was not merely a divorce but the express sanction of the Pope to his
divorce, and this Clement steadily evaded. A fresh embassy with Wolsey's
favourite and secretary, Stephen Gardiner, at its head reached Orvieto in
March 1528 to find in spite of Gardiner's threats hardly better success;
but Clement at last consented to a legatine commission for the trial of
the case in England. In this commission Cardinal Campeggio, who was looked
upon as a partisan of the English king, was joined with Wolsey.

[Sidenote: The Papal difficulties]

Great as the concession seemed, this gleam of success failed to hide from
the minister the dangers which gathered round him. The great nobles whom
he had practically shut out from the king's counsels were longing for his
fall. The Boleyns and the young courtiers looked on him as cool in Anne's
cause. He was hated alike by men of the old doctrine and men of the new.
The clergy had never forgotten his extortions, the monks saw him
suppressing small monasteries. The foundation of Cardinal College failed
to reconcile to him the scholars of the New Learning; their poet, Skelton,
was among his bitterest assailants. The Protestants, goaded by the
persecution of this very year, hated him with a deadly hatred. His French
alliances, his declaration of war with the Emperor, hindered the trade
with Flanders and secured the hostility of the merchant class. The country
at large, galled with murrain and famine and panic-struck by an outbreak
of the sweating sickness which carried off two thousand in London alone,
laid all its suffering at the door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's
mood itself became uncertain Wolsey knew his hour was come. Were the
marriage once made, he told the French ambassador, and a male heir born to
the realm, he would withdraw from state affairs and serve God for the rest
of his life. But the divorce had still to be brought about ere marriage
could be made or heir be born. Henry indeed had seized on the grant of a
commission as if the matter were at an end. Anne Boleyn was installed in
the royal palace, and honoured with the state of a wife. The new legate,
Campeggio, held the bishoprick of Salisbury, and had been asked for as
judge from the belief that he would favour the king's cause. But he bore
secret instructions from the Pope to bring about if possible a
reconciliation between Henry and the queen, and in no case to pronounce
sentence without reference to Rome. The slowness