n as it seemed of France roused into fresh life the
hopes of the English king. Again drawing closely to Charles he offered to
join the Emperor in an invasion of France with forty thousand men, to head
his own forces, and to furnish heavy subsidies for the cost of the war.
Should the allies prove successful and Henry be crowned king of France, he
pledged himself to cede to Bourbon Dauphiny and his duchy, to surrender
Burgundy, Provence, and Languedoc to the Emperor, and to give Charles the
hand of his daughter, Mary, and with it the heritage of two crowns which
would in the end make him master of the world.

[Sidenote: Resistance to Benevolences]

Though such a project seemed hardly perhaps as possible to Wolsey as to
his master it served to test the sincerity of Charles in his adhesion to
the alliance. But whether they were in earnest or no in proposing it, king
and minister had alike to face the difficulty of an empty treasury. Money
was again needed for action, but to obtain a new grant from Parliament was
impossible, nor was Wolsey eager to meet fresh rebuffs from the spirit of
the Commons or the clergy. He was driven once more to the system of
Benevolences. In every county a tenth was demanded from the laity and a
fourth from the clergy by the royal commissioners. But the demand was met
by a general resistance. The political instinct of the nation discerned as
of old that in the question of self-taxation was involved that of the very
existence of freedom. The clergy put themselves in the forefront of the
opposition, and preached from every pulpit that the commission was
contrary to the liberties of the realm and that the king could take no
man's goods but by process of law. Archbishop Warham, who was pressing the
demand in Kent, was forced to write to the court that "there was sore
grudging and murmuring among the people." "If men should give their goods
by a commission," said the Kentish squires, "then it would be worse than
the taxes of France, and England should be bond, not free." So stirred was
the nation that Wolsey bent to the storm and offered to rely on the
voluntary loans of each subject. But the statute of Richard the Third
which declared all exaction of Benevolences illegal was recalled to
memory; the demand was evaded by London, and the Commissioners were driven
out of Kent. A revolt actually broke out among the weavers of Suffolk; the
men of Cambridge banded for resistance; the Norwich clothiers, thou