Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/242

226 still refractory, the Pope 'declared that he would strip him of the dignity of Cardinal.' Louis though in favour of the acceptation of the Bull, resented, however, this threatened exercise of the Pope's authority against the Archbishop of Paris, and would not permit the Brief to have public course. But this did not quash the dispute, which became more and more envenomed, until, in November 1716, the Pope coerced the Cardinals into subscribing a letter he had himself drawn up, whereby they professed to exhort their colleague Noailles to submit, and which was accompanied by a Brief, directed to the Regent Orleans, wherein the Pope declared that if this appeal were disregarded, no further mercy could be expected. This Brief the clergy were inhibited by royal veto from receiving, and in March 1717 four Bishops lodged with the Sorbonne a formal appeal, in the matter of the Bull Unigenitus, to a future General Council, and this appeal Cardinal Noailles approved as quite canonical, although he himself still abstained from the same step. But when it seemed certain that in Rome the proceeding of the Bishops was about to be censured, Noailles himself lodged, though for a time secretly, a similar appeal to the Pope, melius informandus, and to a General Council in the matter of the Bull, and of the Pope's refusal to explain it. Manifestly here was an act