Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/428

396 had taken in the matter. What was the consternation of the bishop designate when the Pope announced to him that he had already appointed another person.

The object Clement had in view by thus nullifying his own request is not very clear. It probably arose, in the first place, from pique at the delay of the emperor in acceding to his wishes, and afterwards from a desire to retain so valuable a piece of patronage in his own hands. All remonstrance on the part either of the emperor or the Grand-Master was unavailing, and the dispute remained unsettled until the death of the Pope three years later. His successor, Paul III., anxious to conciliate the emperor, eventually confirmed the appointment to Bosio.

This solution of the affair did not, however, take place till after the death of L’Isle Adam, so that the disappointment he experienced in his attempt to provide for the brother of one who had rendered such great services to the fraternity still remained to embitter his last moments. Another dark cloud which at this time gathered over him was the loss with which the Order was threatened in England through the religious revolution then taking place in that country. Long before Henry VIII. had renounced his allegiance to the Church of Rome he had displayed symptoms of greed against the English langue. The haughty monarch could ill brook that so many broad acres should be held in his own land by a power which yielded him no allegiance, and he had more than once availed himself of the most flimsy pretexts to encroach upon the property of the Hospital. Now, however, he had thrown aside the mask and placed himself at the head of the religious movement which had for years been fermenting within his kingdom, and he soon shewed that he purposed nothing short of the complete spoliation of the langue. His measures to that effect did not receive their final development during the life of L’Isle Adam; still, enough was apparent to leave him full of anxious forebodings for the future.

He was further fated before his death to become the witness of a disturbance within his convent of a nature so serious as almost to endanger the existence of the brotherhood. The quarrel originated in a dispute between one of the secular retainers of the grand-prior of Rome and a young knight of the