ng so great a scandal
in Christendom, and to restore his late queen to her place at his side.
This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest
compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could
be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character,
which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion
of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects
which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the
Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had
deserved that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more
than justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced
no effect, and on the 15th of November, three days before Clement's
departure to Bologna, where he pretended (we must not forget) that he
considered Henry substantially right; he added a postscript, in a tone not
contrasting only with his words to the ambassadors, but with the language
of the brief itself.

Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and the
scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him, under
penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of those
injunctions, to restore the queen to her place, and to abstain
thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of
the trial. "Otherwise," the pope continued, "when the said term shall have
elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said Anne, to be
_ipso facto_ excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your
presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such a thought of
your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of the Rota an
inhibition has been already issued against you; although the act of which
you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human and divine, yet
the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that once more we do
inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the aforesaid Catherine, or
from continuing process, in your own courts, of divorce from her. And we do
also hereby warn you, that you presume not to contract any new marriage
with the said or with any other woman; we declare such marriage, if you
still attempt it, to be vain and of none effect, and so to be regarded by
all persons in obedience to the Apostolic see."[408]

An inhibitory mandate, was