this
people that your Majesty should send men. Every day I have been
applied to about it by Englishmen of rank, wit and learning, (p. 305)
who give me to understand that the last King Richard was never so much
hated by his people as this King."[853] The Emperor, he went on, had a
better chance of success than Henry VII., and Ortiz at Rome was
cherishing the belief that England would rise against the King for his
contumacy and schismatic disobedience.[854] Fisher was urgent that
Charles should prepare an invasion of England; the young Marquis of
Exeter, a possible claimant to the throne, was giving the same
advice.[855] Abergavenny, Darcy and other peers brooded in sullen
discontent. They were all listening to the hysterical ravings of
Elizabeth Barton,[856] the Nun of Kent, who prophesied that Henry had
not a year to live. Charles's emissaries were busy in Ireland, where
Kildare was about to revolt. James V. of Scotland was hinting at his
claims to the English crown, should Henry be deprived by the
Pope;[857] and Chapuys was divided in mind whether it would be better
to make James the executor of the papal sentence, or marry Mary to
some great English noble, and raise an internal rebellion.[858] At
Catherine's suggestion he recommended to the Emperor Reginald Pole, a
grandson of George, Duke of Clarence, as a suitor for Mary's hand; and
he urged, on his own account, Pole's claims to the English
throne.[859] Catherine's scruples, not about deposing her husband, or
passing over the claims of Henry's sisters, but on the score of Edward
IV.'s grandson, the Marquis of Exeter, might, thought Chapuys, (p. 306)
be removed by appealing to the notorious sentence of Bishop Stillington,
who, on the demand of Richard III., had pronounced Edward IV.'s
marriage void and his children illegitimate.[860] Those who had been
the King's firm supporters when the divorce first came up were some of
them wavering, and others turning back.[861] Archbishop Lee, Bishops
Tunstall and Gardiner, and Bennet,[862] were now all in secret or open
opposition, and even Longland was expressing to Chapuys regrets that
he had ever been Henry's confessor;[863] like other half-hearted
revolutionists, they would never have started at all, had they known
how far they would have to go, and now they were setting their sails
for an adverse breeze. It was the King, and the King alone, who kept
England on the course which he had mapped out. Pope and Emperor w