Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter III · RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
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After a week of violent discussion, the lay interest in the House of Lords found itself the strongest. Pole exclaimed that, if the submission and the dispensation were tied together, it was a simoniacal compact; the pope's holiness was bought and sold for a price, he said, and he would sooner go back to Rome, and leave his work unfinished, than consent to an act so derogatory to the Holy See. But the protest was vain; if the legate was so anxious, his anxiety was an additional reason why the opposition should persevere; if he chose to go, his departure could be endured.[404]