Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/94

76 worst came, the King would be made conscious of his duties.

In the middle of October the Legate arrived. He had been ill in earnest from gout and was still suffering. He had to rest two days in Calais before he could face the Channel. The passage was wild. A deputation of Peers and Bishops waited to receive him at Dover. Respectful demonstrations had been prepared at the towns through which he was to pass, and a state ceremonial was to accompany his entrance into London. But he was, or pretended to be, too sick to allow himself to be seen. He was eight days on the road from the coast, and on reaching his destination he was carried privately in a state barge to the house provided for his residence. Wolsey called the next morning. The King was absent, but returned two days later to the Bridewell palace. There Campeggio waited on him, accompanied by Wolsey. The weather continued to frown. "I wish," wrote Gerardo Molza to the Marchioness of Mantua, "that you could have seen the two Cardinals abreast, one on his mule, the other carried in his chair, the rain falling fast so that we were all drenched." The King, simple man, believed that the documents which he held secured him. The Pope in sending the Legate had acted in the teeth of the Emperor's prohibition, and no one guessed how the affair had been soothed down. The farce was well played, and the language used was what Henry expected. Messer Floriano, one of Campeggio's suit, made a grand oration, setting out the storming of Rome, the perils of the Church, and the misery of Italy, with moving eloquence. The crowd was so dense in the hall of audience that some of the Italians