ould favor the King's cause. But he bore secret instructions
from the Pope to bring about if possible a reconciliation between Henry
and the Queen, and in no case to pronounce sentence without reference to
Rome. The slowness of his journey presaged ill; he did not reach England
till the end of September, and a month was wasted in vain efforts to
bring Henry to a reconciliation or Catharine to retirement into a
monastery.

A new difficulty disclosed itself in the supposed existence of a brief
issued by Pope Julius and now in the possession of the Emperor, which
overruled all the objections to the earlier dispensation on which Henry
relied. The hearing of the cause was delayed through the winter, while
new embassies strove to induce Clement to declare this brief also
invalid. Not only was such a demand glaringly unjust, but the progress
of the imperial arms brought vividly home to the Pope its injustice. The
danger which he feared was not merely a danger to his temporal domain in
Italy--it was a danger to the papacy itself. It was in vain that new
embassies threatened Clement with the loss of his spiritual power over
England. To break with the Emperor was to risk the loss of his spiritual
power over a far larger world.

Charles had already consented to the suspension of the judgment of his
diet at Worms, a consent which gave security to the new Protestantism in
North Germany. If he burned heretics in the Netherlands, he employed
them in his armies. Lutheran soldiers had played their part in the sack
of Rome. Lutheranism had spread from North Germany along the Rhine, it
was now pushing fast into the hereditary possessions of the Austrian
house, it had all but mastered the Low Countries. France itself was
mined with heresy; and were Charles once to give way, the whole
Continent would be lost to Rome.

Amid difficulties such as these the papal court saw no course open save
one of delay. But the long delay told fatally for Wolsey's fortunes.
Even Clement blamed him for having hindered Henry from judging the
matter in his own realm and marrying on the sentence of his own courts,
and the Boleyns naturally looked upon his policy as dictated by hatred
to Anne. Norfolk and the great peers took courage from the bitter tone
of the girl; and Henry himself charged the Cardinal with a failure in
fulfilling the promises he had made him. King and minister still clung
indeed passionately to their hopes from Rome. But in 1529 Charles met