it
comprehendre, comme pour exemple il me demandoit
qui estoit roy au temps de Adam, et disoit comme
j'estoy obligee de faire ceste marriage par ung
article de mon Credo, mais il ne l'exposoit....
Aultres choses trop difficiles pour moy d'entendre
... ainsy qu'il estoit impossible en si peu de
temps de changer ... conscience.... Votre Haultesse
escript en ses dictes lettres que si le consent de
ce royaulme iroyt au contraire, Votre Haultesse en
imputeroit la coulpe en moy. Je supplie en toute
humilite votre Haultesse de differer ceste affaire
jusques a votre retour; et donques Votre Haultesse
sera juge si je seray coulpable ou non. Car
autrement je vinray en jalousie de Votre Haultesse
la quelle sera pire a moy que mort; car j'en ay
commence deja d'en taster trop a mon grand regret,"
etc.--_Cotton MSS., Titus_, B. 2: printed very
incorrectly in Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi. 418.]

[Footnote 529: Noailles.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his trial and his citation to
Rome, addressed to the queen a singular letter; he did not ask for
mercy, and evidently he did not expect mercy: he reasserted calmly the
truth of the opinions for which he was to suffer; but he protested
against the indignity done to the realm of England, and the
degradation of the royal prerogative, "when the king and queen, as if
they were subjects in their own realm, complained and required justice
at a stranger's hand against their own subjects, being already
condemned to death by their own laws." "Death," he said, "could not
grieve him much more than to have his most dread and gracious
sovereigns, to whom under God he owed all obedience, to be his
accusers in judgment before a stranger and outward power."[530]

[Footnote 530: Cranmer to Queen Mary: Jenkins, vol.
i. p. 369. This protest was committed to Pole to
answer, who replied to it at length.

The authority of the pope in a secular kingdom, the
legate said, was no more a foreign power than "the
authority of the soul of ma