Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/194

 of his own hand relaxed his agents could effect but little. The English Parliament was to open again in January. The King's Commissioners at Rome informed the Consistory that if it was decided finally to try the cause at Rome they were to take their leave, and the King would thenceforward regard the Pope as his public enemy. The threat "produced a great impression." The Pope had no wish to be Henry's enemy in order to please the Emperor. Mai and Ortiz told him that the English menaces were but words; he had but to speak and England would submit. The Pope did not believe it, and became again "lax and procrastinating."

The English nobles made a last effort to move Catherine. Lord Sussex, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Lee, Archbishop of York, who had been her warm supporter, waited on her at Moor Park to urge her, if she would not allow the case to be tried at Cambray, to permit it to be settled by a commission of bishops and lawyers. The Pope confessedly was not free to give his own opinion, and English causes could not be ruled by the Emperor. If Catherine had consented, it is by no means certain that Anne Boleyn would have been any more heard of. A love which had waited for five years could not have been unconquerable; and it was possible and even probable in the existing state of opinion that some other arrangement might have been made for the succession. The difficulty rose from Catherine's determination to force the King before a tribunal where the national pride would not permit him to plead. The independence of England was threatened, and