to Henry, from Paris, Feb. 22.  But this was scarcely a complete account of the transaction; it was an account only of so much of it as the French king was pleased to communicate.  The emperor was urgent for a council.  The pope, feeling the difficulty either of excluding or admitting the Protestant representatives, was afraid of consenting to it, and equally afraid of refusing.  The meeting proposed to Francis was for the discussion of this difficulty; and Francis, in return, proposed that the great Powers, Henry included, should hold an interview, and arrange beforehand the conclusions at which the council should arrive.  This naive suggestion was waived by Charles, apparently on grounds of religion.  LORD HERBERT, Kennet’s Edit. p. 167.

[413] The emperor’s answer touching this interview is come, and is, in effect, that if the pope shall judge the said interview to be for the wealth and quietness of Christendom, he will not be seen to dissuade his Holiness from the same; but he desired him to remember what he showed to his Holiness when he was with the same, at what time his Holiness offered himself for the commonwealth to go to any place to speak with the French king.—­Bennet to Henry VIII.; State Papers, vol. vii. p. 464.

[414] The estrapade was an infernal machine introduced by Francis into Paris for the better correction of heresy.  The offender was slung by a chain over a fire, and by means of a crane was dipped up and down into the flame, the torture being thus prolonged for an indefinite time.  Francis was occasionally present in person at these exhibitions, the executioner waiting his arrival before commencing the spectacle.

[415] 24 Hen.  VIII. cap. 13.

[416] 24 Hen.  VIII. cap. 12

[417] State Papers, vol. vii. p. 441.

[418] D’Inteville to Francis the First:  MS. Bibliotheque Imperial, Paris—­Pilgrim, p. 92.

[419] 24 Hen.  VIII. cap. 12.

[420] He had been selected as Warham’s successor; and had been consecrated on the 30th of March, 1533.  On the occasion of the ceremony when the usual oath to the Pope was presented to him, he took it with a declaration that his first duty and first obedience was to the crown and laws of his own country.  It is idle trifling, to build up, as too many writers have attempted to do, a charge of insincerity upon an action which was forced upon him by the existing relation between England and Rome.  The Act of Appeals was the law of the land.  The separation from communion with the papacy was a contingency which there was still a hope might be avoided.  Such a protest as Cranmer made was therefore the easiest solution of the difficulty.  See it in STRYPE’S Cranmer, Appendix, p. 683.

[421] BURNET, Vol. iii. pp. 122-3

[422] Bennet to Henry VIII.:  State Papers, vol. vii. p. 402.  Sir Gregory Cassalis to the same:  Rolls House MS.

[423] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 123.