im that Henry's
course would be arrested at the last extremity by his own subjects. He
left Mai to watch the Pope, and Ortiz to urge for sentence; but when the
pressure of his own hand relaxed his agents could effect but little. The
English Parliament was to open again in January. The King's Commissioners
at Rome informed the Consistory that if it was decided finally to try the
cause at Rome they were to take their leave, and the King would
thenceforward regard the Pope as his public enemy.[163] The threat
"produced a great impression." The Pope had no wish to be Henry's enemy in
order to please the Emperor. Mai and Ortiz told him that the English
menaces were but words; he had but to speak and England would submit. The
Pope did not believe it, and became again "lax and procrastinating."[164]

The English nobles made a last effort to move Catherine. Lord Sussex, Sir
William Fitzwilliam, and Lee, Archbishop of York, who had been her warm
supporter, waited on her at Moor Park to urge her, if she would not allow
the case to be tried at Cambray, to permit it to be settled by a
commission of bishops and lawyers. The Pope confessedly was not free to
give his own opinion, and English causes could not be ruled by the
Emperor. If Catherine had consented, it is by no means certain that Anne
Boleyn would have been any more heard of. A love which had waited for five
years could not have been unconquerable; and it was possible and even
probable in the existing state of opinion that some other arrangement
might have been made for the succession. The difficulty rose from
Catherine's determination to force the King before a tribunal where the
national pride would not permit him to plead. The independence of England
was threatened, and those who might have been her friends were disarmed
of their power to help her. Unfortunately for herself, perhaps fortunately
for the English race which was yet to be born, she remained still
inflexible. "The King's plea of conscience," she said, "was not honest. He
was acting on passion, pure and simple; and English judges would say black
was white." Sussex and Fitzwilliam knelt to entreat her to reconsider her
answer. She too knelt and prayed them for God's honour and glory to
persuade the King to return to her, as she was his lawful wife. All
present were in tears, but there was no remedy. Chapuys said that the
coldness and indifference with which the affair was treated at Rome was
paralysing her defen