jects will tolerate it. If he appears in Italy,
it will be at the head of a formidable army."[707] A sympathiser with
Catherine expressed his resentment at his King being summoned to plead
as a party in his own realm before the legatine Court;[708] and it has
even been suggested that those proceedings were designed to irritate
popular feeling against the Roman jurisdiction. Far more offensive was
it to national prejudice, that England's king should be cited to
appear before a court in a distant land, dominated by the arms of a
foreign prince. Nothing did more to alienate men's minds from the
Papacy. Henry would never have been able to obtain his divorce on its
merits as they appeared to his people. But now the divorce became
closely interwoven with another and a wider question, the papal
jurisdiction in England; and on that question Henry carried with him
the good wishes of the vast bulk of the laity. There were few Englishmen
who would not resent the petition presented to the Pope in 1529 by
Charles V. and Ferdinand that the English Parliament should be forbidden
to discuss the question of divorce.[709] By summoning Parliament,
Henry opened the floodgates of anti-papal and anti-sacerdotal feelings
which Wolsey had long kept shut; and the unpopular divorce became (p. 252)
merely a cross-current in the main stream which flowed in Henry's favour.

[Footnote 707: _L. and P._, iv., 5797.]

[Footnote 708: Cavendish, p. 210; _L. and P._, iv.,
Introd., p. dv.]

[Footnote 709: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 979.]

It was thus with some confidence that Henry appealed from the Pope to
his people. He could do so all the more surely, if, as is alleged,
there was no freedom of election, and if the House of Commons was
packed with royal nominees.[710] But these assertions may be dismissed
as gross exaggerations. The election of county members was marked by
unmistakable signs of genuine popular liberty. There was often a riot,
and sometimes a secret canvass among freeholders to promote or defeat
a particular candidate.[711] In 1547 the council ventured to recommend
a minister to the freeholders of Kent. The electors objected; the
council reprimanded the sheriff for representing its recommendation as
a command; it protested that it never dreamt of depriving the shire of
its "liberty of election," but "would take it thankfully" if the
electors would give their voices to