Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/380

 Sforza, Duke of Milan and husband of Christina of Denmark, died childless on the 24th of October. Milan was the special subject of difference between France and the Empire. The dispute had been suspended while the Duke was alive. His death reopened the question, and the war long looked for for the Milan succession became inevitable and immediately imminent.

The entire face of things was now changed. Francis had, perhaps, never seriously meant to join in executing the Papal sentence against England; but he had intended to encourage the Emperor to try, that he might fish himself afterwards in the troubled waters, and probably snatch at Calais. He now required Henry for a friend again, and the old difficulties and the old jealousies were revived in the usual form. Both the great Catholic Powers desired the suspension of the censures. The Emperor was again unwilling to act as the Pope's champion while he was uncertain of the French King. Francis wished to recover his position as Henry's defender. The Pope was an Italian prince as well as sovereign of the Church, and his secular interest was thought to be more French than Imperial.

No sooner was Sforza gone than the Cardinal Du Bellay and the Bishop of Mâcon were despatched from Paris to see and talk with Paul. They found him still too absorbed in the English question to attend to anything besides. He was in the high exalted mood of Gregory VII., imagining that he was about to reassert the ancient Papal prerogative, and again dispose of kingdoms.

The Pope, wrote the French Commissioners, having heard that there was famine and plague in England, had made up his mind to act, and was incredibly