delay, on the supposition that the interview in
question was to take place immediately; for the natural consequences of the
second marriage would involve, as a matter of course, some speedy legal
declaration with respect to the first. And when on various pretexts the
pope postponed the meeting, and on the other part of his suggestion Henry
had acted within a few months of his return from Calais, it became
impossible that such a condition could be observed. It availed for a formal
excuse; but Francis vainly endeavoured to disguise his own infirmity of
purpose behind the language of a negotiation which conveyed, when it was
used, a meaning widely different.

The conference was concluded on the 1st of November, but the court was
detained at Calais for a further fortnight by violent gales in the Channel.
In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves ordinary
assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen Catherine, to
whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous augury, and the
nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a time would have
plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the storm with anxious
agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the
churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme and imminent peril.
The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted to conferences with
angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial instruction, as a
conspiracy against Heaven. The king, she said, but for her interposition,
would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious marriage;[391] and
God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his
unholy eyes the blessed Sacrament. "It was written in her revelations,"
says the statute of her attainder, "that when the King's Grace was at
Calais, and his Majesty and the French king were hearing mass in the Church
of Our Lady, that God was so displeased with the King's Highness, that his
Grace saw not at that time the blessed sacrament in the form of bread, for
it was taken away from the priest, being at mass, by an angel, and was
ministered to the said Elizabeth, there being present and invisible, and
suddenly conveyed and rapt thence again into the nunnery where she was
professed."[392]

She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to try
the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still
delayed his marriage, it was probably n