Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter I · QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.

Mendoza had been sent by Charles to meet Pole on his way to Flanders, and reason him into moderation. In return the legate wrote himself to Charles's confessor, commanding him to explain to his master the sin which he was committing. "The objection to his going to England," as Pole understood, "was the supposed danger of an outbreak". Were the truth as the emperor feared, the queen's first duty would be, nevertheless, to God, her own soul, and the souls of the millions of her subjects who were perishing in separation from the church; for no worldly policy or carnal respect ought she to defer for a moment to apply a remedy to so monstrous a calamity.[150] But the danger was imaginary—or, rather, such danger as there was, arose from the opposite cause. The right of the queen to the throne did not rest on an act of parliament; it rested on her birth as the lawful child of the lawful marriage between Henry and Catherine of Arragon. Parliament, he was informed, would affirm the marriage legitimate, if nothing was said about the pope; but, unless the pope's authority was first recognised, parliament would only stultify itself; the papal dispensation alone made valid a connection which, if the pope had no power to dispense, was incestuous, and the offspring of it illegitimate. God had made the peaceful settlement of the kingdom dependent on submission to the Holy See,[151] and for parliament to interfere and give an opinion upon the subject would be but a fresh act of schism and disobedience.