The renewed offer was doubtless conveyed to Wolsey, but he probably found that he had gone too deep to retire. If he made such an effort as Mendoza relates, he must have speedily discovered that it would be useless. He had encouraged the King in a belief that the divorce would be granted by the Pope as a matter of course, and the King, having made up his own mind, was not to be moved from it. If Wolsey now drew back, the certain inference would be that he had accepted an imperial bribe. There was no resource, therefore, but to go on.
While Wolsey had been hesitating, the King had, unknown to him, sent his secretary. Dr. Knight, to Rome with directions to obtain access if possible to the Pope, and procure the dispensation which had been already applied for to enable him to marry a second time without the formalities of a judgment. Such an expedient would be convenient in many ways. It would leave Catherine's position unaffected and the legitimacy of the Princess Mary unimpugned. Knight went. He found that without a passport he could not even enter the city, still less be allowed an interview. "With ten thousand crowns he could not bribe his way into St. Angelo." He contrived, however, to have a letter introduced, which the Pope answered by telling Knight to wait in some quiet place. He (the Pope) would "there send him all the King's requests in as ample a form as they were desired." Knight trusted in a short time "to have in his custody as much, perfect, sped, and under lead, as his Highness had long time desired."[1]
Knight was too sanguine. The Emperor, finding the Pope's detention as a prisoner embarrassing,
- ↑ Knight to Henry VIII., Dec. 4.—Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 1633–4.
