he had resigned himself to a wiser policy,[417] and the
surrender of a barren designation would cost him little. In his quarrel
with the pope, also, he had professed an extreme reluctance to impair
the unity of the church; and the sacrifices which he had made, and the
years of persevering struggle which he had endured, had proved that in
those professions he had not been insincere. But Henry's character was
not what it had been when he won his title of Defender of the Faith. In
the experience of the last few years he had learnt to conceive some
broader sense of the meaning of the Reformation; and he had gathered
from Cromwell and Latimer a more noble conception of the Protestant
doctrines. He had entered upon an active course of legislation for the
putting away the injustices, the falsehoods, the oppressions of a
degenerate establishment; and in the strong sense that he had done
right, and nothing else but right, in these measures, he was not now
disposed to submit to a compromise, or to consent to undo anything which
he was satisfied had been justly done, in consideration of any supposed
benefit which he could receive from the pope. He was anxious to remain
in communion with the see of Rome. He was willing to acknowledge in some
innocuous form the Roman supremacy. But it could be only on his own
terms. The pope must come to him; he could not go to the pope. And the
papal precedency should only again be admitted in England on conditions
which should leave untouched the Act of Appeals, and should preserve the
sovereignty of the crown unimpaired.

[Sidenote: Henry's reply to the overtures of the French king.]

[Sidenote: The pope must make the first move towards a reconciliation.]

He replied, therefore, to the overtures of Francis, that he was ready to
enter into negotiations for the resignation or his title to the crown of
France, and for the proposed marriage.[418] Before any other step was
taken, however, he desired his good brother to insist that "the Bishop
of Rome" should revoke the sentence, and "declare his pretended marriage
with the Lady Catherine naught;" "which to do," Henry wrote (and this
portion of his reply is written by his own hand), "we think it very
facile for our good brother; since we do perceive by letters [from Rome]
both the opinions of the learned men there to be of that opinion that we
be of; and also a somewhat disposition to that purpose in the Bishop of
Rome's self, according to equity, re