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436 the King could reasonably demand. Limiting, like a man of business, the advantages which he had to offer to the present world, the Pope suggested that Henry, in connection with himself, might now become the arbiter of Europe and prescribe terms to the Empire as well as to France. For himself and for his office he said he had no ambition. The honour and the profit should alike be for England. An accession of either to the pontificate might prove its ruin. He lauded the King's early character, his magnanimity, his generous assistance in times past to the Holy See, his devotion to the Catholic faith. Forgetting the Holy League, glossing over the Bull of Deposition as an official form which there had been no thought of enforcing, he ventured to say that for himself he had been Henry's friend from the beginning. He had urged his predecessor to permit the divorce; at Bologna he had laboured to persuade the Emperor to consent to it. He had sent a red hat to the Bishop of Rochester only that he might have the benefit of his assistance at the approaching