Three days passed, and then the English agent was informed that he might again present himself.  The pope had recovered his calmness.  When he had time to collect himself, Clement could speak well and with dignity; and if we could forget that his conduct was substantially unjust, and that in his conscience he knew it to be unjust, he would almost persuade us to believe him honest.  “He said,” wrote Bonner, “that his mind towards your Highness always had been to minister justice, and to do pleasure to you; albeit it hath not been so taken:  and he never unjustly grieved your Grace that he knoweth, nor intendeth hereafter to do.  As concerning the appeal, he said that, forasmuch as there was a constitution of Pope Pius, his predecessor, that did condemn and reprove all such appeals, he did therefore reject your Grace’s appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and unlawful.”  As touching the council, he said generally, that he would do his best that it should meet; but it was to be understood that the calling a general council belonged to him, and not to the King of England.

The audience ended, and Bonner left the pope convinced that he intended, on his return to Rome, to execute the censures and continue the process without delay.  That the sentence which he would pronounce would be against the king appeared equally certain.

It appeared certain, yet after all no certain conclusion is possible.  Francis I., though not choosing to quarrel with the see of Rome to do a pleasure to Henry, was anxious to please his ally to the extent of his convenience; at any rate, he would not have gratuitously deceived him; and still less would he have been party to an act of deliberate treachery.  When Bonner was gone he had a last interview with the pope, in which he urged upon him the necessity of complying with Henry’s demands; and the pope on this occasion said that he was satisfied that the King of England was right; that his cause was good; and that he had only to acknowledge the papal jurisdiction by some formal act, to find sentence immediately pronounced in his favour.  Except for his precipitation, and his refusal to depute a proxy to plead for him, his wishes would have been complied with long before.  In the existing posture of affairs, and after the measures which had been passed in England with respect to the see of Rome, he himself, the pope said, could not make advances without some kind of submission; but a single act of acknowledgment was all which he required.[630]

Extraordinary as it must seem, the pope certainly bound himself by this engagement:  and who can tell with what intention?  To believe him sincere and to believe him false seems equally impossible.  If he was persuaded that Henry’s cause was good, why did he in the following year pronounce finally for Catherine? why had he imperilled so needlessly the interests of the papacy in England? why had his conduct from the beginning pointed steadily to the conclusion at which he at last arrived? and why throughout