er would consent to the
dismembering of any province from the monarchy for her son's ransom.
With the emperor, however, he put on the appearance of vigor and
enterprise; and in order to have a pretence for breaking with him, he
despatched Tonstal, bishop of London, to Madrid with proposals for a
powerful invasion of France. He required that Charles should immediately
enter Guienne at the head of a great army, in order to put him in
possession of that province; and he demanded the payments of large sums
of money which that prince had borrowed from him in his last visit
at London. He knew that the emperor was in no condition of fulfilling
either of these demands; and that he had as little inclination to make
him master of such considerable territories upon the frontiers of Spain.

* Guicciard. lib. xvi.

** Du Bellai, liv. iii Stowe, p. 221. Baker, p. 273.

Tonstal, likewise, after his arrival at Madrid, informed his master that
Charles, on his part, urged several complaints against England; and in
particular was displeased with Henry, because last year he had neither
continued his monthly payments to Bourbon nor invaded Picardy, according
to his stipulations. Tonstal added, that instead of expressing an
intention to espouse Mary when she should be of age, the emperor had
hearkened to proposals for marrying his niece Isabella, princess of
Portugal; and that he had entered into a separate treaty with Francis,
and seemed determined to reap alone all the advantages of the success
with which fortune had crowned his arms.

The king, influenced by all these motives, concluded at Moore his
alliance with the regent of France, and engaged to procure her son his
liberty on reasonable conditions:[*] the regent also, in another treaty,
acknowledged the kingdom Henry's debtor for one million eight hundred
thousand crowns to be discharged in half-yearly payments of fifty
thousand crowns; after which Henry was to receive, during life, a yearly
pension of a hundred thousand. A large present of a hundred thousand
crowns was also made to Wolsey for his good offices, but covered under
the pretence of arrears due on the pension granted him for relinquishing
the administration of Tournay.

* Du Tillet, Recueil des Traites de Leonard, tom. ii.
Herbert.

Meanwhile Henry, foreseeing that this treaty with France might involve
him in a war with the emperor, was also determined to fill his treasury
by impositions upon his