The language of this remarkable document[332] was as follows:—­

“To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the most invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of France, Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great and weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it may be brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great and earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented hitherto to expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness’s hands; we have been unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing that this kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril through the unseasonable delay of sentence.  His Majesty, who is our head, and by consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject members by a just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness entreated your Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain:  we are by the greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and distinctly by these our letters most humbly to demand a speedy determination.  There ought, indeed, to have been no need of this request on our part.  The justice of the cause itself, approved to be just by the sentence of so many learned men, by the suffrage of the most famous universities in England, France, and Italy, should have sufficed alone to have induced your Holiness to confirm the sentence given by others; especially when the interests of a king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of the apostolic see.  This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion.  Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as it is beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our complaints.

“For what a misfortune is this,—­that a sentence which our own two universities, which the University of Paris, and many other universities in France, which men of the highest learning and probity everywhere, at home and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen, that such sentence, we say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by a prince to whom that see owes its present existence.  Amidst the