Note (back) — Chapter XII

Convinced of his security from attack at home and abroad, Henry proceeded to accomplish what remained for the subjugation of the Church in England and the final breach with Rome. Clement had no sooner excommunicated Henry than he began to repent; he was much more alarmed than the English King at the probable effects of his sentence. Henry at once recalled his ambassadors from Rome, and drew up an appeal to a General Council.[892] The Pope feared he would lose England for ever. Even the Imperialists proved but Job's comforters, and told him that, after all, it was only "an unprofitable island,"[893] the loss of which was not to be compared with the renewed devotion of Spain and the Emperor's other dominions; possibly they assured him that there would never again be a sack of Rome. Clement delayed for a time the publication of the sentence against Henry, and in November he went to his interview with Francis I. at Marseilles.[894] While he was there, Bonner intimated to him Henry's appeal to a General Council. Clement angrily rejected the appeal as frivolous, and Francis regarded this defiance of the Pope as an affront to himself in the person of his guest, and as the ruin of his attempts to reconcile the two parties. "Ye have clearly marred all," he said to Gardiner; "as fast as I study to win the Pope, you study to lose him,"[895] and he declared that, had he known of the intimation beforehand, it should never have been made. Henry, however, had no desire that the Pope should be won.[896] He was, he told the French ambassador, determined to separate from Rome; "he will not, in consequence of this, be less Christian, but more so, for in everything and in every place he desires to cause Jesus Christ to be recognised, who alone is the patron of Christians; and he will cause the Word to be preached, and not the canons and decrees of the Pope."[897]