ath, who
was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal of the arrival
there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent had spoken to
the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that there would
be difficulties about it.[1] The "blessed divorce"--_benedictum divorcium_
the Bishop calls it--had been already under consideration at Rome. The
difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the time
obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably
referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the
Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released
at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had
reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages
for the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half
German, remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of
Italy; and Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury
which the world believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines
of the New World, seemed advancing to universal empire.

France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary enemy of
England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of
Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established
alliance. She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as a
link in the confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times
were changing. Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through
English influence; but Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger
to Europe than France had been. The Italian princes were too weak to
resist the conqueror of Pavia. Italy once conquered, the Papacy would
become a dependency of the empire, and, with Charles's German subjects in
open revolt against it, the Church would lose its authority, and the
organisation of the Catholic world would fall into hopeless decrepitude.
So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of English ministers. He
believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the best defence of order
and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a change of partners.
England held the balance between the great rival powers. If the English
alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the Emperor could
be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised. Wolsey was
utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an u