nnatural one. Charles, busy
with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with suspicious
forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were
disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by
plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and
ravished nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been
as little spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was
another inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's
master meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to
Clement as perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded,
and desperate condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution
was possible. To the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering
to its fall, and Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might
precipitate the catastrophe. To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal
offence to the Spanish nation by agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of
Aragon was to ask him to sign his death-warrant. No wonder, therefore,
that he found difficulties. Yet it was to France and England that Clement
had to look for help in his extremities. The divorce perhaps had as yet
been no more than a suggestion, a part of a policy which was still in its
infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more convenient season. Meantime
he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally
he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See
in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he
said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been
devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of
Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The
Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last,
but they would open them too late. So piteous was the entreaty that Henry
when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears.[2] Clement had not been
idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to oppose Bourbon;
he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend himself. He was
called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war with the most
Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless the Western
powers interfered the end would come.

If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with France. The
change of poli