Vatican remained untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also,
something assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority
still saw the necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation,
final sentence was to have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed
by interdict, excommunication, and the full volume of the papal
thunders. At the close of a month's deliberation they resolved to
reserve judgment on the original question, and to confine themselves for
the present to revenging the insult to the pope by "my Lord of
Canterbury." Both the king and the archbishop had disobeyed a formal
inhibition. On the 12th of July, the pope issued a brief, declaring
Cranmer's judgment to have been illegal, the English process to have
been null and void, and the king, by his disobedience, to have incurred,
_ipso facto_, the threatened penalties of excommunication. Of his
clemency he suspended these censures till the close of the following
September, in order that time might be allowed to restore the respective
parties to their old positions: if within that period the parties were
not so restored, the censures would fall.[164] This brief was sent into
Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the door of a church in
Dunkirk.

[Sidenote: Henry again urges Francis to decline to meet the pope.]

Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He had
been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and
Francis must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when
the French king advised him to marry, and promised to support him
through the consequences. His own measures had been arranged beforehand,
and he had secured himself in technical entrenchments by his appeal.
After the issue of the brief, however, he could allow no English embassy
to compliment Clement by its presence on his visit to France. He "knew
the pope," as he said. Long experience had shown him that nothing was to
be gained by yielding in minor points; and the only chance which now
remained of preserving the established order of Christendom, was to
terrify the Vatican court into submission by the firmness of his
attitude. For the present complications, the court of Rome, not he, was
responsible. The pope, with a culpable complacency for the emperor, had
shrunk from discharging a duty which his office imposed upon him; and
the result had been that the duty was discharged by another. Henry
could not blame hi