it would consent to be inert. So long as a legates' court sat in London, men were able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence was respected. When the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one consequence was possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.
So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of maintaining the Pope's authority in England under any form. The people were smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill endured to see the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the arbitration of a foreign prince. The Emperor, not the Pope, was the true judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to tolerate longer a national dishonour.
'The great men of the realm,' wrote the legates, 'are storming in bitter wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to see the Pope's authority in this country diminished or annulled, are speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror.'[1]
And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of negotiation, by the opening of
- ↑ Burnet's Collectanea, p. 41.
