King
might perhaps reconsider his position may not have been wholly groundless.

The action of the Rota, pressed through by Davalos, had taken Henry by
surprise. He had not expected that the Pope would give a distinct judgment
against him. He had been equally disappointed in the support which he
expected from Francis. That he should now hesitate for an instant was
natural and inevitable; but the irresolution, if real, did not last.
Norfolk wrote to the King from Paris "to care nothing for the Pope:" there
were men "enough at his side in England to defend his right with the
sword."[241] Henry appealed to a General Council, when a Council could be
held which should be more than a Papal delegacy. The revenues of the
English sees which were occupied by Campeggio and Ghinucci he
sequestrated, as a sign of the abandonment of a detestable system.

His own mind, meanwhile, was fastened on the approaching confinement of
Anne. With the birth of a male heir to the Crown he knew that his
difficulties would vanish. Nurses and doctors had assured him of a son,
and the event was expected both by him and by others with passionate
expectation. A Prince of Wales would quiet the national uncertainty. It
would be the answer of Heaven to Pope and Emperor, and a Divine sanction
of his revolt. There is danger in interpreting Providence before the
event. If the anticipation is disappointed the weight of the sentence may
be thrown into the opposing scale.

To the bitter "mortification of the King and the Lady, to the reproach of
physicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and sorceresses who affirmed that the
child would be a male,"[242] to the delight of Chapuys and the perplexity
of a large section of the English people who were waiting for Providence
to speak, on the 7th of September the girl who was afterwards to be Queen
Elizabeth was brought into the world.

This was the worst blow which Henry had received. He was less given to
superstition than most of his subjects, but there had been too much of
appeals to Heaven through the whole of the controversy. The need of a male
heir had been paraded before Christendom as the ground of his action. He
had already discovered that Anne was not what his blindness to her faults
had allowed him to believe; he was fond of the Princess Mary, and Anne had
threatened to make a waiting-maid of her. The new Queen had made herself
detested in the Court by her insolence; there had been "lover's
quarrels,"[243] from