as maintained that all Christian princes were only
feudatories of the Pope. He himself, he said, intended to put a remedy to
such inordinate ambition, and repair the errors of Henry II. and John, who
had been tricked into making England tributary to the Holy See." "The
Emperor," he said, "not only demanded justice, but would have justice done
in his own way, and according to his own caprice. For himself, he thought
of resuming to the Crown the lands of the clergy, which his predecessors
had alienated without right." Chapuys advised him to wait for a General
Council before he tried such high measures. "But the King could not be
persuaded" that a council was needed for such a purpose.[212]

The Act of Appeals touched too many interests to be passed without
opposition. Private persons as well as princes had appealed to the Roman
law-courts, and suits pending or determined there might be reopened at
home and produce confusion unless provided for. However complacent the
Pope might appear, it could not be supposed that he would bear patiently
the open renunciation of his authority. Excommunication was half perceived
to be a spectre; but spectres had not wholly lost their terrors. With an
excommunication pronounced in earnest might come interdict and stoppage of
trade, perhaps war and rebellion at home; and one of the members for
London said that if the King would refer the question between himself and
the Queen to a General Council, the City of London would give him two
hundred thousand pounds. The arrival of Cranmer's Bulls, while the Act was
still under discussion, moderated the alarm. The Pope evidently was in no
warlike humour. At the bottom of his heart he had throughout been in
Henry's favour; he hoped probably that a time might come when he could say
so, and that all this hostile legislation would then be repealed. When the
excitement was at its hottest, and it was known at Rome, not only that the
last brief had been defied, but that the King was about to marry the lady,
the Pope had borne the news with singular calmness. After all, he said to
the Count de Cifuentes, if the marriage is completed, we have only to
think of a remedy. The remedy, Cifuentes said, was for the Pope to do
justice; the King had been encouraged in his rash course by the toleration
with which he had been treated and the constant delays. Clement answered
that he would certainly do justice; but if the marriage was "a fact
accomplished," he wished to