiring him to carry fire and sword through England, when if she herself six years before would have allowed the Pope's predecessor to guide her and had retired into "religion," there would have been no divorce, no schism, no martyrs, no dangers of a European convulsion on her account.

Catherine, as other persons have done, had allowed herself to be governed by her own wounded pride, and called it conscience.

Chapuys conveyed the Queen's arguments both to Charles and to Granvelle.

He again a.s.sured them that the Princess and her mother were in real danger of death. If the Emperor continued to hesitate, he said, after his splendid victories in Africa, there would be general despair. The opportunity would be gone, and an enterprise now easy would then be difficult, if not impossible.

Now was the time. The execution of More and Fisher, the suppression of the monasteries, the spoliation of the Church, had filled clerical and aristocratic England with fear and fury. The harvest had failed; and the failure was interpreted as a judgment from Heaven on the King's conduct.

So sure Chapuys felt that the Emperor would now move that he sent positive a.s.surances to Catherine that his master would not return to Spain till he had restored her to her rights. Even the Bishop of Tarbes, who was again in London, believed that Henry was lost at last. The whole nation, he said, Peers and commons, and even the King's own servants, were devoted to the Princess and her mother, and would join any prince who would take up their cause. The discontent was universal, partly because the Princess was regarded as the right heir to the crown, partly for fear of war and the ruin of trade. The autumn had been wet: half the corn was still in the fields. Queen Anne was universally execrated, and even the King was losing his love for her. If war was declared, the entire country would rise.[349]

The Pope, it has been seen, had thought of declaring Mary to be Queen in her father's place. Such a step, if ventured, would inevitably be fatal to her. Her friends in England wished to see her married to some foreign prince--if possible, to the Dauphin--that she might be safe and out of the way. The Princess herself, and even the Emperor, were supposed to desire the match with the Dauphin, because in such an alliance the disputes with France might be forgotten, and Charles and the French king might unite to coerce Henry into obedience.

The wildest charges against Henry were now printed and circulated in Germany and the Low Countries. Cromwell complained to Chapuys. "Worse," he said, "could not be said against Jew or Devil." Chapuys replied ironically that he was sorry such things should be published. The Emperor would do his best to stop them, but in the general disorder tongues could not be controlled.

So critical the situation had become in these autumn months that Cromwell, of course with the King's consent, was obliged to take the unusual step of interfering with the election of the Lord Mayor of London, alleging that, with the State in so much peril, it was of the utmost consequence to have a well-disposed man of influence and experience at the head of the City.

"Cromwell came to me this morning," Chapuys wrote to his master on the 13th of October; "he said the King was informed that the Emperor intended to attack him in the Pope's name (he called his Holiness, 'bishop of Rome,' but begged my pardon while he did so,) and that a Legate or Bishop was coming to Flanders to stir the fire. The King could not believe that the Emperor had any such real intention after the friendship which he had shown him, especially when there was no cause. In breaking with the Pope he had done nothing contrary to the law of G.o.d, and religion was nowhere better regulated and reformed than it was now in England. The King would send a special emba.s.sy to the Emperor, if I thought it would be favourably received. I said I could not advise so great a Prince. I believed that, if the object of such an emba.s.sy was one which your Majesty could grant in honour and conscience, it would not only be well received but would be successful. Otherwise, I could neither recommend nor dissuade."[350]

By the same hand which carried this despatch Chapuys forwarded the letters of Catherine and Mary, adding another of his own to Granvelle, in which he said that "if the Emperor wished to give peace and union to Christendom, he must begin in England. It would be easy, for everyone was irritated.

The King's treasure would pay for all, and would help, besides, for the enterprise against the Turk. It was time to punish him for his folly and impiety."[351]

Charles seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion. He had already written from Messina, on his return from Tunis, both to Chapuys and to his Amba.s.sador in Paris, that, as long as Henry retained his concubine, persisted in his divorce, and refused to recognise the Princess as his heir, he could not honourably treat with him.[352] The Pope, when Catherine's letter reached him, was fuming with fresh anger at the fate of the Irish rebellion. Lord Thomas, spite of Papal absolution and blessing, was a prisoner in the Tower. He had surrendered to his uncle, Lord Leonard Grey, under some promise of pardon. He had been carried before the King.

For a few days he was left at liberty, and might have been forgiven, if he would have made a satisfactory submission; but he calculated that "a new world" was not far off, and that he might hold out in safety. Such a wild cat required stricter keeping. The Tower gates closed on him, and soon after he paid for the Archbishop's life with his own.

