r the bull, that the marriage was
requisite, in order to preserve peace between the two crowns; though it
is certain that there was not then any ground or appearance of quarrel
between them. These false premises in Julius's bull seemed to afford
Clement a sufficient reason or pretence for annulling it, and granting
Henry a dispensation for a second marriage.[*]

* Collier, Eccles. Hist. vol. ii p. 25, from the Cott. Lib.
Vitel. p. 9

But though the pretext for this indulgence had been less plausible,
the pope was in such a situation that he had the strongest motives to
embrace every opportunity of gratifying the English monarch. He was then
a prisoner in the hands of the emperor; and had no hopes of recovering
his liberty on any reasonable terms, except by the efforts of the league
which Henry had formed with Francis and the Italian powers, in order to
oppose the ambition of Charles. When the English secretary, therefore,
solicited him in private, he received a very favorable answer: and a
dispensation was forthwith promised to be granted to his master.[*]
Soon after, the march of a French army into Italy, under the command of
Lautrec, obliged the imperialists to restore Clement to his liberty; and
he retired to Orvietto, where the secretary, with Sir Gregory Cassali,
the king's resident at Rome, renewed their applications to him. They
still found him full of high professions of friendship, gratitude, and
attachment to the king; but not so prompt in granting his request
as they expected. The emperor, who had got intelligence of Henry's
application to Rome, had exacted a promise from the pope, to take
no steps in the affair before he communicated them to the imperial
ministers; and Clement, embarrassed by this promise, and still more
overawed by the emperor's forces in Italy, seemed willing to postpone
those concessions desired of him by Henry. Importuned, however, by
the English ministers, he at last put into their hands a commission to
Wolsey, as legate, in conjunction with the archbishop of Canterbury,
or any other English prelate, to examine the validity of the king's
marriage, and of Julius's dispensation:[**] he also granted them a
provisional dispensation for the king's marriage with any other person;
and promised to issue a decretal bull, annulling the marriage with
Catharine. But he represented to them the dangerous consequences which
must ensue to him, if these concessions should come to the emperor'