were dead and the King
married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not
offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from
Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and
Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry's marriage should
be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English
Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England
he dreaded before all things. But Charles's troops were in Rome and his
agents for ever bullying the wretched Pope, and the latter was obliged to
reply finally to the English peers with a rebuke. There were those both
in England and abroad who urged Henry to marry Anne at once, and depend
upon the recognition of the _fait accompli_ by means of negotiation
afterwards, but this did not satisfy either the King or the favourite.
Every interview between the King and the Nuncio grew more bitter than the
previous one. No English cause, swore Henry, should be tried outside his
realm where he was master; and if the Pope insisted in giving judgment for
the Queen, as he had promised the Emperor to do, the English Parliament
should deal with the matter in spite of Rome.

The first ecclesiastical thunderclap came in October 1530, when Henry
published a proclamation reminding the lieges of the old law of England
that forbade the Pope from exercising direct jurisdiction in the realm by
Bull or Brief. No one could understand at the time what was meant, but
when the Nuncio in perturbation went and asked Norfolk and Suffolk the
reason of so strange a proclamation at such a time, they replied roughly,
that they "cared nothing for Popes in England ... the King was Emperor and
Pope too in his own realm." Later, Henry told the Nuncio that the Pope had
outraged convention by summoning him before a foreign tribunal, and should
now be taught that no usurpation of power would be allowed in England. The
Parliament was called, said Henry, to restrain the encroachment of the
clergy generally, and unless the Pope met his wishes promptly a blow would
be struck at all clerical pretensions. The reply of the Pope was another
brief forbidding Henry's second marriage, and threatening Parliaments and
Bishops in England if they dared to meddle in the matter. The question
was thus rapidly drifting into an international one on religious lines,
which involved either the submission of Henry or schism from the Chu