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208 amendment in the convocation, by which the grant was voted with this clause in the preamble:—"Of which Church and clergy we acknowledge His Majesty to be the chief protector, the only and supreme lord, and, as far as the law of God will allow, the supreme head." The wedge was introduced; the severance was certain: the perfect accomplishment of it only awaited another opportunity for an easier issue. The northern convocation adopted the same language, and voted a grant of £18,840.

Meantime, every effort had been made to bend the Pope to Henry's view of the case; every opportunity had been seized to that end. Early in 1530 an embassy had been sent to Italy to take advantage of an interview about to be had betwixt the Pope and the Emperor at Bologna. The chief envoy on this occasion was the Earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne Boleyn, accompanied by Stokesley, Bishop of London, Lee, the king's almoner, and Bennet, doctor of laws. To these were added several clergymen, at the head of whom was Cranmer. Henry declared to those about him that this was his last effort, and that, if it failed, he would withdraw from Clement, as a pontiff unfit for his office through ignorance, and still more unfit through simony. On the other hand, the emperor, still pressing the Pope, obtained from him a "breve," forbidding Henry to marry before the publication of his sentence.

Whilst things were in this position, Henry's ambassadors arrived. The Pope still declared he would do all that he possibly could for Henry. But the emperor received them in a very different humour. As soon as the Earl of Wiltshire began to speak, he interrupted him, saying, "Stop, sir! allow your colleagues to speak. You are a party in the cause." The earl, undeterred by this, answered boldly that he stood not there as a father defending the interests of his child, but as a minister representing his sovereign; that if Charles would comply with the wish of Henry, he would be quiet, if not, he would proceed without his permission; and that he now offered him, as the price of his acquiescence, 300,000 crowns, the restoration of the marriage portion of Catherine, and security for her maintenance suitable to her high birth during her life. Charles declared, in reply, that he was not going to sell the honour of his aunt, and that he would support her cause by the means at his disposal. This being the position of things, Cranmer challenged all the learned men of the Papal Court to dispute the question of the king's marriage, but none of them accepted the challenge. The proposal was a very safe one, for the Pope was not likely to permit such a discussion in the very face of the emperor; but it answered Cranmer's object: it highly delighted Henry, who made him ambassador to the emperor; and the Pope, to conciliate Henry, also made him his plenipotentiary in England.

In January, 1531, the brief forbidding Henry to proceed to a marriage with Anne Boleyn, which the Pope had signed, was published by the emperor in Flanders, Henry, to neutralise the effect of this, sent down Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, attended by twelve peers spiritual and temporal, to the House of Commons, to explain all that the king had done towards the discharge of his conscience and the safety of the realm hereafter, in regard to the divorce. Sir Thomas carried thither a box containing the decrees of the universities and the opinions of learned men, which he placed on the table; whereupon Sir Bryan Tuke opened the box, and took out twelve writings sealed, the decrees of the twelve universities, which he read, translated into English. There were, besides, above 100 books and writings, which there was no time to read; and the speaker bade the members, on their return to their several counties and towns, show to all their neighbours that the king had not done these things for his own will and pleasure, but only for the discharge of his conscience and the security of the succession of the realm. Parliament being prorogued, the king, on the 31st of May, sent a deputation of peers to communicate to the queen the decrees of the universities and the dicta of the learned, and to entreat her to quiet the king's conscience by consenting to the divorce. But Catherine was firm as ever. She said:—"I pray God send his grace a quiet conscience; and this shall be your answer—That I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, and by the order of the Holy Church I was to him espoused as his true wife, although not so worthy; and by that point I will abide, till the Court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, have made thereof a determination and final ending." The king was so enraged at this answer that he never saw her again; and in the month of July she was ordered to quit Windsor. "Go where I may," she said, on receiving this harsh command, "I am still his lawful wife, and will pray for him." No woman ever maintained her just rights with more firmness and true dignity than Catherine of Arragon. She retired first to the Moore in Hertfordshire, then to Easthampstead, and finally to Ampthill, where she continued to reside.

After the prorogation of Parliament, Sir Thomas More, who was sincerely attached to the Catholic religion, begged to be permitted to resign the great seal. He saw that a thorough breach with Rome was inevitable, and he desired to have no hand it. Indeed, Sir Thomas had allowed the spirit of the times already too much to influence his nobler nature. He was one of the most learned, witty, and light-hearted of men. In the silence of his closet he had arrived at the most admirable ideas of the rights of conscience, and in his celebrated work, the "Utopia," he had tolerated all religious opinions in his imaginary kingdom. But on being raised to power he forgot the liberality of his sentiments, and was seized with that very persecuting spirit which he had in his writings so entirely condemned. His treatment of one man is peculiarly disgraceful to a writer who knew so much better. This was James Bainham, a gentleman of the Temple, who was accused of the new opinions, and whom More had taken to his own house, where he ordered him to be whipped in his presence, and then sent him to the Tower, and put him to the torture. This unfortunate gentleman was induced by the force of agonies to abjure his opinions; but returning to them, and openly advocating them, was condemned and burnt in Smithfield, a fate which soon became common to those who denied the dogmas of the Church, against which Henry himself was in arms.

Well had it been for More had he sooner retired from a position which so lamentably injured his spirit and his fame. But having made up his mind to it, he descended