The pope, when the commission was appointed for the trial of the cause in England, had given a promise in writing that the commission should not be revoked.  It seemed, therefore, that the legates would be compelled, in spite of themselves, to pronounce sentence; and that the settlement of the question, in one form or other, could not long be delayed.  At the pressure of the crisis in the winter of 1528-9, a document was produced alleged to have been found in Spain, which furnished a pretext for a recall of the engagement, and opening now questions, indefinite and inexhaustible, rendered the passing of a sentence in England impossible.  Unhappily, the weight of the king’s claim (however it had been rested on its true merits in conversation and in letters) had, by the perverse ingenuity of the lawyers, been laid on certain informalities and defects in the original bull of dispensation, which had been granted by Julius II. for the marriage of Henry and Catherine.  At the moment when the legates’ court was about to be opened, a copy of a brief was brought forward, bearing the same date as the bull, exactly meeting the objection.  The authenticity of this brief was open, on its own merits, to grave doubt; and suspicion becomes certainty when we find it was dropped out of the controversy so soon as the immediate object was gained for which it was produced.  But the legates’ hands were instantly tied by it.  The “previous question” of authenticity had necessarily to be tried before they could take another step; and the “original” of the brief being in the hands of the emperor, who refused to send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision.  He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that he did not intend—­of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to the supremacy of the Holy See.

The spring of 1529 was wasted in fruitless efforts to obtain the brief.  At length, in May, the proceedings were commenced; but they were commenced only in form, and were never more than an illusion.  Catherine had been instructed in the course which she was to pursue.  She appealed from the judgment of the legates to that of the pope; and the pope, with the plea of the new feature which had arisen in the case, declared that he could not refuse to revoke his promise.  Having consented to the production of the brief, he had in fact no alternative; nor does it appear what he could have urged in excuse of himself.  He may have suspected the forgery; nay, it is certain that in England he was believed to be privy to it; but he could not ignore an important feature of necessary evidence, especially when pressed upon him by the emperor; and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to admit the authority of a papal commission, and