of his order in England.  Nor can it be said for him that the case was one in which it was unusually difficult to be virtuous.  Justice, wounded dignity, and the interests of the See pointed alike to the same course.  Queen Catherine’s relationship to the emperor could not have recommended her to the tenderness of the pope, and the policy of assenting to an act which would infallibly alienate Henry from Charles, and therefore attach him to the Roman interests, did not require the eloquence of Wolsey to make it intelligible.  If, because he was in the emperor’s power, he therefore feared the personal consequences to himself, his cowardice of itself disqualified him to sit as a judge.

It does not fall within my present purpose to detail the first stages of the proceedings which followed.  In substance they are well known to all readers of English history, and may be understood without difficulty as soon as we possess the clue to the conduct of Wolsey.  I shall, however, in a few pages briefly epitomise what passed.

At the outset of the negotiation, the pope, although he would take no positive steps, was all, in words, which he was expected to be.  Neither he nor the cardinals refused to acknowledge the dangers which threatened the country.  He discussed freely the position of the different parties, the probabilities of a disputed succession, and the various claimants who would present themselves, if the king died without an heir of undisputed legitimacy.[135] Gardiner writes to Wolsey,[136] “We did even more inculcate what speed and celerity the thing required, and what danger it was to the realm to have this matter hang in suspense.  His Holiness confessed the same, and thereupon began to reckon what divers titles might be pretended by the King of Scots and others, and granted that, without an heir male, with provision to be made by consent of the state for his succession, and unless that what shall be done herein be established in such fashion as nothing may hereafter be objected thereto, the realm was like to come to dissolution.”

In stronger language the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna declared that “he knew the gyze of England as well as few men did, and if the king should die without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred thousand men’s lives.  Wherefore he thought, supposing his Grace should have no more children by the queen, and that by taking of another wife he might have heirs male, the bringing to pass that matter, and by that to avoid the mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."[137] Whatever doubt their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with Catherine was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about the national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had been free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to doubt that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to Henry to marry a second wife—­his