d,
"did inforce us to excogitate some new thing, whereby we might be healed
and relieved of that continual disease, to care for our cause at Rome,
where such defence was taken from us, as by the laws of God, nature, and
man, is due unto us. Hereupon depended the wealth of our realm; hereupon
consisted the surety of our succession, which by no other means could be
well assured." "And therefore," he went on, "you [the Duke] shall say to
our good brother, that the pope persisting in the ways he hath entered,
ye must needs despair in any meeting between the French king and the
pope, to produce any such effect as to cause us to meet in concord with
the pope; but we shall be even as far asunder as is between yea and nay.
For to the pope's enterprise to revoke or put back anything that is done
here, either in marriage, statute, sentence, or proclamation[165]--of
which four members is knit and conjoined the surety of our matter, nor
any can be removed from the other, lest thereby the whole edifice should
be destroyed--we will and shall, by all ways and means say nay, and
declare our nay in such sort as the world shall hear, and the pope feel
it. Wherein ye may say our firm trust, perfect hope, and assured
confidence is, that our good brother will agree with us: as well for
that it should be partly dishonourable for him to see decay the thing
that was of his own foundation and planting; as also that it should be
too much dishonourable for us--having travelled so far in this matter,
and brought it to this point, that all the storms of the year passed, it
is now come to harvest, trusting to see shortly the fruit of our
marriage, to the wealth, joy, and comfort of all our realm, and our own
singular consolation--that anything should now be done by us to impair
the same, and to put our issue either in peril of bastardy, or otherwise
disturb that [which] is by the whole agreement of our realm established
for their and our commodity, wealth, and benefit. And in this
determination ye know us to be so fixed, and the contrary hereof to be
so infeasible, either at our hands, or by the consent of the realm, that
ye must needs despair of any order to be taken by the French king with
the pope. For if any were by him taken wherein any of these four pieces
should be touched--that is to say, the marriage of the queen our wife,
the revocation of the Bishop of Canterbury's sentence, the statute of
our realm, or our late proclamation, which be as it