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1533.] matters; the Pope making good-natured inquiries about Bennet, and speaking warmly and kindly of him.

'Presently,' Bonner continues, 'falling out of that, he said that he marvelled your Highness would use his Holiness after such sort as it appears ye did. I said that your Highness no less did marvel that his Holiness, having found so much benevolence and kindness at your hands in all times past, would for acquittal show such unkindness as of late he did. And here we entered in communication upon two points: one was that his Holiness, having committed in times past, and in most ample form, the cause into the realm, promising not to revoke the said commission, and over that, to confirm the process and sentence of the commissaries, should not at the point of sentence have advoked the cause, retaining it at Rome—forasmuch as Rome was a place whither your Highness could not, ne yet ought, personally to come unto, and also was not bound to send thither your proctor. The second point was, that your Highnesses cause being, in the opinion of the best learned men in Christendom, approved good and just, and so [in] many ways known unto his Holiness, the same should not so long have retained it in his hands without judgment.

'His Holiness answering the same, as touching the first point, said that if the Queen (meaning the late wife of Prince Arthur, calling her always in his conversation the Queen) had not given an oath refusing the judges as suspect, he would not have advoked the matter at all, but been content that it should have been determined and ended in your realm. But seeing she gave that