396
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[ch. 5.
watched the storm with anxious agitation; on the King's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme and imminent peril. The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted to conferences with angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial instruction, as a conspiracy against Heaven. The King, she said, but for her interposition, would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious marriage;[1] and God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his unholy eyes the blessed sacrament. 'It was written in her revelations,' says the statute of her attainder, 'that
- ↑ Note of the Revelations of Eliz. Barton: Rolls House MS. Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 17.The intention was really perhaps what the Nun said. An agent of the Government at Brussels, who was watching the conference, reported on the 12th of November:— 'The King of England did really cross with the intention of marrying; but, happily for the Emperor, the ceremony is postponed. Of other secrets, my informant has learned thus much. They have resolved to demand as the portion of the Queen of France, Artois, Tournay, and part of Burgundy. They have also sent two Cardinals to Rome to require the Pope to relinquish the tenths, which they have begun to levy for themselves. If his Holiness refuse, the King of England will simply appropriate them throughout his dominions. Captain heard this from the King's proctor at Rome, who has been with him at Calais, and from an Italian named Jeronymo, whom the Lady Anne has roughly handled for managing her business badly. She trusted that she would have been married in September.'The proctor told her the Pope delayed sentence for fear of the Emperor. The two Kings, when they heard this, despatched the cardinals to quicken his movements; and the demand for the tenths is thought to have been invented to frighten him.'They are afraid that the Emperor may force his Holiness into giving sentence before the cardinals arrive. Jeronymo has been therefore sent forward by post to give him notice of their approach, and to require him to make no decision till they have spoken with him.'—The Pilgrim, p. 89.
