solicited the king's friendship against Francis: and to advance his design gained Cardinal Wolsey, who then governed all the king's counsels, by the promise of making him pope; in which he judged he might, for a present advantage, promise a thing that seemed to be at so great a distance (Pope Leo the Tenth being then but a young man); and with rich presents, which he made both to the king, the cardinal, and all the court, wrought much on them. But that which prevailed most with the king was, that he saw, though Charles had great dominions, yet they lay at such a distance, that France alone was a sufficient counterpoise to him; but if Francis could keep Milan, recover Naples, Burgundy, and Navarre, to all which he was then preparing, he would be an uneasy neighbour to himself; and if he kept the footing he then had in Italy, he would lie so heavily on the papacy, that the popes could no longer carry equally in the affairs of Christendom, upon which much depended, according to the religion of that time. Therefore he resolved to take part with the emperor, till at least Francis was driven out of Italy, and reduced to juster terms: so that the following interview between Francis and him (June 7), produced nothing but a vast expense and high compliments: and from a second interview (July 10), between the king and the emperor, Francis was full of jealousy, in which what followed justified his apprehensions; for the war going on between the emperor and Francis, the king entered into a league with the former, and made war upon France..

But the pope dying sooner than it seems the emperor looked for (Dec. 1, 1521), Cardinal Wolsey claimed his promise for the papacy; but, before the messenger came to him, Adrian, the emperor's tutor, was chosen pope (Jan. 9, 1522); yet to feed the cardinal with fresh hopes, a new promise was made for the next vacancy, and in the meanwhile he was put in hope of the archbishopric of Toledo. But two years after, that pope dying (Sept. 14, 1523), the emperor again broke his word with him; yet though he was thereby totally alienated from him, he concealed his indignation, till the public concerns should give him a good opportunity to prosecute it upon a better colour; and by his letters to Rome dissembled his resentments so artificially, that in a congratulation he wrote to pope Clement VII (chosen Nov. 19), he "protested his election was matter of such joy, both to the king and himself, that nothing had ever befallen them which pleased them better, and that he was the very person whom they had wished to see raised to that greatness." But while the war went on (1522), the emperor, did cajale

the king with the highest compliments possible, which always wrought much on him, and came in person into England (May 26), to be installed knight of the garter, where a new league was concluded, by which, beside mutual assistance, a match was agreed on (June 19), betweeen the emperor and lady Mary, the king's only child by his queen, of whom he had no hopes of more issue. This was sworn to on both hands, and the emperor was obliged, when she was of age, to marry her, per verba de præsenti," under pain of excommunication and the forfeiture of £100,000.

The war went on with great success on the emperor's part, especially after the battle of Pavia, in which Francis's army was totally defeated, and himself taken prisoner and carried into Spain. After which the emperor being much offended with the pope for joining with Francis, turned his arms against him, which were so successful that he besieged and took Rome (May 6, 1527), and kept the pope a prisoner six months.

The cardinal finding the public interests concur so happily with his private distastes, engaged the king to take part with France, and afterwards with the pope, against the emperor, his greatness now becoming the terror of Christendom; for the emperor, lifted up with his success, began to think of no less than an universal empire. And, first, that he might unite all Spain together, he preferred a match with Portugal, to that which he had before contracted in England: and he thought it not enough to break off his sworn alliance with the king, but he did it with a heavy imputation on the lady Mary: for in his council it was said that she was illegitimate, as being born in an unlawful marriage, so that no advantage could be expected from her title to the succession, as will appear more particularly in the second book. And the pope having dispensed with the oath, he married the infanta of Portugal. Besides, though the king of England had gone deep in the charge, he would give him no share in the advantages of the war; much less give him that assistance which he had promised him, to recover his ancient inheritance in France. The king, being irritated with this manifold ill-usage, and led on by his own interests, and by the offended cardinal, joined himself to the interests of France. Upon which there followed, not only a firm alliance, but a personal friendship, which appeared in all the most obliging expressions that could be devised. And upon the king's threatening to make war on the emperor, the French king was set at liberty (Mar. 18, 1526), though on very hard terms, if any thing can be hard that sets a king

out of prison; but he still acknowledged he owed his liberty to King Henry.

Then followed the famous Clementine League, between the Pope and Francis, the Venetians, the Florentines, and Francis Sforza, duke of Milan (May 22, 1526), by which the pope absolved the French king from the oath he had, sworn at Madrid, and they all united against the emperor, and declared the king of England protector of the league. This gave the emperor great distaste, who complained of the pope as an ungrateful and perfidious person. The first beginning of the storm fell heavy on the pope; for the French king, who had a great mind to have his children again into his own hands, that lay hostages in Spain, went on but slowly in performing his part. And the king of England would not openly break with the emperor, but seemed to reserve himself to be arbiter between the princes. So that the Colonnas, being of the imperial faction, with 3000 men entered Rome (Sept. 20), and sacked a part of it, forcing the pope to fly into the castle of St. Angelo, and to make peace with the emperor. But as soon as that fear was over, the pope returning to his old arts, complained of the cardinal of Colonna, and resolved to deprive him of that dignity, and with an army entered the kingdom of Naples, taking divers places that belonged to that family. But the confederates coming slowly to his assistance, and he hearing of great forces that were coming from Spain against him, submitted himself to the emperor, and made a cessation of arms; but being again encouraged with some hopes from his allies, and (by a creation of fourteen cardinals for money) having raised 300,000 ducats, he disowned the treaty (1527), and gave the kingdom of Naples to count Vaudemont, whom he sent with forces to subdue it. But the duke of Bourbon prevented him, and went to Rome, and giving the assault, in which himself received his mortal wound, the city was taken by storm (May 16), and plundered for several days, about 5000 being killed. The pope, with seventeen cardinals, fled to the castle of St. Angelo, but was forced to render his person, and to pay 400,000 ducats to the army.

