HENRY VIII

IV.

THE THREE RIVALS.

The edifice which Wolsey had so laboriously built up was, however, based on no surer foundation than the feeble life of a sickly monarch already tottering to his grave. In the midst of his preparations for the conquest of Milan and his negotiations for an attack upon Spain, Louis XII. died on 1st January, 1515; and the stone which Wolsey had barely rolled up the hill came down with a rush. The bourgeois Louis was succeeded by the brilliant, ambitious and warlike Francis I., a monarch who concealed under the mask of chivalry and the culture of arts and letters a libertinism beside which the peccadilloes of Henry or Charles seem virtue itself; whose person was tall and whose features were described as handsome; but of whom an observer wrote with unwonted candour that he "looked like the Devil". The first result of the change was an episode of genuine romance. The old King's widow, "la reine blanche," was one of the most fascinating women of the Tudor epoch. "I think," said a Fleming, "never man saw a more beautiful creature, nor one having so much grace and sweetness." "He had never seen so beautiful a lady," repeated Maximilian's ambassador, "her deportment is exquisite, both in conversation and in dancing, and she is very lovely." "She is very beautiful," echoed the staid old Venetian, Pasqualigo, "and has not her match in England; she is tall, fair, of a light complexion with a colour, and most affable and graceful"; he was warranted, he said, in describing her as "a nymph from heaven". A more critical observer of feminine beauty thought her eyes and eyebrows too light, but, as an Italian, he may have been biassed in favour of brunettes, and even he wound up by calling Mary "a Paradise". She was eighteen at the time; her marriage with a dotard like Louis had shocked public opinion; and if, as was hinted, the gaieties in which his youthful bride involved him, hastened the French King's end, there was some poetic justice in the retribution. She had, as she reminded Henry herself, only consented to marry the "very aged and sickly" monarch on condition that, if she survived him, she should be allowed to choose her second husband herself. And she went on to declare, that "remembering the great virtue" in him, she had, as Henry himself was aware, "always been of good mind to my Lord of Suffolk".

She was probably fascinated less by Suffolk's virtue than by his bold and handsome bearing. A bluff Englishman after the King's own heart, he shared, as none else did, in Henry's love of the joust and tourney, in his skill with the lance and the sword; he was the Hector of combat, on foot and on horse, to Henry's Achilles. His father, plain William Brandon, was Henry of Richmond's standard-bearer on Bosworth field; and as such he had been singled out and killed in personal encounter by Richard III. His death gave his son a claim on the gratitude of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; and similarity of tastes secured him rapid promotion at the young King's Court. Created Viscount Lisle, he served in 1513 as marshal of Henry's army throughout his campaign in France. With the King there were said to be "two obstinate men who governed everything"; one was Wolsey, the other was Brandon. In July he was offering his hand to Margaret of Savoy, who was informed that Brandon was "a second king," and that it would be well to write him "a kind letter, for it is he who does and undoes". At Lille, in October, he continued his assault on Margaret as a relief from the siege of Tournay; Henry favoured his suit, and when Margaret called Brandon a larron for stealing a ring from her finger, the King was called in to help Brandon out with his French. Possibly it was to smooth the course of his wooing that Brandon, early in 1514, received an extraordinary advancement in rank. There was as yet only one duke in England, but now Brandon was made Duke of Suffolk, at the same time that the dukedom of Norfolk was restored to Surrey for his victory at Flodden. Even a dukedom could barely make the son of a simple esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three wives. This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his master in later years.

