deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the
sentence.

[Sidenote: Intended appeal to a general council.]

[Sidenote: The advantages of this measure.]

[Sidenote: June 29.]

After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to
anticipate the pope by an appeal which would neutralize his judgment
should he venture upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of
restoring the peace of Christendom, if there was true anxiety to
preserve that peace. The hinge of the great question, in the form which
at last it assumed, was the validity or invalidity of the dispensation
by which Henry had married his brother's widow. Being a matter which
touched the limit of the pope's power, the pope was himself unable to
determine it in his own favour; and the only authority by which the law
could be ruled, was a general council. In the preceding winter, the pope
had volunteered to submit the question to this tribunal; but Henry
believing that it was on the point of immediate solution in another way,
had then declined, on the ground that it would cause a needless delay.
He was already married, and he had hoped that sentence might be given in
his favour in time to anticipate the publication of the ceremony. But he
was perfectly satisfied that justice was on his side; and was equally
confident of obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it could be fairly
pronounced. Now, therefore, under the altered circumstances, he accepted
the offered alternative. He anticipated with tolerable certainty the
effect which would be produced at Rome, when the news should arrive
there of the Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June he appealed
formally, in the presence of the Archbishop of York, from the pope's
impending sentence, to the next general council.[154]

[Sidenote: Terms of the appeal. The king has no intention of derogating
from the lawful privileges of the See of Rome.]

Of this curious document the substance was as follows:--It commenced
with a declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise
than became a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or
attacking the privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words
could be lawfully shown to have such a tendency, he would revoke, emend,
and correct them in a Catholic spirit.

[Sidenote: But Europe having declared in his favour in his great matter,
"by the inspiration of the Most High," he has married another wife.]

[Sidenote: He fears that the pope