end their
ambassadors to Calais, there to negotiate a peace under the mediation
of Wolsey and the pope's nuncio. The emperor was well apprised of the
partiality of these mediators; and his demands in the conference were
so unreasonable as plainly proved him conscious of the advantage. He
required the restitution of Burgundy, a province which many years before
had been ceded to France by treaty, and which, if in his possession,
would have given him entrance into the heart of that kingdom: and he
demanded to be freed from the homage which his ancestors had always done
for Flanders and Artois, and which he himself had by the treaty of Noyon
engaged to renew.

{1521.} On Francis's rejecting these terms, the congress of Calais broke
up; and Wolsey soon after took a journey to Bruges, where he met with
the emperor. He was received with the same state, magnificence,
and respect, as if he had been the king of England himself; and he
concluded, in his master's name, an offensive alliance with the pope
and the emperor against France. He stipulated that England should next
summer invade that kingdom with forty thousand men; and he betrothed
to Charles the princess Mary, the king's only child, who had now some
prospect of inheriting the crown. This extravagant alliance, which was
prejudicial to the interests, and might have proved fatal to the liberty
and independence, of the kingdom, was the result of the humors and
prejudices of the king, and the private views and expectations of the
cardinal.

The people saw every day new instances of the uncontrolled authority of
this minister. The duke of Buckingham, constable of England, the first
nobleman both for family and fortune in the kingdom, had imprudently
given disgust to the cardinal; and it was not long before he found
reason to repent of his indiscretion. He seems to have been a man
full of levity and rash projects; and being infatuated with judicial
astrology, he entertained a commerce with one Hopkins, a Carthusian
friar, who encouraged him in the notion of his mounting one day the
throne of England. He was descended by a female from the duke of
Glocester, youngest son of Edward III.; and though his claim to the
crown was thereby very remote, he had been so unguarded as to let fall
some expressions, as if he thought himself best entitled, in case the
king should die without issue, to possess the royal dignity. He had not
even abstained from threats against the king's life; an