before her with a long face, saying his mother was ill in Spain, and ask for leave to go and see her. Catharine was to set her face against his going, as a man she could not spare; counting on the King's good nature, when he heard the tale of Felipo's affection for his dying mother, to back her servant's prayer. In that way, it was thought, Felipo might obtain a passport.

3. Act the first began. Felipo asked the Queen for leave to go and see his mother on her death-bed. Catharine refused his suit, and begged the King and Cardinal not to let him go. Henry, believing she was at her tricks, put on a mask and played a part. Feigning to receive Felipo's reason as the true one, he besought the Queen to spare him for a little while. She spoke of pirates and the perils of a voyage to Spain. To ease her mind, he promised that in case her man was taken captive, he would provide his ransom. Act the second now began. Felipo, on the eve of starting, was invited to the King's closet, where Henry told him of his promise to the Queen, and offered him a pass through France. Felipo said he had his papers already signed. Henry asked to see them, so that he might know the route. Felipo showed his passport, marked for Calais, and the usual route from Paris to the Pyrenees. Henry was content, and Felipo departed on his journey. Act the third began. Henry was in his closet with his secretary, who was copying out instructions for the Cardinal, then at Calais. Wolsey was to keep an eye on Felipo, whom he must cause to be traced, pursued, and caught. If he took the road through

France, he was to be entrapped and kept a prisoner in some obscure place in such a way that no one should suspect the cause of his arrest. Act the fourth began. Felipo was at Dover, waiting for a boat; Wolsey at Calais, waiting for Felipo. A boat put off the shore, but not for Calais; and a fortnight later, while the Cardinal's men were watching in the port of Calais, act the fifth began by Felipo landing in Spain, and concluded by his placing Catharine's letter in her nephew's hands.

4. Charles took his line with an unusual promptness. Were Catharine driven away, and Mary blighted in her birth, the gains of fifty years would all be lost, and France might reap the harvests sown by Spain. While he had power to hinder, Catharine must not be deposed. "Felipo has told us by the Queen's directions," he wrote to Mendoza, his agent in London, "what we already knew from you respecting her affairs. It is not our intention to desert her: on the contrary, we mean to do what we can in her behalf." Mendoza was to be extremely smooth, treating the question as an idle rumour, and pretending to submit all matters in dispute to Henry's will. Through other agents Charles suggested to Wolsey that the King's son, Henry Fitzroy, might have Maria of Portugal, daughter of his sister, Queen Elinor, and be created Duke of Milan. Wolsey knew that such an offer was "a blind." As yet the name of Anne Boleyn was not mentioned in imperial circles. Catharine was thinking of Renée; Charles of a union of the French and English crowns. Soft words and pleasant looks were to be tried. The years and

virtues of the Queen, her lofty birth, her strong affection for the King, were points on which Mendoza dwelt. "Entreat His Highness," said the Emperor, "to take what we say in good part, as coming from our love, and from our sense of what is best for him and for ourselves; to put an end, as soon as may be, for the honour and service of God, to this affair; and to arrange the matter with as much reserve and secrecy as it demands."

5. To Italy he wrote in a more stringent tone. Lannoi, the Pontiff's jailor, was commanded to repair in secret to his Holiness, and get from him a breve addressed to Henry and his councillors, persuading them, as from his own paternal heart, to put an end to the great evils which must flow from a design so scandalous as the divorce. Through other channels, Charles entreated Clement to revoke the legatine powers now held by Wolsey, and to prohibit either Wolsey or any other English prelate from dealing with the cause. The Cardinal, he said, lay under suspicion of ill-will towards Catharine, and the Emperor required to have her case removed into a Roman court.

6. Charles was advised by one of his most crafty servants to buy the Cardinal as the cheapest way of getting out of his trouble. This crafty servant was a Savoyard, named Eustace Chapuys, whom the Emperor had found in Ghent. He was a learned man; supple as an Italian of the plains, tenacious as a Switzer of the Alps. "The King's purpose," said Chapuys, "in entering on a league with France, is simply to get his money, which François will agree History of two Queens. V.

II

to pay. Either the Dauphin or the Duke of Orleans will marry the English princess. If the Dauphin marries her, Henry will have his bastard son, of whom he is extremely fond, declared his successor. To prevent an alliance so fatal to Spain, the Cardinal must be gained over; his pension of nine thousand crowns a-year must be paid, augmented by twelve or fourteen thousand crowns, to be secured on the best bishopric in Castille. If Wolsey were secured, the Emperor might make excuses for breaking off the match with Mary." Chapuys advised that English jealousy of France should be excited. Most of all, he said, the Emperor ought to work on England's desire of being regarded as mistress of the sea. Charles acted on this crafty counsel; writing a letter in his smoothest vein to Wolsey when the Cardinal returned from France.

7. But Charles had still more powerful means of acting on his uncle and his pontiff. The Franciscan Order was a state within the state, a church within the church. In every country, from the Tiber to the Thames, the members of this Order were entrenched as preachers to the poor and as confessors to the rich. They stood above the ordinary codes, being free to wander up and down the world, unquestioned by the civil magistrate, and even by the local bishop; knowing no master save their General, and obeying no law except their Founder's rule. Their General was an absolute prince. In ordinary times this General ostentatiously obeyed and served the holy chair; but he was always conscious of his power, and when the Church, in his opinion, seemed

to be in danger, he was strong enough to make conditions with the Pope. Father Quiñones, General of this Order, was a Spanish subject, bound to Charles, not only by his birth and family, but by a proud and passionate love for Spain. Quiñones thought the Church of Spain had kept the sacred dogmas in a purer state than that of Rome. Rome, he believed, had lost her way on many points-to wit, on that of the Immaculate Conception, one of those dogmas which his fraternity had always held, and he was urging in the ears of a reluctant Pope. For some time past Quiñones had been used by Charles to terrify the Sacred College, under the pretence of seeking to restore a state of peace. The Emperor wanted peace, but only on his own conditions, which the General was employed to urge with the authority of a man who by a single word could set ten thousand preaching friars to agitate the world. Quiñones' power might be employed in London with as much effect as in Toledo and in Rome.

8. In crossing from Italy to Spain, Quiñones had the good or evil fortune to be captured by a Barbary crew, who jerked out one of his teeth, slapped his feet with rods, and held him to a ransom of four thousand ducats. Spain hastened to release the holy man, who entered Valladolid in all the glory of a suffering saint. No man was humoured more by Charles. "Unless your Majesty does your duty to the Pope, you will no longer be called the Emperor, but Luther's captain," said Quiñones; and the Emperor bowed to this rebuke a patient head. Calling the General to his closet, Charles desired