ards him,"[826] and Clement was saying that Henry was of
a better nature and more wise than Francis I.[827] Henry was now
willing to suspend his consent to the general council, where the Pope
feared that a scheme would be mooted for restoring the papal States to
the Emperor;[828] and he told the papal nuncio in England that, though
he had studied the question of the Pope's authority and retracted his
defence of the Holy See,[829] yet possibly Clement might give him
occasion to probe the matter further still, and to reconfirm what he
had originally written.[830] Was he not, moreover, withholding his
assent from the Act of Annates, which would deprive the Pope of large
revenues? Backed by this gentle hint, Henry's request not merely for
Cranmer's bulls, but for their expedition without the payment of the
usual 10,000 marks, reached Rome. The cardinals were loth to forgo
their perquisites for the bulls, but the annates of all England were
more precious still, and, on 22nd February, Consistory decided to do
what Henry desired.

[Footnote 825: _L. and P._, vi., 26. The interview
took place at Bologna in December, 1532.]

[Footnote 826: _Ibid._, v., 326.]

[Footnote 827: _Ibid._, v., 555.]

[Footnote 828: _Ibid._, vi., 89, 212.]

[Footnote 829: _E.g._, _ibid._, v., 820, where Henry
tells Tunstall that to follow the Pope is to
forsake Christ, that it was no schism to separate
from Rome, and that "God willing, we shall never
separate from the universal body of Christian men,"
and admits that he was misled in his youth to make
war upon Louis XII. by those who sought only their
own pomp, wealth and glory.]

[Footnote 830: _Ibid._, vi., 296.]

The same deceptive appearance of concord between King and Pope (p. 298)
was employed to lull both Parliament and Convocation. The delays
in the divorce suit disheartened Catherine's adherents. The Pope,
wrote Chapuys, would lose his authority little by little, unless the
case were decided at once;[831] every one, he said, cried out "au
murdre" on Clement for his procrastination on the divorce, and for the
speed with which he granted Cranmer's bulls.[832] There was a general
impression that "he would betray the Emperor,"