Chapuys tried Granvelle again. "Every man of position here," he said, "is in despair at the Pope's inaction. If something is not done promptly there will be no hope for the ladies, or for religion either, which is going daily to destruction. Things are come to such a pass that at some places men even preach against the Sacrament. The Emperor is bound to interfere. What he has done in Africa he can do in England with far more ease and with incomparably more political advantage."[1]
Granvelle could but answer that Henry was a monster, and that God would undoubtedly punish him; but that for himself he was so busy that he could scarcely breathe, and that the Emperor continued to hope for some peaceful arrangement.
Cifuentes meanwhile kept his hand on Paul. His task was difficult, for his orders were to prevent the issue of the executorials for fear France should act upon them, while Catholic Christendom would be shaken to its base if it became known that it was the Emperor who was preventing the Holy See from avenging itself. Even with the Pope Cifuentes could not be candid, and Ortiz, working on Paul's jealousy and unable to comprehend the obstacle, had persuaded his Holiness to draw up "the brief of execution" and furnish a copy to himself.[2]
- ↑ Chapuys to Granvelle, Sept. 25, 1535.—Vienna MS.; Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol. ix. p. 141.
- ↑ The executory brief was not identical with the Bull of Deposition. The first was the final act of Catherine's process, a declaration that Henry, having disobeyed the sentence on the divorce delivered by Clement VII., was excommunicated, and an invitation to the Catholic Powers to execute the judgment by force. The second involved a claim for the Holy See on England as a fief of the Church—an intimation that the King of England had forfeited his crown and that his subjects' allegiance had reverted to their Supreme Lord. The Pope and Consistory preferred the complete judgment, as more satisfactory to them-
