Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/469

1540.] and extradition of Reginald Pole; and now other persons, especially a pretender calling himself the White Rose, though with as little Plantagenet blood in him as was in Perkin Warbeck, were residing openly in Paris, circulating the libels against England with which the Catholic presses were teeming. The French Government, not unnaturally, declined to be bound by conditions regarding political offenders, into which they had entered while the contracting parties were alike in communion with Rome. Treason in an Englishman had become respectable; and a Catholic power could not consent to surrender to death or enforced apostasy men whose crime was fidelity to the Church. A formal demand for 'the White Rose' was evaded or refused. The English minister was pressing. Francis was loud and peremptory. The scene between Wyatt and the Emperor in the similar instance of Brancetor all but repeated itself.

A bad spirit simultaneously showed itself on the Marches at Calais and Guisnes. The defensive works at both these places had been largely increased in the three last years. Additions, since the discovery of Botolph's plot, had been made to the garrisons, while in the late summer as many as sixteen hundred men had been employed in cutting trenches and throwing up batteries. The French had stationed a force at Ardes to watch these proceedings, and extend their own defences in proportion; and the boundary line not being