venture on any decided course. He refused the
dispensation altogether. Wolsey's proposal for leaving the matter to a
legatine court found better favor; but when the commission reached
England it was found to be "of no effect or authority." What Henry
wanted was not merely a divorce but the express sanction of the Pope to
his divorce, and this Clement steadily evaded. A fresh embassy, with
Wolsey's favorite and secretary, Stephen Gardiner, at its head, reached
Orvieto in March, 1528, to find, in spite of Gardiner's threats, hardly
better success; but Clement at last consented to a legatine commission
for the trial of the case in England. In this commission Cardinal
Campeggio, who was looked upon as a partisan of the English King, was
joined with Wolsey.

Great as the concession seemed, this gleam of success failed to hide
from the minister the dangers which gathered round him. The great nobles
whom he had practically shut out from the King's counsels were longing
for his fall. The Boleyns and the young courtiers looked on him as cool
in Anne's cause. He was hated alike by men of the old doctrine and men
of the new. The clergy had never forgotten his extortions, the monks saw
him suppressing small monasteries. The foundation of Cardinal College
failed to reconcile to him the scholars of the New Learning; their poet,
Skelton, was among his bitterest assailants.

The Protestants, goaded by the persecution of this very year, hated him
with a deadly hatred. His French alliances, his declaration of war with
the Emperor, hindered the trade with Flanders and secured the hostility
of the merchant class. The country at large, galled with murrain and
famine and panic-struck by an outbreak of the sweating sickness which
carried off two thousand in London alone, laid all its suffering at the
door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's mood itself became uncertain
Wolsey knew his hour was come. Were the marriage once made, he told the
French ambassador, and a male heir born to the realm, he would withdraw
from state affairs and serve God for the rest of his life. But the
divorce had still to be brought about ere marriage could be made or heir
be born. Henry indeed had seized on the grant of a commission as if the
matter were at an end. Anne Boleyn was installed in the royal palace and
honored with the state of a wife. The new legate, Campeggio, held the
bishopric of Salisbury, and had been asked for as judge from the belief
that he w