ey to power might imply the
acceptance of the French policy; perhaps the alliance with the
Lutherans--at any rate, war with the Emperor. The Duke of Norfolk and his
friends were English aristocrats, adherents of the old traditions,
dreading and despising German revolutionists; but they believed that the
King and the Emperor could only be drawn together by Charles's consent to
the divorce. The King, Norfolk said to Chapuys, was so much bent on it
that no one but God could turn him. He believed it imperative for the
welfare of the realm that his master should marry again and have male
succession; he would give all that he possessed for an hour's interview
with the Emperor; if his Majesty would but consent to the marriage, the
friendship between him and the King would then be indissoluble;[113] the
divorce was nothing by the side of the larger interests at issue; "the
King," it was rumoured, "had written, or was about to write, to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, that if the Pope persisted in refusing justice,
his own and all Church authority would be at an end in England;" the
nobles and people, provoked and hurt at the advocation of the suit to
Rome, were daily more and more incensed against Churchmen, and would
become Lutherans in the end.[114] The Pope had confessed that the presence
of the Imperial army in Italy left him no liberty. If revolution came, the
Emperor would be the cause of it. The Duke spoke with the indignation of
an Englishman at a rumour that the Emperor had "threatened to use all his
power in the Queen's support." Such menaces, he said, were useless, and
the nation would not endure them. Foreign princes had no authority over
English kings.

Chapuys did not mend matters by saying that the Emperor was not thinking
of employing force, for he did not believe that the King would give
occasion for it. The Emperor's interference, indeed, would be unnecessary,
for the Duke must be aware that if the divorce was proceeded with there
would be a civil war in England.[115] Chapuys was vain of his insight into
things and characters. Like so many of his successors, he mistook the
opinion of a passionate clique of priests and priest-ridden malcontents
for the general sentiment of the nation. They told him, as they told other
Spanish ambassadors after him, that all the world thought as they did.
Fanatics always think so; and the belief that they were right proved in
the end the ruin of the Spanish empire. In the present i