ecret was
out, and they knew at Rome what the king's scruples were worth. This
was done behind the cardinal's back. When he took the matter in hand,
he asked that the Pope should dissolve the first marriage, on the
ground that Julius II had issued a dispensation in terms which could
not be justified. That this might not be taken as denying the
plenitude of the prerogative, he further asked for a dispensation to
marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And he desired
that the cause might be judged in this country and not at Rome.

When these negotiations commenced, in the spring and summer of 1527,
Rome had been sacked by the Imperialists, and Clement was a prisoner
in St. Angelo, or a fugitive at Orvieto, with the strongest motive
for resentment against the author of his humiliation. By the summer
of 1528, when Lautrec was in Italy at the head of a French army,
Clement had conceded virtually the whole of the English demands. He
removed every impediment to the marriage with Anne other than the fact
that Henry was married already. He authorised the trial of the case
in England by Wolsey and Warham; or again, by Wolsey and Campeggio,
Archbishop of Bologna, the best jurist of the sacred college. He
pronounced on the question of law, leaving questions of fact to the
legates, and he pronounced against the terms of the dispensation,
intimating that Julius had done what no Pope has a right to do. He
promised that judgment as given in England would be final, and that he
would not remove the cause to Rome. He was willing that Richmond, the
king's son, should marry the king's daughter, Mary Tudor. He did not
turn a deaf ear even to the proposal of bigamy. For several years he
continued to suggest that Henry should marry Anne Boleyn and renounce
the quest of a divorce. In 1530, somebody informed him that this
would not do, and that brought him to the last of his resources. He
proposed to the Imperialists, in order to prevent a schism, that Henry
should live with Anne without marriage and without divorce. That he
might not be hopelessly wrong with the Emperor, he required that the
most compromising of these documents should be kept secret. His
friendliness rose with the French advance and fell with the French
disasters. If Lautrec would approach the vicinity of Rome, he said,
he would do more, because the Emperor would excuse him on the ground
of compulsion. When Campeggio reached England, Lautrec was dea