She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to try the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened by her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an equinoctial storm.  Many motives combined to dissuade him from further hesitation.  Six years of trifling must have convinced him that by decisive action alone he could force the pope to a conclusion.  He was growing old, and the exigencies of the succession, rendered doubly pressing by the long agitation, required immediate resolution.  He was himself satisfied that he was at liberty to marry whom he pleased and when he pleased, his relationship to Catherine, according to his recent convictions, being such as had rendered his connection with her from the beginning invalid and void.  His own inclinations and the interests of the nation pointed to the same course.  The King of France had advised it.  Even the pope himself, at the outset of the discussion, had advised it also.  “Marry freely,” the pope had said; “fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire.”  He had forborne to take the pope at his word; he had hoped that the justice of his demands might open a less violent way to him; and he had shrunk from a step which might throw even a causeless shadow over the legitimacy of the offspring for which he longed.  The case was now changed; no other alternative seemed to be open to his choice, and it was necessary to bring the matter to a close once and for all.

But Henry, as he said himself, was past the age when passion or appetite would be likely to move him, and having waited so many years, he could afford to wait a little longer, till the effects of the Calais conferences upon the pope should have had time to show themselves.  In December, Clement was to meet the emperor at Bologna.  In the month following, it might be hoped that he would meet Francis at Marseilles or Avignon, and from their interview would be seen conclusively the future attitude of the papal and imperial courts.  Experience of the past forbade anything like sanguine expectation; yet it was not impossible that the pope might be compelled at last to yield the required concessions.  The terms of Henry’s understanding with Francis were not perhaps made public, but he was allowed to dictate the language which the French cardinals were to make use of in the consistory;[394] and the reception of Anne Boleyn by the French king was equivalent to the most emphatic declaration that if the censures of the church were attempted in defence of Catherine, the enforcement of them would be resisted by the combined arms of France and England.