In January, 1515, the Duke was sent to Paris to condole with Francis on Louis' death, to congratulate him on his own accession, and renew the league with England. Before he set out, Henry made him promise that he would not marry Mary until their return. But Suffolk was not the man to resist the tears of a beautiful woman in trouble, and he found Mary in sore distress. No sooner was Louis dead than his lascivious successor became, as Mary said, "importunate with her in divers matters not to her honour," in suits "the which," wrote Suffolk, "I and the Queen had rather be out of the world than abide". Every evening Francis forced his attentions upon the beautiful widow. Nor was this the only trouble which threatened the lovers. There were reports that the French would not let Mary go, but marry her somewhere to serve their own political purposes. Henry, too, might want to betroth her again to Charles; Maximilian was urging this course, and telling Margaret that Mary must be recovered for Charles, even at the point of the sword. Early in January, Wolsey had written to her, warning her not to make any fresh promise of marriage. Two friars from England, sent apparently by Suffolk's secret enemies, told Mary the same tale, that if she returned to England she would never be suffered to marry the Duke, but made to take Charles for her husband, "than which," she declared, "I would rather be torn in pieces". Suffolk tried in vain to soothe her fears. She refused to listen, and brought him to his knees with the announcement that unless he would wed her there and then, she would continue to believe that he had come only to entice her back to England and force her into marriage with Charles. What was the poor Duke to do, between his promise to Henry and the pleading of Mary? He did what every other man with a heart in his breast and warm blood in his veins would have done, he cast prudence to the winds and secretly married the woman he loved.

The news could not be long concealed, but unfortunately we have only Wolsey's account of how it was received by Henry. He took it, wrote the cardinal to Suffolk, "grievously and displeasantly," not only on account of the Duke's presumption, but of the breach of his promise to Henry. "You are," he added, "in the greatest danger man was ever in;" the council were calling for his ruin. To appease Henry and enable the King to satisfy his council, Suffolk must induce Francis to intervene in his favour, to pay Henry two hundred thousand crowns as Mary's dowry, and to restore the plate and jewels she had received; the Duke himself was to return the fortune with which Henry had endowed his sister and pay twenty-four thousand pounds in yearly instalments for the expenses of her marriage. Francis proved unexpectedly willing; perhaps his better nature was touched by the lovers' distress. He also saw that Mary's marriage with Suffolk prevented her being used as a link to bind Charles to Henry; and he may have thought that a service to Suffolk would secure him a powerful friend at the English Court, a calculation that was partly justified by the suspicion under which Suffolk henceforth laboured, of being too partial to Francis. Yet it was with heavy hearts that the couple left Paris in April and wended their way towards Calais. Henry had given no sign; from Calais, Mary wrote to him saying she would go to a nunnery rather than marry against her desire. Suffolk threw himself on the King's mercy; all the council, he said, except Wolsey, were determined to put him to death. Secretly, against his promise, and without Henry's consent, he had married the King's sister, an act the temerity of which no one has since ventured to rival. He saw the executioner's axe gleam before his eyes, and he trembled.

At Calais, Mary said she would stay until she heard from the King. His message has not been preserved, but fears were never more strangely belied than when the pair crossed their Rubicon. So far from any attempt being made to separate them, their marriage was publicly solemnised before Henry and all his Court on 13th May, at Greenwich. In spite of all that happened, wrote the Venetian ambassador, Henry retained his friendship for Suffolk; and a few months later he asserted, with some exaggeration, that the Duke's authority was scarcely less than the King's. He and Mary were indeed required to return all the endowment, whether in money, plate, jewels or furniture, that she received on her marriage. But both she and the Duke had agreed to these terms before their offence. They were not unreasonable. Henry's money had been laid out for political purposes which could no longer be served; and Mary did not expect the splendour, as Duchess of Suffolk, which she had enjoyed as Queen of France. The only stipulation that looks like a punishment was the bond to repay the cost of her journey to France; though not only was this modified later on, but the Duke received numerous grants of land to help to defray the charge. They were indeed required to live in the country; but the Duke still came up to joust as of old with Henry on great occasions, and Mary remained his favourite sister, to whose issue, in preference to that of Margaret, he left the crown by will. The vindictive suspicions which afterwards grew to rank luxuriance in Henry's mind were scarcely budding as yet; his favour to Suffolk and affection for Mary were proof against the intrigues in his Court. The contrast was marked between the event and the terrors which Wolsey had painted; and it is hard to believe that the Cardinal played an entirely disinterested part in the matter. It was obviously his cue to exaggerate the King's anger, and to represent to the Duke that its mitigation was due to the Cardinal's influence; and it is more than possible that Wolsey found in Suffolk's indiscretion the means of removing a dangerous rival. The "two obstinate men" who had ruled in Henry's camp were not likely to remain long united; Wolsey could hardly approve of any "second king" but himself, especially a "second king" who had acquired a family bond with the first. The Venetian ambassador plainly hints that it was through Wolsey that Suffolk lost favour. In the occasional notices of him during the next few years it is Wolsey, and not Henry, whom Suffolk is trying to appease; and we even find the Cardinal secretly warning the King against some designs of the Duke that probably existed only in his own imagination.

