n
he entered the hall and bowed before his sovereign, who was toying now
with his lady-love, and joking with his favourites, the minister must have
known that his empire over Henry had for the time vanished. He was clever
and crafty: he had often conquered difficulties before, and was not
dismayed now that a young woman had supplanted him, for he still held
confidence in himself. So he made no sign of annoyance, but he promptly
tried to checkmate Knight's mission when he heard of it, whilst pretending
approval of the King's attachment to Anne. The latter was deceived. She
could not help seeing that with Wolsey's help she would attain her object
infinitely more easily than without it, and she in her turn smiled upon
the Cardinal, though her final success would have boded ill for him, as he
well knew.

His plan, doubtless, was to let the divorce question drag on as long as
possible, in the hope that Henry would tire of his new flame. First he
persuaded the King to send fresh instructions to Knight, on the ground
that the Pope would certainly not give him a dispensation to commit bigamy
in order that he might marry Anne, and that it would be easier to obtain
from the Pontiff a decree leaving the validity of the marriage with
Katharine to the decision of the Legates in England, Wolsey and another
Cardinal. Henry having once loosened the bridle, did not entirely return
to his submission to Wolsey. Like most weak men, he found it easier to
rebel against the absent than against those who faced him; but he was not,
if he and Anne could prevent it, again going to put his neck under the
Cardinal's yoke completely, and in a secret letter to Knight he ordered
him to ask Clement for a dispensation couched in the curious terms already
referred to, allowing him to marry again, even within the degrees of
affinity, as soon as the union with Katharine was dissolved. Knight had
found it impossible to get near the Pope in Rome, for the imperialists had
been fully forewarned by this time; but at length Clement was partially
released and went to Orvieto in December, whither Knight followed him
before the new instructions came from England. Knight was no match for the
subtle churchmen. Clement dared not, moreover, mortally offend the
Emperor, whose men-at-arms still held Rome; and the dispensation that
Knight sent so triumphantly to England giving the Legate's Court in London
power to decide the validity of the King's marriage, had a clause sl