onscience, and partly in despair
of any issue male by her, it drove me at last to consider the estate of
this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of issue male to succeed me
in this imperial dignity."--CAVENDISH, p. 220.

[123] "If a man shall take his brother's wife it is an unclean
thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be
childless."--_Leviticus_ xx. 21. It ought to be remembered, that if the
present law of England be right, the party in favour of the divorce was
right.

[124] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.

[125] Legates to the Pope, printed in BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 40.

[126] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 117.

[127] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.; HALL, 669.

[128] They were shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo.

[129] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 18, 19.

[130] The fullest account of Wolsey's intentions on church reform will be
found in a letter addressed to him by Fox, the old blind Bishop of
Winchester, in 1528. The letter is printed in STRYPE'S _Memorials Eccles._
vol. i. Appendix 10.

[131] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii. It is not
uncommon to find splendid imaginations of this kind haunting statesmen of
the 16th century; and the recapture of Constantinople always formed a
feature in the picture. _A Plan for the Reformation of Ireland_, drawn up
in 1515, contains the following curious passage: "The prophecy is, that the
King of England shall put this land of Ireland into such order that the
wars of the land, whereof groweth the vices of the same, shall cease for
ever; and after that God shall give such grace and fortune to the same king
that he shall with the army of England and of Ireland subdue the realm of
France to his obeysance for ever, and shall rescue the Greeks, and recover
the great city of Constantinople, and shall vanquish the Turks and win the
Holy Cross and the Holy Land, and shall die Emperor of Rome, and eternal
blisse shall be his end."--_State Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 30, 31.

[132] Knight to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 2, 3.

[133] Wolsey to Cassalis: Ibid. p. 26.

[134] The dispensing power of the popes was not formally limited. According
to the Roman lawyers, a faculty lay with them of granting extraordinary
dispensations in cases where dispensations would not be usually
admissible--which faculty was to be used, however, dummodo causa cogat
urgentissima ne regnum aliq