This gave great offence to all the princes of Christendom, except the Lutherans of Germany; but none resented it more loudly than this king, who sent over cardinal Wolsey (July 11), to make up a new treaty with Francis, which was chiefly intended for setting the pope at liberty. Nor did the emperor know well how to justify an action, which seemed so inconsistent with his devotion to the see of Rome; yet the pope was for some months detained a prisoner, till

at length the emperor having brought him to his own terms, ordered him to be set at liberty (Dec. 9): but he being weary of his guards escaped in a disguise, and owned his liberty to have flowed chiefly from the king's endeavours to procure it. And thus stood the king as to foreign affairs: he had infinitely obliged both the pope and the French king, and was firmly united to them, and engaged in a war against the emperor, when he began first to move about his divorce. As for Scotland, the near alliance between him and James the Fourth, king of Scotland, did not take away the standing animosities between the two nations, nor interrupt the alliance between France and Scotland. And therefore when he made the first war upon France, in the fourth year of his reign, the king of Scotland came with a great army into the north of England, but was totally defeated by the earl of Surrey in Flodden Field (Sept. 9, 1513). The king himself was either killed in the battle, or soon after; so that the kingdom falling under factions, during the minority of the new king, the government was but feeble, and scarce able to secure its own quiet. And the duke of Albany, the chief instrument of the French faction, met with such opposition from the parties that were raised against him by King Henry's means, that he could give him no disturbance. And when there came to be a lasting peace between England and France, then, as the king needed to fear no trouble from that warlike nation, so he got a great interest in the government there. And at this time money becoming a more effectual engine than any the war had ever produced, and the discovery of the Indies having brought great wealth into Europe, princes began to deal more in that trade than before so that both France and England had their instruments in Scotland, and gave considerable yearly pensions to the chief heads of parties and families. In the search I have made, I have found several warrants for sums of money, to be sent into Scotland, and divided there among the favourers of the English interest; and it is not to be doubted but France traded in the same manner, which continued till a happier way was found out for extinguishing these quarrels, both the crowns being set on one head.

Having thus showed the state of this king's government as to foreign matters, I shall next give an account of the administration of affairs at home, both as to civil and spiritual matters. The king upon his first coming to the crown did choose a wise council, partly out of those whom his father had trusted, partly out of those that were recommended to him by his grandmother, the countess of Richmond and Derby, in whom was the right of the house of Lancaster,

though she willingly devolved her pretensions on her son, claiming nothing to herself, but the satisfaction of being mother to a king. She was a wise and religious woman, and died soon after her grandson came to the crown (1509). There was a faction in the council, between Fox, bishop of Winchester, and the lord treasurer, which could never be well made up, though they were often reconciled: Fox always complaining of the lord treasurer, for squandering away so soon that vast mass of treasure left by the king's father; in which the other justified himself, that what he did was by the king's warrants, which he could not disobey: but Fox objected, that he was too easy to answer, if not to procure these warrants, and that he ought to have given the king better advice. In the king's first parliament (Jan. 21, 1510) things went as he desired, upon his delivering up Empson and Dudley, in which his preventing the severity of the houses, and proceeding against them at the common law, as it secured his ministers from an unwelcome precedent, so the whole honour of it fell on the king's justice.

His next parliament was in the third year of his reign (Feb. 4, 1512), and there was considered the brief from Pope Julius the Second to the king, complaining of the indignities and injuries done to the apostolic see and the pope by the French king, and entreating the king's assistance with such cajoling words as are always to be expected from popes on the like occasions. It was first read by the master of the rolls in the house of lords, and then the lord chancellor (Warham, archbishop of Canterbury), and the lord treasurer, with other lords, went down to the house of commons, and read it there. Upon this and other reasons they gave the king subsidies towards the war with France. At this time Fox, to strengthen his party against the lord treasurer, finding Thomas Wolsey to be a likely man to get into the king's favour, used all his endeavours to raise him, who was at that time neither unknown nor inconsiderable: he was at first made a privy counsellor, and frequently admitted to the king's presence, and waited on him over to France. The king liked him well, which he so managed that he quickly engrossed the king's favour to himself, and for fifteen years together was the most absolute favourite that had ever been seen in England: all foreign treaties and places of trust at home were at his ordering; he did what he pleased, and his ascendant over the king was such, that there never appeared any party against him all that while. The great artifice by which he insinuated himself so much on the king, is set down very plainly by one that knew him well, in these words: "In him the king conceived such a