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 firm. He had there ordered Henry to take Catherine back under penalty of excommunication. The last, though so hardly extracted from him, was meagre and insignificant. The King, when it was presented, merely laughed at it. "The Pope," he said, "complains that I have sent the Queen away. If his Holiness considers her as my wife, the right of punishing her for the rudeness of her behaviour belongs to me and not to him."

Ortiz, finding it hopeless to expect a decision on the marriage itself from the Pope, demanded excommunication on the plea of disobedience to the Bologna brief. He had succeeded, or thought he had succeeded, in bringing the Pope to the point. The excommunication was drawn up, "but when it was to be engrossed and sealed the enemy of mankind prevented its completion in a manner only known to God." Ortiz continued to urge. The document could be sent secretly to the Emperor, to be used at his discretion. "If the Emperor thought fit to issue it, bearing, as it did, God's authority, God in such cases would infallibly send his terrors upon earth and provide that no ill should come of it." The Pope was less certain that God would act as Ortiz undertook for him, and continued to offend the Lord by delay. In vain Catherine's representative railed at him, in vain told him that he would commit a great sin and offence against God if he did not excommunicate a King who was, in mortal sin, keeping a mistress at his Court. The Pope rationally answered that there was no evidence of mortal sin. "It was the custom in England for Princes to converse intimately with ladies. He could not prove that, in the present case, there was