If some lawful means could be discovered by which your Majesty could furnish yourself with male offspring, the emperor could no more justly complain than if the queen were to die and the prospects of the princess were interfered with by a second marriage of an ordinary kind.  To this the pope made no answer.  I cannot tell what your Majesty will think, nor how far this suggestion of the pope would be pleasing to your Majesty.  Nor indeed can I feel sure, in consequence of what he said about the emperor, that he actually would grant the dispensation of which he spoke.  I have thought it right, however, to inform you of what passed."[395]

This letter is undated, but it was written, as appears from internal evidence, some time in the year 1532.[396]

The pope’s language was ambiguous, and the writer did not allow himself to derive from it any favourable augury; but the tone in which the suggestions had been made was by many degrees more favourable than had been heard for a very long time in the quarter from which they came, and the symptoms which it promised of a change of feeling were more than confirmed in the following winter.

Charles was to be at Bologna in the middle of December, where he was to discuss with Clement the situation of Europe, and in particular of Germany, with the desirableness of fulfilling the engagements into which he had entered for a general council.

This was the avowed object of the meeting.  But, however important the question of holding a council was becoming, it was not immediately pressing; and we cannot doubt that the disquiet occasioned by the alliance of England and France was the cause that the conference was held at so inconvenient a season.  The pope left Rome on the 18th of November, having in his train a person who afterwards earned for himself a dark name in English history, Dr. Bonner, then a famous canon lawyer attached to the embassy.  The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable; and Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous account of it to Cromwell.[397] Three wretched weeks the party were upon the road, plunging through mire and water.  They reached Bologna on the 8th of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these movements.  I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of several curious documents.  On the 12th of December the pope and the emperor met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry’s able secretary, who had been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to report the result of his observations.  He had been admitted to repeated interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor’s arrival; and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in which he was placing himself towards the imperial faction.  Bennet’s letter was as follows:—­