Jump to content

Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/188

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
170
The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

been cited to appear personally at Rome—a measure never before enforced by any pope against an English king. He could not go; he could not leave his kingdom—nor could the dispute be settled by the Pope's insistence on it. A fitter place and fitter judges must be chosen by the mutual consent of the parties, or she would be the cause of trouble and scandal to them and their posterity. The Duke entreated her to consider the consequences of refusal—to remember the many good services which the King had rendered to her father and to the Emperor, and to allow the constitution of some other court before which the King could plead.

In itself the demand was reasonable. It was impossible for a king of England to plead before the Pope, in the power, as he was, of the Emperor, who was himself a party interested in the dispute. A neutral place might have been easily found. Neutral judges might be less easily procurable; but none could be less fit than his Holiness. The Queen, however, replied stoutly as ever that her cause should be judged by the Pope and by no one else; not that she expected any favour at his hands; so far the Pope had shown himself so partial to the King that more could not be asked of him; she, and not the King, had cause to complain of his Holiness; but the Pope held the place and had the power of God upon earth, and was the image of eternal truth. To him, and only to him, she remitted her case. If trouble came, it would be the work of others, not of her. She allowed that in past times the King had assisted her relations. The Emperor had not denied it, and was the King's true friend. With a scornful allusion to the Supremum Caput, she said, the King might be Lord and Master in temporal matters, but the Pope was the true Sover-