cle in any region
that a King and Queen should be convented and constrained by process
compellatory to appear in any court as common persons, within their own
realm and dominion, to abide the judgement and decree of their own
subjects, having the royal diadem and prerogative thereof." Even this
degradation had been borne in vain. Foreign and Papal tribunal as that of
the Legates really was, it lay within Henry's kingdom and had the air of
an English court. But the citation to Rome was a summons to the king to
plead in a court without his realm. Wolsey had himself warned Clement of
the hopelessness of expecting Henry to submit to such humiliation as this.
"If the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy and his prerogative
be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate the insult.... To
cite the King to Rome, to threaten him with excommunication, is no more
tolerable than to deprive him of his royal dignity.... If he were to
appear in Italy it would be at the head of a formidable army." But Clement
had been deaf to the warning, and the case had been avoked out of the
realm.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's fall]

Henry's wrath fell at once on Wolsey. Whatever furtherance or hindrance
the Cardinal had given to his re-marriage, it was Wolsey who had dissuaded
him from acting at the first independently, from conducting the cause in
his own courts and acting on the sentence of his own judges. Whether to
secure the succession by a more indisputable decision or to preserve
uninjured the prerogatives of the Papal See, it was Wolsey who had
counselled him to seek a divorce from Rome and promised him success in his
suit. And in this counsel Wolsey stood alone. Even Clement had urged the
king to carry out his original purpose when it was too late. All that the
Pope sought was to be freed from the necessity of meddling in the matter
at all. It was Wolsey who had forced Papal intervention on him, as he had
forced it on Henry, and the failure of his plans was fatal to him. From
the close of the Legatine court Henry would see him no more, and his
favourite, Stephen Gardiner, who had become chief Secretary of State,
succeeded him in the king's confidence. If Wolsey still remained minister
for a while, it was because the thread of the complex foreign negotiations
which he was conducting could not be roughly broken. Here too however
failure awaited him. His diplomacy sought to bring fresh pressure on the
Pope and to provide a fresh c