This episode threw into the shade the main purpose of Suffolk's embassy to France. It was to renew the treaty concluded the year before, and apparently also the discussions for war upon Spain. Francis was ready enough to confirm the treaty, particularly as it left him free to pursue his designs on Milan. With a similar object he made terms with the Archduke Charles, who this year assumed the government of the Netherlands, but was completely under the control of Chièvres, a Frenchman by birth and sympathy, who signed his letters to Francis "your humble servant and vassal". Charles bound himself to marry Louis XII.'s daughter Renée, and to give his grandfather Ferdinand no aid unless he restored Navarre to Jean d'Albret. Thus safeguarded from attack on his rear, Francis set out for Milan. The Swiss had locked all the passes they thought practicable; but the French generals, guided by chamois hunters and overcoming almost insuperable obstacles, transported their artillery over the Alps near Embrun; and on 13th September, at Marignano, the great "Battle of the Giants" laid the whole of Northern Italy at the French King's feet. At Bologna he met Leo X., whose lifelong endeavour was to be found on both sides at once, or at least on the side of the bigger battalions; the Pope recognised Francis's claim to Milan, while Francis undertook to support the Medici in Florence, and to countenance Leo's project for securing the Duchy of Urbino to his nephew Lorenzo.

Henry watched with ill-concealed jealousy his rival's victorious progress; his envy was personal, as well as political. "Francis," wrote the Bishop of Worcester in describing the interview between the French King and the Pope at Bologna, "is tall in stature, broad-shouldered, oval and handsome in face, very slender in the legs and much inclined to corpulence." His appearance was the subject of critical inquiry by Henry himself. On May Day, 1515, Pasqualigo was summoned to Greenwich by the King, whom he found dressed in green, "shoes and all," and mounted on a bay Frieslander sent him by the Marquis of Mantua; his guard were also dressed in green and armed with bows and arrows for the usual May Day sports. They breakfasted in green bowers some distance from the palace. "His Majesty," continues Pasqualigo, "came into our arbor, and addressing me in French, said: 'Talk with me awhile. The King of France, is he as tall as I am?' I told him there was but little difference. He continued, 'Is he as stout?' I said he was not; and he then inquired, 'What sort of legs has he?' I replied 'Spare'. Whereupon he opened the front of his doublet, and placing his hand on his thigh, said: 'Look here; and I also have a good calf to my leg'. He then told me he was very fond of this King of France, and that on more than three occasions he was very near him with his army, but that he would never allow himself to be seen, and always retreated, which His Majesty attributed to deference for King Louis, who did not choose an engagement to take place." After dinner, by way of showing his prowess, Henry "armed himself cap-à-pie and ran thirty courses, capsizing his opponent, horse and all". Two months later, he said to Giustinian: "I am aware that King Louis, although my brother-in-law, was a bad man. I know not what this youth may be; he is, however, a Frenchman, nor can I say how far you should trust him;" and Giustinian says he at once perceived the great rivalry for glory between the two young kings.

