[390] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc.

[391] Note of the Revelations of Eliz.  Barton:  Rolls House MS. Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 17.

The intention was really perhaps what the nun said.  An agent of the government at Brussels, who was watching the conference, reported on the 12th of November:—­“The King of England did really cross with the intention of marrying; but, happily for the emperor, the ceremony is postponed.  Of other secrets, my informant has learned thus much.  They have resolved to demand as the portion of the Queen of France, Artois, Tournay, and part of Burgundy.  They have also sent two cardinals to Rome to require the Pope to relinquish the tenths, which they have begun to levy for themselves.  If his Holiness refuse, the King of England will simply appropriate them throughout his dominions.  Captain ——­ heard this from the king’s proctor at Rome, who has been with him at Calais, and from an Italian named Jeronymo, whom the Lady Anne has roughly handled for managing her business badly.  She trusted that she would have been married in September.

“The proctor told her the Pope delayed sentence for fear of the Emperor.  The two kings, when they heard this, despatched the cardinals to quicken his movements; and the demand for the tenths is thought to have been invented to frighten him.

“They are afraid that the Emperor may force his Holiness into giving sentence before the cardinals arrive.  Jeronymo has been therefore sent forward by post to give him notice of their approach, and to require him to make no decision till they have spoken with him.”—­The Pilgrim, p. 89.

[392] 25 Hen.  VIII. cap. 12.

[393] Revelations of Eliz.  Barton:  Rolls House MS.

[394] State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 435, 468.

[395] Letter from ——­, containing an account of an interview with his Holiness:  Rolls House MS.

[396] This proposal was originally the king’s (see chapter 2), but it had been dropped because one of the conditions of it had been Catherine’s “entrance into religion.”  The pope, however, had not lost sight of the alternative, as one of which, in case of extremity, he might avail himself; and, in 1530, in a short interval of relaxation, he had definitely offered the king a dispensation to have two wives, at the instigation, curiously, of the imperialists.  The following letter was written on that occasion to the king by Sir Gregory Cassalis:—­

Serenissime et potentissime domine rex, domine mi supreme humillima commendatione premissa, salutem et felicitatem.  Superioribus diebus Pontifex secreto, veluti rem quam magni faceret, mihi proposuit conditionem hujusmodi; concedi posse vestrae majestati, ut duas uxores habeat; cui dixi nolle me provinciam suscipere ea de re scribendi, ob eam causam quod ignorarem an inde vestrae conscientiae satisfieri posset quam vestra majestas imprimis exonerare cupit.  Cur