“But if the King’s Majesty,” continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of the difficulty, “if the King’s Majesty and the nobility of England, being persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion respecting this See—­namely, that God has taken from it the key of knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those papal laws which neither the pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only to be committed to the flames.”  “I desired his Holiness,” he adds, “to ponder well this matter."[142]

Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never failed him.  He answered that he was not learned, and “to speak truth, albeit there was a saying in the canon law, that Pontifex habet omnia jura in scrinio pectoris (the pope has all laws locked within his breast), yet God had never given him the key to open that lock.”  He was but “seeking pretexts” for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the Italian campaign of the French in the summer of 1528 was decided.  He had been liberated, or had been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that if detained longer he might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an old ruined castle at Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City still occupied by the Prince of Orange.  In the preceding autumn, immediately after the congress at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by several English noblemen, had led an army across the Alps.  He had defeated the Imperialists in the north of Italy in several minor engagements; and in January his success appeared so probable, that the pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis, that if the French would only approach near enough to enable him to plead compulsion, he would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to conclude the cause.[143] De Lautrec, however, foiled in his desire to bring the Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the battle of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the Alps; and with them all Wolsey’s hopes of realising his dream.  Struck down, not by a visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French general himself, his English friends, and all his army melted away from off the earth.  The pope had been wise in time.  He had committed himself in words and intentions; but he had done nothing which he could not recall.  He obtained his pardon from the emperor by promising to offend no more; and from that moment never again entertained any real thought of concession.  Acting under explicit directions, he made it his object thenceforward to delay and to procrastinate.  Charles had no desire to press matters to extremities.  War had