Henry now complained that Francis had concealed his Italian enterprise from him, that he was ill-treating English subjects, and interfering with matters in Scotland. The last was his real and chief ground for resentment. Francis had no great belief that Henry would keep the peace, and resist the temptation to attack him, if a suitable opportunity were to arise. So he had sent the Duke of Albany to provide Henry with an absorbing disturbance in Scotland. Since the death of James IV. at Flodden, English influence had, in Margaret's hands, been largely increased. Henry took upon himself to demand a voice in Scotland's internal affairs. He claimed the title of "Protector of Scotland"; and wrote to the Pope asking him to appoint no Scottish bishops without his consent, and to reduce the Archbishopric of St. Andrews to its ancient dependence on York. Many urged him to complete the conquest of Scotland, but this apparently he refused on the ground that his own sister was really its ruler and his own infant nephew its king. Margaret, however, as an Englishwoman, was hated in Scotland, and she destroyed much of her influence by marrying the Earl of Angus. So the Scots clamoured for Albany, who had long been resident at the French Court and was heir to the Scottish throne, should James IV.'s issue fail. His appearance was the utter discomfiture of the party of England; Margaret was besieged in Stirling and ultimately forced to give up her children to Albany's keeping, and seek safety in flight to her brother's dominions.

Technically, Francis had not broken his treaty with England, but he had scarcely acted the part of a friend; and if Henry could retaliate without breaking the peace, he would eagerly seize any opportunity that offered. The alliance with Ferdinand and Maximilian was renewed, and a new Holy League formed under Leo's auspices. But Leo soon afterwards made his peace at Bologna with France. Charles was under French influence, and Henry's council and people were not prepared for war. So he refused, says Giustinian, Ferdinand's invitations to join in an invasion of France. He did so from no love of Francis, and it was probably Wolsey's ingenuity which suggested the not very scrupulous means of gratifying Henry's wish for revenge. Maximilian was still pursuing his endless quarrel with Venice; and the seizure of Milan by the French and Venetian allies was a severe blow to Maximilian himself, to the Swiss, and to their protégé, Sforza. Wolsey now sought to animate them all for an attempt to recover the duchy, and Sforza promised him 10,000 ducats a year from the date of his restoration. There was nothing but the spirit of his treaty with France to prevent Henry spending his money as he thought fit; and it was determined to hire 20,000 Swiss mercenaries to serve under the Emperor in order to conquer Milan and revenge Marignano. The negotiation was one of great delicacy; not only was secrecy absolutely essential, but the money must be carefully kept out of Maximilian's reach. "Whenever," wrote Pace, "the King's money passed where the Emperor was, he would always get some portion of it by force or false promises of restitution." The accusation was justified by Maximilian's order to Margaret, his daughter, to seize Henry's treasure as soon as he heard it was on the way to the Swiss. "The Emperor," said Julius II., "is light and inconstant, always begging for other men's money, which he wastes in hunting the chamois."

The envoy selected for this difficult mission was Richard Pace, scholar and author, and friend of Erasmus and More. He had been in Bainbridge's service at Rome, was then transferred to that of Wolsey and Henry, and as the King's secretary, was afterwards thought to be treading too close on the Cardinal's heels. He set out in October, and arrived in Zurich just in time to prevent the Swiss from coming to terms with Francis. Before winter had ended the plans for invasion were settled. Maximilian came down with the snows from the mountains in March; on the 23rd he crossed the Adda; on the 25th he was within nine miles of Milan, and almost in sight of the army of France. On the 26th he turned and fled without striking a blow. Back he went over the Adda, over the Oglio, up into Tyrol, leaving the French and Venetians in secure possession of Northern Italy. A year later they had recovered for Venice the last of the places of which it had been robbed by the League of Cambrai.

