and yet
more unscrupulous device. The entire subjection of Italy to the Emperor
was drawing closer the French alliance; and a new treaty had been
concluded in April. But this had hardly been signed when the sack of Rome
and the danger of the Pope called for bolder measures. Wolsey was
despatched on a solemn embassy to Francis to promise an English subsidy on
the despatch of a French army across the Alps. But he aimed at turning the
Pope's situation to the profit of the divorce. Clement was virtually a
prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo; and as it was impossible for him to
fulfil freely the function of a Pope, Wolsey proposed in conjunction with
Francis to call a meeting of the College of Cardinals at Avignon which
should exercise the papal powers till Clement's liberation. As Wolsey was
to preside over this assembly, it would be easy to win from it a
favourable answer to Henry's request.

[Sidenote: The Legatine Commission]

But Clement had no mind to surrender his power, and secret orders from the
Pope prevented the Italian Cardinals from attending such an assembly. Nor
was Wolsey more fortunate in another plan for bringing about the same end
by inducing Clement to delegate to him his full powers westward of the
Alps. Henry's trust in him was fast waning before these failures and the
steady pressure of his rivals at court, and the coldness of the king on
his return in September was an omen of his minister's fall. Henry was in
fact resolved to take his own course; and while Wolsey sought from the
Pope a commission enabling him to try the case in his legatine court and
pronounce the marriage null and void by sentence of law, Henry had
determined at the suggestion of the Boleyns and apparently of Thomas
Cranmer, a Cambridge scholar who was serving as their chaplain, to seek
without Wolsey's knowledge from Clement either his approval of a divorce,
or if a divorce could not be obtained a dispensation to re-marry without
any divorce at all. For some months his envoys could find no admission to
the Pope; and though in December Clement succeeded in escaping to Orvieto
and drew some courage from the entry of the French army into Italy, his
temper was still too timid to venture on any decided course. He refused
the dispensation altogether. Wolsey's proposal for leaving the matter to a
legatine court found better favour; but when the commission reached
England it was found to be "of no effect or authority." What Henry wanted