to refuse to permit an appeal from it to the pope in person.  We may thank Clement for dispelling a chimera by a simple act of consistency.  The power of the See of Rome in England was a constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that it would consent to be inert.  So long as a legate’s court sat in London, men were able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence was respected; when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one consequence was possible.  If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.

So fell Wolsey’s great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of maintaining the pope’s authority in England under any form.  The people were smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to see the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the arbitration of a foreign prince.  The emperor, not the pope, was the true judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to tolerate longer a national dishonour.

“The great men of the realm,” wrote the legates, “are storming in bitter wrath at our procrastination.  Lords and commons alike complain that they are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to themselves and their fortunes.  And many persons here who would desire to see the pope’s authority in this country diminished or annulled, are speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror."[167]

And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties, when they were informed that the further hearing of the cause was transferred to Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in protest before such a dream of shame.  He was no more the Roman legate, but the English minister.

“If the advocation be passed,” he wrote to Cassalis,[168] “or shall now at any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or excommunication, vel cum invocatione brachii saecularis, whereby the king should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and prerogative royal of the king’s crown, whereunto all the nobles and subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed.  And to say the truth, in so doing the pope should not only show himself the king’s enemy, but also as much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the semblable.  Nor shall it ever be seen that the king’s cause shall be ventilated or decided in any place out of his own realm; but that if his Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all Italy."[169]