wild weather was extremely miserable; and Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous account of it to Cromwell.[1] Three wretched weeks the party were upon the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on the 8th of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of several curious documents. On the 12th of December the Pope and the Emperor met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr Bennet, Henry's able secretary, who had been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to repeated interviews with the Pope, as well before as after the Emperor's arrival; and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in which he was placing himself towards the Imperial faction. Bennet's letter was as follows:—
'I have been sundry and many times with the Pope, as well afore the coming of the Emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his Holiness more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness than now of late,—insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind than he was accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly without any observance or
- ↑ State Papers, vol. vii. p. 394, &c.
