Lest the censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be deposed.[705] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and great bodies of men paraded the streets with shouts of “the Empire and Spain."[706] Already, in their eager expectation, England was a second Netherlands, a captured province under the regency of Catherine or Mary.

Two days later, the courier arrived.  The pope, at the entreaties of the Bishop of Paris, re-assembled the consistory, to consider whether the steps which had been taken should be undone.  They sat debating all night, and the result was nothing.  No dependence could be placed on the cardinals, Du Bellay said, for they spoke one way, and voted another.[707]

Thus all was over.  In a scene of general helplessness the long drama closed, and, what we call accident, for want of some better word, cut the knot at last over which human incapacity had so vainly laboured.  The Bishop of Paris retired from Rome in despair.  On his way back, he met the English commissioners at Bologna, and told them that their errand was hopeless, and that they need not proceed.  “When we asked him,” wrote Sir Edward Karne to the king, “the cause of such hasty process, he made answer that the imperialists at Rome had strengthened themselves in such a manner, that they coacted the said Bishop of Rome to give sentence contrary to his own mind, and the expectation of himself and of the French king.  He showed us also that the Lady Princess Dowager sent lately, in the month of March past, letters to the Bishop of Rome, and also to her proctors, whereby the Bishop of Rome was much moved for her part.  The imperials, before the sentence was given, promised, in the emperor’s behalf, that he would be the executor of the sentence."[708]

This is all which we are able to say of the immediate catastrophe which decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world.  The deep impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember that, whatever may have been the explanation of his conduct, the pope, in the concluding passage of his connection with this country, furnished the most signal justification which was ever given for the revolt from an abused authority.  The supreme judge in Christendom had for six years trifled with justice, out of fear of an earthly prince; he concluded these years with uniting the extreme of folly with the extreme of improbity, and pronounced a sentence, willingly or unwillingly, which he had acknowledged to be unjust.