on lawyer attached to the
embassy. The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable; and
Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous
account of it to Cromwell.[397] Three wretched weeks the party were upon
the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on the 8th
of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is
important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these
movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of
several curious documents. On the 12th of December the pope and the emperor
met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry's able secretary, who had
been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to
report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to repeated
interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor's arrival;
and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and
was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in
which he was placing himself towards the imperial faction. Bennet's letter
was as follows:--

"I have been sundry and many times with the pope, as well afore the coming
of the emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his Holiness
more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness than now of
late,--insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind than he was
accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly without any
observance or respect at all. At which time, I greatly lamented (your
Highness's cause being so just) no means could be found and taken to
satisfy your Highness therein; and I said also that I doubted not but that
(if his Holiness would) ways might be found by his wisdom, now at the
emperour's being with him, to satisfy your Highness; and that done, his
Holiness should not only have your Highness in as much or more friendship
than he hath had heretofore, but also procure thereby that thing which his
Holiness hath chiefly desired, which is, as he hath said, a universal
concord among the princes of Christendom. His Holiness answered, that he
would it had cost him a joint of his hand that such a way might be
excogitate; and he said also, that the best thing which he could see to be
done therein at this present, for a preparation to that purpose, was the
thing which is contained in the first part of the cipher.[398] Speaking of
the justness of your cause, he c