Page:History of england froude.djvu/438

416 Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and the scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him, under penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of those injunctions, to restore the Queen to her place, and to abstain thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of the trial. 'Otherwise,' the Pope continued, 'when the said term shall have elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said Anne, to be ipso facto excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such a thought of your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of the Rota an inhibition has been already issued against you; although the act of which you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human and divine, yet the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that once more we do inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the aforesaid Catherine, or from continuing process, in your own courts, of divorce from her. And we do also hereby warn you, that you presume not to contract any new marriage with the said or with any other woman; we declare such marriage, if you still attempt it, to be vain and of none effect, and so to be regarded by all persons in obedience to the Apostolic See.'

An inhibitory mandate was a natural consequence of the conference of Calais, provided that the Pope intended to proceed openly and uprightly; and if it had been