Note 189 — EDITOR'S PREFACE. (continued 2)

Dr. Lingard holds this letter, printed by Lord Lyttelton, and which he admits was produced, to have been a forgery. If it was, it was a most audacious one; and a most flagrant insult to the Pope, whom Henry was even now endeavoring to propitiate through the Lombard Republics and the Emperor of the East (see Giles, iv. 10). It is remarkable, too, that though the Pope declares that this coronation, contrary to his prohibition (Giles, iv. 30), is not to be taken as a precedent, he has no word of the forgery. Nor do I find any contemporary assertion of its spuriousness. Becket, indeed, in his account of the last interview with the King, only mentions the general permission granted by the Pope at an early period of the reign; and argues as if this were the only permission. Is it possible that a special permission to York to act was craftily interpolated into the general permission? But the trick may have been on the side of the Pope, now granting, now nullifying his own grants by inhibition. Bouquet is strong against Baronius (as on other points) upon Alexander's duplicity.—p. 434.