Ortiz, when he heard that Fitzgerald was imprisoned, said that the choice lay before him to die a martyr or else to be perverted. G.o.d, he hoped, would permit the first. The spirit of one of the murdered Carthusians had appeared to the brotherhood and informed them of the glorious crown which had been bestowed on Fisher.[353]

In this exalted humour Catherine's letter found Paul and the Roman clergy.

The Pope had already informed Cifuentes that he meant to proceed to "deprivation." The letters of execution had been so drawn or re-drawn as to involve the forfeiture of Henry's throne,[354] and Ortiz considered that Providence had so ordered it that the Pope was now acting _motu proprio_ and not at the Queen's solicitation. Cifuentes was of opinion, however, that Paul meant to wait for the Queen's demand, that the responsibility might be hers. Chapuys's courier was ordered to deliver Catherine's letter into the Pope's own hands. Cifuentes took the liberty of detaining it till the Emperor's pleasure was known. But no one any longer doubted that the time was come. France and England were no longer united, and the word for action was to be spoken at last.

At no period of his reign had Henry been in greater danger. At home the public mind was unsettled. A large and powerful faction of peers and clergy were prepared for revolt, and abroad he had no longer an ally.

England seemed on the eve of a conflict the issue of which no one could foresee. At this moment Providence, or the good luck which had so long befriended him, interposed to save the King and save the Reformation.

Sforza, Duke of Milan and husband of Christina of Denmark, died childless on the 24th of October. Milan was the special subject of difference between France and the Empire. The dispute had been suspended while the Duke was alive. His death reopened the question, and the war long looked for for the Milan succession became inevitable and immediately imminent.

The entire face of things was now changed. Francis had, perhaps, never seriously meant to join in executing the Papal sentence against England; but he had intended to encourage the Emperor to try, that he might fish himself afterwards in the troubled waters, and probably s.n.a.t.c.h at Calais.

He now required Henry for a friend again, and the old difficulties and the old jealousies were revived in the usual form. Both the great Catholic Powers desired the suspension of the censures. The Emperor was again unwilling to act as the Pope's champion while he was uncertain of the French King. Francis wished to recover his position as Henry's defender.

The Pope was an Italian prince as well as sovereign of the Church, and his secular interest was thought to be more French than Imperial.

No sooner was Sforza gone than the Cardinal Du Bellay and the Bishop of Macon were despatched from Paris to see and talk with Paul. They found him still too absorbed in the English question to attend to anything besides.

He was in the high exalted mood of Gregory VII., imagining that he was about to rea.s.sert the ancient Papal prerogative, and again dispose of kingdoms.

The Pope, wrote the French Commissioners, having heard that there was famine and plague in England, had made up his mind to act, and was incredibly excited. The sentence was prepared and was to issue unexpectedly like a bolt out of the blue sky. They enclosed a copy of it, and waited for instructions from Francis as to the line which they were to take. To set things straight again would, they said, be almost impossible; but they would do their best to prevent extremities, and to show the King of England that they had endeavoured to serve him. Nothing like the sentence which Paul had constructed had been ever seen before. Some articles had been inserted to force Francis to choose between the Pope and the King. They were malicious, unjust, and _terriblement enormes_.[355]

The new Hildebrand, applying to himself the words of Jeremiah, "Behold, I have set thee over nations and kingdoms, that thou mayest root out and destroy," had proceeded to root out Henry. He had cursed him; he cursed his abettors. His body when he died was to lie unburied and his soul lie in h.e.l.l for ever. His subjects were ordered to renounce their allegiance, and were to fall under interdict if they continued to obey him. No true son of the Church was to hold intercourse or alliance with him or his adherents, under pain of sharing his d.a.m.nation; and the Princes of Europe and the Peers and commons of England were required, on their allegiance to the Holy See, to expel him from the throne.[356]

This was the "remedy" for which Catherine had been so long entreating, out of affection for her misguided lord, whose soul she wished to save. The love which she professed was a love which her lord could have dispensed with.

