Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/454

434 consider it to appear to purchase English submission by setting aside the canons of the Church, he must consent to the English terms, or there was no hope whatever that his supremacy would be recognized. If in accepting these terms he would agree to a humiliating reconciliation, only those who objected on doctrinal grounds to the Papal religion were inclined to persist in refusing a return of his friendship. The dream of an independent orthodox Anglicanism which had once found favour with Gardiner was fading away. The indifferent and the orthodox alike desired to put an end to spiritual anarchy; and the excommunication, though lying lightly on the people, and despised even by the Catholic powers, had furnished, and might furnish, a pretext for inconvenient combinations. Singularity of position, where there was no especial cause for it, was always to be avoided.

These influences would have been insufficient to have brought the English of themselves to seek for a reunion. They were enough to induce them to accept it with indifference when offered them on their own conditions, or to affect for a time an outward appearance of acquiescence.

Philip, therefore, consulted Renard, and Charles invited Pole to Brussels. Renard, to whom politics were all-important, and religion useful in its place, but inconvenient when pushed into prominence, adhered to his old opinion. He advised the 'King to write privately to the Pope, telling him that he had already so many embarrassments on his hands that he could not afford