ds of the chief families. Even the cardinal's old
friend, the Earl of Suffolk, now joined this combination: the whole
of the nobility sided with it.

But besides this the chief foreign affairs took a turn which made it
impossible to carry out Wolsey's political ideas. In the summer of
1528 the attacks of the allies on Naples were repulsed, and their
armies annihilated. In the spring of 1529 the Emperor got the upper
hand in Lombardy also. How utterly then did the oft-proposed plan, of
depriving him of the supreme dignity, sink into nothingness: he was
stronger than ever in Italy. The Pope was fortunate in not having
joined the allies more closely; the relations of the States of the
Church with Tuscany made a union with the Emperor necessary; he had a
horror of a new quarrel with him. And as the Emperor now took up the
interests of his mother's sister in the most earnest manner, and
protested against proceeding by a Commission granted for England, the
Pope could not possibly let the affair go on unchecked. When the
English ambassadors pressed him, he exclaimed to them (for apart from
this he would gladly have shown more favour to the King) that he felt
himself as it were between anvil and hammer. Divers proposals were
made, one more extraordinary than the other, if only the King would
give up his demand;[99] but this was no longer possible. The two
cardinals, Campeggi and Wolsey, had to begin judicial proceedings:
King and Queen appeared before the Court, Articles were put forward,
witnesses heard: the Correspondence shows that the King and Anne
Boleyn expected with much confidence a speedy and favourable
decision.[100] Wolsey too did not yet abandon this hope. It was
thought at the time that he did not do all he might have done for it,
that in fact he no longer favoured it, seeing as he did that it would
turn out to the advantage of his rivals.[101] But it was in truth his
fate, that the consequences of the design which originated with him
recoiled on his own head. If it succeeded, it must be disadvantageous
to him: if it failed, he was lost. The exhortations he addressed to
the French Court, to exert yet once more its whole influence with the
Papal Court for this matter, sound like a cry of distress in extreme
peril. He had only undertaken it to unite France and England; the
thing was reasonable and practicable, the Pope would not wish by
refusing it to offend both crowns at once; he would value it more
highly than if