oreign
jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence
was respected; when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one
consequence was possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a
foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to
inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.

So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of
maintaining the pope's authority in England under any form. The people were
smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to see
the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the
arbitration of a foreign prince. The emperor, not the pope, was the true
judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to
tolerate longer a national dishonour.

"The great men of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in bitter
wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they
are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to
themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to
see the pope's authority in this country diminished or annulled, are
speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror."[167]

And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of
negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties, when they
were informed that the further hearing of the cause was transferred to
Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in protest before
such a dream of shame. He was no more the Roman legate, but the English
minister.

"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,[168] "or shall now at
any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by
proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or
excommunication, _vel cum invocatione brachii saecularis_, whereby the king
should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and
prerogative royal of the king's crown, whereunto all the nobles and
subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not
tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed. And to say the truth, in so
doing the pope should not only show himself the king's enemy, but also as
much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the
semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen that the king's cause shall be
ventilated or decided in any place out of hi