out herself and the King. She was thus absent when in July
1527 Wolsey had gone to France, but took care to keep herself in Henry's
memory by sending him a splendid jewel of gold and diamonds representing a
damsel in a boat on a troubled sea. The lovesick King replied in the first
of those extraordinary love-letters of his which have so often been
printed. "Henceforward," he says, "my heart shall be devoted to you only.
I wish my body also could be. God can do it if He pleases, to whom I pray
once a day that it may be, and hope at length to be heard:" and he signs
_Escripte de la main du secretaire, que en coeur, corps, et volonte, est
vostre loiall et plus assure serviteure, H. (autre coeur ne cherche) R._
Soon afterwards, when Wolsey was well on his way, the King writes to his
lady-love again. "The time seems so long since I heard of your good health
and of you that I send the bearer to be better ascertained of your health
and your purpose: for since my last parting from you I have been told you
have quite abandoned the intention of coming to Court, either with your
mother or otherwise. If so I cannot wonder sufficiently; for I have
committed no offence against you, and it is very little return for the
great love I bear you to deny me the presence of the woman I esteem most
of all the world. If you love me, as I hope you do, our separation should
be painful to you. I trust your absence is not wilful; for if so I can but
lament my ill fortune and by degrees abate my great folly."[55] This was
the tone to bring Anne to her lover again, and before many days were over
they were together, and in Wolsey's absence the marriage rumours spread
apace.

The fiasco of Knight's mission had convinced Henry and Anne that they must
proceed through the ordinary diplomatic channels and with the aid of
Wolsey in their future approaches to the Pope; and early in 1528 Stephen
Gardiner and Edward Fox, two ecclesiastics attached to the Cardinal, were
despatched on a fresh mission to Orvieto to urge Clement to grant to
Wolsey and another Legate power to pronounce finally on the validity of
Henry's marriage. The Pope was to be plied with sanctimonious assurances
that no carnal love for Anne prompted Henry's desire to marry her, as the
Pope had been informed, but solely her "approved excellent, virtuous
qualities--the purity of her life, her constant virginity, her maidenly
and womanly pudicity, her soberness, her chasteness, meekness, humility,