Maximilian retreated, said Pace, voluntarily and shamefully, and was now so degraded that it signified little whether he was a friend or an enemy. The cause of his ignominious flight still remains a mystery; countless excuses were made by Maximilian and his friends. He had heard that France and England had come to terms; 6,000 of the Swiss infantry deserted to the French on the eve of the battle. Ladislaus of Hungary had died, leaving him guardian of his son, and he must go to arrange matters there. He had no money to pay his troops. The last has an appearance of verisimilitude. Money was at the bottom of all his difficulties, and drove him to the most ignominious shifts. He had served as a private in Henry's army for 100 crowns a day. His councillors robbed him; on one occasion he had not money to pay for his dinner; on another he sent down to Pace, who was ill in bed, and extorted a loan by force. He had apparently seized 30,000 crowns of Henry's pay for the Swiss; the Fuggers, Welzers and Frescobaldi, were also accused of failing to keep their engagements, and only the first month's pay had been received by the Swiss when they reached Milan. On the Emperor's retreat the wretched Pace was seized by the Swiss and kept in prison as security for the remainder. His task had been rendered all the more difficult by the folly of Wingfield, ambassador at Maximilian's Court, who, said Pace, "took the Emperor for a god and believed that all his deeds and thoughts proceeded ex Spiritu Sancto". There was no love lost between them; the lively Pace nicknamed his colleague "Summer shall be green," in illusion perhaps to Wingfield's unending platitudes, or to his limitless belief in the Emperor's integrity and wisdom. Wingfield opened Pace's letters and discovered the gibe, which he parried by avowing that he had never known the time when summer was not green. On another occasion he forged Pace's signature, with a view of obtaining funds for Maximilian; and he had the hardihood to protest against Pace's appointment as Henry's secretary. At last his conduct brought down a stinging rebuke from Henry; but the King's long-suffering was not yet exhausted, and Wingfield continued as ambassador to the Emperors Court.

The failure of the Milan expedition taught Wolsey and Henry a bitter but salutary lesson. It was their first attempt to intervene in a sphere of action so distant from English shores and so remote from English interests as the affairs of Italian States. Complaints in England were loud against the waste of money; the sagacious Tunstall wrote that he did not see why Henry should bind himself to maintain other men's causes. All the grandees, wrote Giustinian, were opposed to Wolsey's policy, and its adoption was followed by what Giustinian called a change of ministry in England. Warham relinquished the burdens of the Chancellorship which he had long unwillingly borne; Fox sought to atone for twenty-eight years' neglect of his diocese by spending in it the rest of his days. Wolsey succeeded Warham as Chancellor, and Ruthal, who "sang treble to Wolsey's bass," became Lord Privy Seal in place of Fox. Suffolk was out of favour, and the neglect of his and Fox's advice was, according to the Venetian, resented by the people, who murmured against the taxes which Wolsey's intervention in foreign affairs involved.

But Wolsey still hoped that bribes would keep Maximilian faithful to England and induce him to counteract the French influences with which his grandson Charles was surrounded. Ferdinand had died in January, 1516, having, said the English envoy at his Court, wilfully shortened his life by hunting and hawking in all weathers, and following the advice of his falconers rather than that of his physicians. Charles thus succeeded to Castile, Aragon and Naples; but Naples was seriously threatened by the failure of Maximilian's expedition and the omnipotence of Francis in Italy. "The Pope is French," wrote an English diplomatist, "and everything from Rome to Calais." To save Naples, Charles, in July, 1516, entered into the humiliating Treaty of Noyon with France. He bound himself to marry Francis's infant daughter, Charlotte, to do justice to Jean d'Albret in the matter of Navarre, and to surrender Naples, Navarre, and Artois, if he failed to keep his engagement. Such a treaty was not likely to stand; but, for the time, it was a great feather in Francis's cap, and a further step towards the isolation of England. It was the work of Charles's Gallicised ministry, and Maximilian professed the utmost disgust at their doings. He was eager to come down to the Netherlands with a view to breaking the Treaty of Noyon and removing his grandson's advisers, but of course he must have money from England to pay his expenses. The money accordingly came from the apparently bottomless English purse; and in January, 1517, the Emperor marched down to the Netherlands, breathing, in his despatches to Henry, threatenings and slaughter against Charles's misleaders. His descent on Flanders eclipsed his march on Milan. "Mon fils," he said to Charles, "vous allez tromper les Français, et moi, je vais tromper les Anglais." So far from breaking the Treaty of Noyon, he joined it himself, and at Brussels solemnly swore to observe its provisions. He probably thought he had touched the bottom of Henry's purse, and that it was time to dip into Francis's. Seventy-five thousand crowns was his price for betraying Henry.

