's Majesty and the nobility of England, being
persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to
doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion
respecting this See--namely, that God has taken from it the key of
knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some
persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those papal laws
which neither the pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only
to be committed to the flames." "I desired his Holiness," he adds, "to
ponder well this matter."[142]

Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never failed
him. He answered that he was not learned, and "to speak truth, albeit there
was a saying in the canon law, that _Pontifex habet omnia jura in scrinio
pectoris_ (the pope has all laws locked within his breast), yet God had
never given him the key to open that lock." He was but "seeking pretexts"
for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the Italian campaign of the
French in the summer of 1528 was decided. He had been liberated, or had
been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that if detained longer he
might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an old ruined castle at
Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City still occupied by the
Prince of Orange. In the preceding autumn, immediately after the congress
at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by several English noblemen, had led
an army across the Alps. He had defeated the Imperialists in the north of
Italy in several minor engagements; and in January his success appeared so
probable, that the pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis,
that if the French would only approach near enough to enable him to plead
compulsion, he would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to
conclude the cause.[143] De Lautrec, however, foiled in his desire to bring
the Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in
ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy
plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the battle
of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the Alps; and
with them all Wolsey's hopes of realising his dream. Struck down, not by a
visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French general himself,
his English friends, and all his army melted away from off the earth. The
pope had been wise in time. He