the sack of Rome was the just judgment
of God, and one of his ambassadors said that the Pope ought to be
deprived of his temporal states, as they had been at the bottom of all
the dissensions.[658] Clement himself claimed to have been the
originator of that war which brought upon him so terrible and so just
a punishment.

[Footnote 653: _L. and P._, i., 3838, 3876.]

[Footnote 654: _Ibid._, ii., 3781; _cf._, i., 4283,
"all here have regard only to their own honour and
profit".]

[Footnote 655: _Ibid._, ii., 2362.]

[Footnote 656: _L. and P._, ii., 3277, 3352.]

[Footnote 657: _Ibid._, ii., 3523.]

[Footnote 658: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 209, 210, 309;
_cf._, _L. and P._, iv., 3051, 3352. Clement had
given away Sicily and Naples to one of Charles's
vassals "which dealing may make me not take him as
Pope, no, not for all the excommunications that he
can make; for I stand under appellation to the next
general council". Every one--Charles V., Henry
VIII., Cranmer--played an appeal to the next
general council against the Pope's
excommunication.]

Another result of the merging of the Pope in the Italian prince was
the practical exclusion of the English and other Northern nations from
the supreme council of Christendom. There was no apparent reason why
an Englishman should not be the head of the Christian Church just as
well as an Italian; but there was some incongruity in the idea of an
Englishman ruling over Italian States, and no Englishman had attained
the Papacy for nearly four centuries. The double failure of Wolsey
made it clear that the door of the Papacy was sealed to Englishmen,
whatever their claims might be. The roll of cardinals tells a similar
tale; the Roman curia graciously conceded that there should generally
be one English cardinal in the sacred college, but one in a body (p. 231)
of forty or fifty was thought as much as England could fairly demand.
It is not so very surprising that England repudiated the authority of
a tribunal in which its influence was measured on such a contemptible
scale. The other nations of Europe thought much the same, and it is
only necessary to add up the number