The Papal Nuncio reported from Paris the att.i.tude which France intended to a.s.sume. He had been speaking with the Admiral Philip de Chabot about England. The Admiral had admitted that the King had doubtless done violent things, and that the Pope had a right to notice them. France did not wish to defend him against the Pope, but, if he was attacked by the Emperor, would certainly take his part. The Nuncio said that he had pointed out that the King of England had G.o.d for an enemy; that he was, therefore, going to total ruin; and that the Pope had hoped to find in Francis a champion of the Church. The Admiral said that, of course, England ought to return to the faith: the Pope could deal with him hereafter; but France must take care of her own interests.[357]

Charles, too, was uneasy and undecided. Until the Milan question had been reopened the French had spoken as if they would no longer stand between Henry and retribution, but he was now a.s.sured that they would return to their old att.i.tude. They had stood by Henry through the long controversy of the divorce. Even when Fisher was sent to the scaffold they had not broken their connection with him. The King, he knew, was frightened, and would yield, if France was firm; but, unless the Pope had a promise from the French King under his own hand to a.s.sist in executing the censures, the Pope would find himself disappointed; and the fear was that Francis would draw the Emperor into a war with England and then leave him to make his own bargain.[358]

Kings whose thrones and lives are threatened cannot afford to be lenient.

Surrounded by traitors, uncertain of France, with the danger in which he stood immeasurably increased by the att.i.tude of Catherine and her daughter, the King, so the Marchioness of Exeter reported to Chapuys, had been heard to say that they must bend or break. The anxiety which they were causing was not to be endured any longer. Parliament was about to meet, and their situation would have then to be considered.[359]

The Marchioness entreated him to let the Emperor know of this, and tell him that, if he waited longer, he would be too late to save them. Chapuys took care that these alarming news should lose nothing in the relating.

Again, after a fortnight, Lady Exeter came to him, disguised, to renew the warning. The "she-devil of a Concubine," she said, was thinking of nothing save of how to get the ladies despatched. The Concubine ruled the Council, and the King was afraid to contradict her. The fear was, as Chapuys said, that he would make the Parliament a joint party with him in his cruelties, and that, losing hope of pardon from the Emperor, they would be more determined to defend themselves.[360]

The danger, if danger there was, to Catherine and Mary, was Chapuys's own creation. It was he who had encouraged them in defying the King, that they might form a visible rallying-point to the rebellion. Charles was more rational than the Amba.s.sador, and less credulous of Henry's wickedness. "I cannot believe what you tell me," he replied to his Amba.s.sador's frightful story. "The King cannot be so unnatural as to put to death his own wife and daughter. The threats you speak of can only be designed to terrify them. They must not give way, if it can be avoided; but, if they are really in danger, and there is no alternative, you may tell them from me that they must yield. A submission so made cannot prejudice their rights. They can protest that they are acting under compulsion, in fear for their lives. I will take care that their protestation is duly ratified by their proctors at Rome."[361] Chapuys was a politician, and obeyed his orders. But that either Catherine or her daughter should give way was the last wish either of him or of Ortiz, or any of the fanatical enthusiasts.

Martyrs were the seed of the Church. If Mary abandoned her claim to the succession, her name could no longer be used as a battle-cry. The object was a revolution which would shake Henry from his throne. On the scaffold, as a victim to her fidelity to her mother and to the Holy See, she would give an impulse to the insurrection which nothing could resist.

The croaks of the raven were each day louder. Lady Exeter declared that the King had said that the Princess should be an example that no one should disobey the law. There was a prophecy of him that at the beginning of his reign he would be gentle as a lamb, and at the end worse than a lion. That prophecy he meant to fulfil.[362]

Ortiz, who had his information from Catherine herself, said that she was preparing to die as the Bishop of Rochester and the others had died. She regretted only that her life had not been as holy as theirs. The "kitchen-wench"--as Ortiz named Anne--had often said of the Princess that either Mary would be her death or she would be Mary's, and that she would take care that Mary did not laugh at her after she was gone.[363]

Stories flying at such a time were half of them the creation of rage and panic, imperfectly believed by those who related them, and reported to feed a fire which it was so hard to kindle; but they show the spirit of which the air was full. At Rome there was still distrust. Francis had shown the copy of the intended sentence to the different Amba.s.sadors at Paris. He had said that the Pope was claiming a position for the Apostolic See which could not be allowed, and must be careful what he did.[364] Paul agreed with the Emperor that, before the sentence was delivered, pledges to a.s.sist must be exacted from Francis, but had thought that he might calculate with sufficient certainty on the hereditary enmity between France and England. Cifuentes told him that he must judge of the future by the past. The French were hankering after Italy, and other things were nothing in comparison. The Pope hinted that the Emperor was said to be treating privately with Henry. Cifuentes could give a flat denial to this, for the treaty had been dropped. If the Emperor, however, resolved to undertake the execution Francis was not to be allowed to hear of it, as he would use the knowledge to set Henry on his guard.[365]