emand for an immediate
sentence, and consent that the cause should be tried in a neutral place;
while the Pope, through his Legate in Spain, made a similar proposition to
Charles. The Queen heard that they were coming, and prepared for them by
causing several "masses of the Holy Ghost" to be said, that she might be
enlightened how to answer. The delegates arrived shortly after the masses
were completed, the two Dukes, Lord Exeter, Earls, Barons, Bishops, and
canon lawyers, thirty of them in all. Norfolk spoke for the rest. He said
that the King had been treated with contempt and vituperation by the Pope
on her account; he had been cited to appear personally at Rome--a measure
never before enforced by any pope against an English king. He could not
go; he could not leave his kingdom--nor could the dispute be settled by
the Pope's insistence on it. A fitter place and fitter judges must be
chosen by the mutual consent of the parties, or she would be the cause of
trouble and scandal to them and their posterity. The Duke entreated her to
consider the consequences of refusal--to remember the many good services
which the King had rendered to her father and to the Emperor, and to allow
the constitution of some other court before which the King could plead.

In itself the demand was reasonable. It was impossible for a king of
England to plead before the Pope, in the power, as he was, of the Emperor,
who was himself a party interested in the dispute. A neutral place might
have been easily found. Neutral judges might be less easily procurable;
but none could be less fit than his Holiness. The Queen, however, replied
stoutly as ever that her cause should be judged by the Pope and by no one
else; not that she expected any favour at his hands; so far the Pope had
shown himself so partial to the King that more could not be asked of him;
she, and not the King, had cause to complain of his Holiness; but the Pope
held the place and had the power of God upon earth, and was the image of
eternal truth. To him, and only to him, she remitted her case. If trouble
came, it would be the work of others, not of her. She allowed that in past
times the King had assisted her relations. The Emperor had not denied it,
and was the King's true friend. With a scornful allusion to the Supremum
Caput, she said, the King might be Lord and Master in temporal matters,
but the Pope was the true Sovereign and Vicar of God in matters
spiritual, of which matrimony wa