s one.[154]

The Spanish Legate had succeeded no better with Charles, who returned a
peremptory refusal; but so little confidence had the Emperor in the true
Sovereign and Vicar of God that he insisted not merely that the Pope
_should try the case but should try it in his own presence, lest the
Queen's interests should suffer injury_. The request itself indicated a
disposition on the Pope's part to evade his duty. Charles gave him to
understand, in language sufficiently peremptory, that he intended that
duty to be done.[155]

In this direction there was no hope. Catherine had been even more emphatic
with the deputation. After her reply to Norfolk, the bishops and lawyers
took up the word. She always denied that she had been Prince Arthur's
actual wife. She herself on all occasions courted the subject, and was not
afraid of indelicacy. The Church doctors responded. They said she had
slept with Prince Arthur, and the presumptions were against her. She bade
them go plead their presumptions at Rome, where they would have others
than a woman to answer them. She was astonished, she said, to see so many
great people gathered against a lone lady without friends or counsel.

Among the great persons before her she had still some staunch friends.
Anne Boleyn was detested by them all; and those who, like Norfolk, wished
her, for her own sake, to be less uncompromising could not refuse to
admire the gallant spirit of Isabella's daughter. But, alas! the refusal
to allow the cause to be heard in a free city, before an impartial
tribunal, was equivalent to a consciousness that, unless by a court under
the Emperor's control, an unfavourable judgment was to be looked for. They
could not, any one of them, allow their Sovereign to plead where an
Imperial Minister could threaten the lives of uncompliant Cardinals. But,
unless every knightly feeling had been dead in them, they could not have
refused their sympathy. Had the Pope spoken plainly from the first, most
of the Peers would perhaps have stood by the lady before them with voice
and sword. But the Pope had allowed that the King was in the right. He had
drawn back only under compulsion, and even at that moment was only
prevented by fear from deciding on the King's side. Glad as they might
have been had the question never been raised, they could not submit their
Prince to the indignity of a condemnation by a coerced tribunal--a
tribunal which was to be trusted to proceed only, as it now