tes, had cheered
her as she came in, and bade her care for nothing. If women had to decide
the case, said the French Ambassador, the Queen would win. Their voices
availed nothing. She was told that her protest could not be admitted. She
then left the court, was thrice summoned to come back, and, as she
refused, was pronounced contumacious.

For the King to appear as a suitor at Rome was justly regarded as
impossible. Casalis was directed to tell Clement that, being in the
Emperor's hands, he could not be accepted as a judge in the case, and that
sovereign princes were exempted by prerogative from pleading in courts
outside their own dominions. If he admitted the Queen's appeal, he would
lose the devotion of the King and of England to the See Apostolic, and
would destroy Wolsey for ever.[70] Had the Legates been in earnest there
would have been no time to learn whether the appeal was allowed at Rome or
not; they would have gone on and given sentence under their commission. It
appeared as if this was what they intended to do. The court continued
sitting. Catherine being contumacious, there was nothing left to delay the
conclusion. She was in despair; she believed herself betrayed. Mendoza,
who might have comforted her, was gone. She wrote to him that she was lost
unless the Emperor or the Pope interposed. Even Campeggio seemed to be
ignorant how he was to avoid a decision. Campeggio, the French Ambassador
wrote, was already half conquered. If Francis would send a word to him, he
might gather courage to pass sentence, and Henry would be brought to his
knees in gratitude. The very Pope, perhaps, in his heart would not have
been displeased if the Legates had disobeyed the orders which he had
given, and had proceeded to judgment, as he had often desired that they
might. Micer Mai's accounts to Charles of the shifts of the poor old man,
as the accounts from England reached him, are almost pathetic. Pope,
Cardinals, canon lawyers, Mai regarded as equally feeble, if not as
equally treacherous. One reads with wonder the Spaniard's real estimate of
the persons for whose sake and in whose name Charles and Philip were to
paint Europe red with blood.

"Salviati," said Mai, "who, though a great rogue, has not wit enough to
hide his tricks, showed me the minute of a letter they had written to
Campeggio: a more stupid or rascally composition could not have been
concocted in hell."[71] Campeggio was directed in this letter to reveal to