it the certainty that the expected concessions were delusive.  Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy made further delay impossible.  D’Inteville, who had succeeded Chastillon as French ambassador, once more attempted to interfere, but in vain.  Henry told him he could not help himself, the pope forced him to the course which he was pursuing, by the answer which he had been pleased to issue; and he could only encounter enmity with its own weapons.  “The archbishop,” d’Inteville wrote to Francis, “will try the question, and will give judgment.  I entreated the king to wait till the conference at Nice, but he would not consent.  I prayed him to keep the sentence secret till the pope had seen your Majesty; he replied it was impossible."[418]

Thus the statute became law which transferred to the English courts of law the power so long claimed and exercised by the Roman see.  There are two aspects under which it may be regarded, as there were two objects for which it was passed.  Considered as a national act, few persons will now deny that it was as just in itself as it was politically desirable.  If the pope had no jurisdiction over English subjects, it was well that he should be known to have none; if he had, it was equally well that such jurisdiction should cease.  The question was not of communion between the English and Roman churches, which might or might not continue, but which this act would not affect.  The pope might still retain his rights of episcopal precedency, whatever those might be, with all the privileges attached to it.  The parliament merely declared that he possessed no right of interference in domestic disputes affecting persons and property.

But the act had a special as well as a national bearing, and here it is less easy to arrive at a just conclusion.  It destroyed the validity of Queen Catherine’s appeal; it placed a legal power in the hands of the English judges to proceed to pass sentence upon the divorce; and it is open to the censure which we ever feel entitled to pass upon a measure enacted to meet the particular position of a particular person.  When embarrassments have arisen from unforeseen causes, we have a right to legislate to prevent a repetition of those embarrassments.  Our instincts tell us that no legislation should be retrospective, and should affect only positions which have been entered into with a full knowledge at the time of the condition of the laws.

The statute endeavours to avoid the difficulty by its declaratory form; but again this is unsatisfactory; for that the pope possessed some authority was substantially acknowledged in every application which was made to him; and when Catherine had married under a papal dispensation, it was a strange thing to turn upon her, and to say, not only that the dispensation in the particular instance had been unlawfully granted, but that the pope had no jurisdiction in the matter by the laws of the land which she had entered.