Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/125

1534.] The King of England, he said, had waited six years; it was not a great thing for the Papal council to wait six days. The cardinals were divided; but the Spanish party were the strongest, and when the votes were taken carried the day. The die was cast, and the Pope, in spite of himself, his promises, and his conscience, drove at length upon the rocks to which he had been so long drifting. In deference to the opinion of the majority of the cardinals, he pronounced the original marriage to have been valid, the dispensation by which it was permitted to have been legal; and, as a natural consequence, Henry, King of England, should he fail in obedience to this judgment, was declared to be excommunicate from the fellowship of the Church, and to have forfeited the allegiance of his subjects.

Lest the censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the sentence, the Emperor would invade England, and Henry should be deposed. The Imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and great bodies of men paraded the streets with shouts of 'the Empire and Spain.' Already, in their eager expectation, England was a second Netherlands, a captured province under the regency of Catherine or Mary.