in its troubled state, these people will be
glad of any excuse to prolong the settlement." January came, when the
English Parliament was to meet, and the note was still the same. "The Pope
says," wrote Mai, "that we must not press the English too hard. I have
exhausted all that I could say without a rupture. I told him he was
discrediting the Queen's case and your Majesty's authority. I made him
understand that I should be obliged to apply elsewhere for the justice
that was denied me at Rome. He owns that I am right, but Consistory
follows Consistory and more delays are allowed. We can but press on as we
have always done, and urge your Majesty's displeasure."[170]

If a sentence could not be had, Ortiz insisted on the issue of another
minatory brief. Anne Boleyn must be sent from the court. The King must be
made to confess his errors. The Pope assented; said loudly that he would
do justice; though England and France should revolt from the Holy See in
consequence, a brief should go, and, if it was disobeyed, he would proceed
to excommunicate: "the Kings of England and France were so bound together
that if he lost one he lost both, but he would venture notwithstanding."
But like the Cardinals who condemned Giordano Bruno, Clement was more
afraid of passing judgment than Henry of hearing it passed. The brief was
written and was sent, but it contained nothing but mild
expostulation.[171] All the distractions of the world were laid at the
door of the well-meaning, uncertain, wavering Clement. La Pommeraye, the
French Ambassador in London, said (Chapuys vouches for the words) that
"nothing could have been so easy as to bring all Christian Princes to
agree had not that devil of a Pope embroiled and sown dissension through
Christendom."[172]

In England alone was to be found clear purpose and steadiness of action.
The divorce in England was an important feature in the quarrel with the
Papacy, but it was but a single element in the great stream of
Reformation, and the main anxiety of King and people was not fixed on
Catherine, but on the mighty changes which were rushing forward. When a
Parliament was first summoned, on the fall of Wolsey, the Queen had
assumed that it was called for nothing else but to empower the King to
separate from her. So she thought at the beginning, so she continued to
think. Yet session had followed session, and the Legislature had found
other work to deal with. They had manacled the wrists of her frie