Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/36

16 untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also, something assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority still saw the necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation, final sentence was to have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed by interdict, excommunication, and the full volume of the Papal thunders. At the close of a month's deliberation they resolved to reserve judgment on the original question, and to confine themselves for the present to revenging the insult to the Pope by 'my Lord of Canterbury.' Both the King and the Archbishop had disobeyed a formal inhibition. On the 12th of July, the Pope issued a brief, declaring Cranmer's judgment to have been illegal, the English process to have been null and void, and the King, by his disobedience, to have incurred, ipso facto, the threatened penalties of excommunication. Of his clemency he suspended these censures till the close of the following September, in order that time might be allowed to restore the respective parties to their old positions: if within that period the parties were not so restored, the censures would fall. This brief was sent into Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the door of a church in Dunkirk.

Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He had been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and Francis must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when the French King advised him to marry, and