The brief was
issued, bearing the date at which it was drawn, and was transmitted to
Flanders as the nearest point to England for publication.

In removing the Queen from his company without waiting for the decision of
his cause, and cohabiting with a certain Anne, Clement told the King that
he was insulting Divine justice and the Papal authority. He had already
warned him, but his monition had not been respected. Again, therefore, he
exhorted him on pain of excommunication to take Catherine back as his
Queen, and put Anne away within a month of the presentation of the present
letter. If the King still disobeyed, the Pope declared both him and Anne
to be, _ipso facto_, excommunicated at the expiration of the term fixed,
and forbade him to divorce himself by his own authority.[200]

It might seem that the end had now come, and that in a month the King, and
the subjects who continued loyal to him, would incur all the consequences
of the Papal censures. But the proceedings of the Court of Rome were
enveloped in formalities. Conditional excommunications affected the
spiritual status of the persons denounced, but went no further. A second
Bull of Excommunication was still requisite, declaring the King deposed
and his subjects absolved from their allegiance, before the secular arm
could be called in; and this last desperate remedy could not decently be
resorted to, with the approval even of the Catholic opinion of Europe,
until it had been decided whether Catherine was really legal queen. The
enthusiastic Ortiz, however, believed that judgment on "the principal
cause" would now be immediately given, and that the victory was won. He
enclosed to the Empress a letter from Catherine to him, "to be preserved
as a relic, since she would one day be canonised." "May God inspire the
King of England," he said, "to acknowledge the error into which the Enemy
of Mankind has led him, and amend his past conduct; otherwise it must
follow that his disobedience to the Pope's injunction and his infidelity
to God once proved, he will be deprived of his kingdom and the execution
of the sentence committed to his Imperial Majesty. This done, all those in
England who fear God will rise in arms, and the King will be punished as
he deserves, the present brief operating as a formal sentence against him.
On the main cause, there being no one in Rome to answer for the opposite
party, sentence cannot long be delayed."[201]

Ortiz was too sanguine, and th