“The morning after,” Chastillon wrote, “his Majesty sent for me and desired me to repeat my words before the council.  I obeyed; but the majority declared, that there was nothing in them to act upon, and that the king must not put himself in subjection.  His Majesty himself, too, I found less warm than in his preceding conversation.  I begged the council to be patient.  I said everything that I could think of likely to weigh with the king, I promised him a sentence from our Holy Father declaring his first marriage null, his present marriage good.  I urged him on all grounds, public and private, to avoid a rupture with the Holy See.  Such a sentence, I said, would be the best security for the queen, and the safest guarantee for the unopposed succession of her offspring.  If the marriage was confirmed by the Holy Father’s authority, the queen’s enemies would lose the only ground where they could make a stand.  The peace of the realm was now menaced.  The emperor talked loudly and made large preparations.  Let the king be allied with France, and through France with the Holy See, and the emperor could do him no harm.  Thus I said my proposals were for the benefit of the realm of his Majesty, and of the children who might be born to him.  The king would act more prudently both for his own interest, and for the interest of his children, in securing himself, than in running a risk of creating universal confusion; and, besides, he owed something to the king his brother, who had worked so long and so hard for him.

“After some further conversation, his Majesty took me aside into a garden, where he told me that for himself he agreed in what I had said; but he begged me to keep his confidence secret.  He fears, I think, to appear to condescend too easily.

“He will not, however, publish the acts of parliament till he sees what is done at Rome.  The vast sums of money which used to be sent out of the country will go no longer; but in other respects he will be glad to return to good terms.  He will send the excusator when he hears again from M. de Paris; and for myself, I think, that although the whole country is in a blaze against the pope, yet with the good will and assistance of the king, the Holy Father will be reinstated in the greater part of his prerogatives.”

But the hope that the pope would yield proved again delusive.  Henry wrote to him himself in the spirit of his conversation with Chastillon.  His letter was presented by Cardinal Tournon, and Clement said all that could be said in acknowledgment without making the one vital concession.  But whenever it was put before him that the cause must be heard and decided in England and in no other place, he talked in the old language of uncertainty and impossibilities;[417] and Henry learning at the same time that a correspondence was going forward between Clement and Francis, with the secrets of which he was not made acquainted, went forward upon his own way.  April brought with