experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart.
The great Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was
several years in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the
arrears should be immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be
secured to him on the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make
him a further grant of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish
bishoprics. No means was to be spared to divert the hostility of so
dangerous an enemy.[5]

Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large schemes which
he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions Francis I. was
as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were brightening.
Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by creating six
new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition of these
sacred offices.[6] A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its
head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's
defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were
refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the
marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret
projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with
Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with
Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and
probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in
Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's
marriage with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the
discussion of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired
whether it was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate.

Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the "Foreign and Domestic
Calendar of State Papers," doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the
kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the
best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during
subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris,
and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly
appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in
the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various
repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that