In conveying the news to Wolsey, Tunstall begged him to urge Henry "to refrain from his first passions" and "to draw his foot out of the affair as gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good words which they yet give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that we perceive not their abuses". Their persistent advances to Charles had, he thought, done them more harm than good; let the King shut his purse in time, and he would soon have Charles and the Emperor again at his feet. Tunstall was ably seconded by Dr. William Knight, who thought it would be foolish for England to attempt to undo the Treaty of Noyon; it contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. Charles would not wait to marry Francis's daughter, and then the breach would come. Henry and Wolsey had the good sense to act on this sound advice. Maximilian, Francis and Charles formed at Cambrai a fresh league for the partition of Italy, but they were soon at enmity and too much involved with their own affairs to think of the conquest of others. Disaffection was rife in Spain, where a party wished Ferdinand, Charles's brother, to be King. If Charles was to retain his Spanish kingdoms, he must visit them at once. He could not go unless England provided the means. His request for a loan was graciously accorded and his ambassadors were treated with magnificent courtesy. "One day," says Chieregati, the papal envoy in England, "the King sent for these ambassadors, and kept them to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping, proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day there was "a most stately joust." Henry was magnificently attired in "cloth of silver with a raised pile, and wrought throughout with emblematic letters". When he had made the usual display in the lists, the Duke of Suffolk entered from the other end, with well-nigh equal array and pomp. He was accompanied by fourteen other jousters. "The King wanted to joust with all of them; but this was forbidden by the council, which, moreover, decided that each jouster was to run six courses and no more, so that the entertainment might be ended on that day.... The competitor assigned to the King was the Duke of Suffolk; and they bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles." "They tilted," says Sagudino, "eight courses, both shivering their lances at every time, to the great applause of the spectators." Chieregati continues: "On arriving in the lists the King presented himself before the Queen and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air, and after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another... doing this constantly, and reappearing in the lists until the end of the jousts". Dinner was then served, amid a scene of unparalleled splendour, and Chieregati avers that the "guests remained at table for seven hours by the clock". The display of costume on the King's part was equally varied and gorgeous. On one occasion he wore "stiff brocade in the Hungarian fashion," on another, he "was dressed in white damask in the Turkish fashion, the above-mentioned robe all embroidered with roses, made of rubies and diamonds"; on a third, he "wore royal robes down to the ground, of gold brocade lined with ermine"; while "all the rest of the Court glittered with jewels and gold and silver, the pomp being unprecedented".

All this riot of wealth would no doubt impress the impecunious Charles. In September he landed in Spain, so destitute that he was glad to accept the offer of a hobby from the English ambassador. At the first meeting of his Cortes, they demanded that he should marry at once, and not wait for Francis's daughter; the bride his subjects desired was the daughter of the King of Portugal. They were no more willing to part with Navarre; and Charles was forced to make to Francis the feeble excuse that he was not aware, when he was in the Netherlands, of his true title to Navarre, but had learnt it since his arrival in Spain; he also declined the personal interview to which Francis invited him. A rupture between Francis and Charles was only a question of time; and, to prepare for it, both were anxious for England's alliance. Throughout the autumn of 1517 and spring of 1518, France and England were feeling their way towards friendship. Albany had left Scotland, so that source of irritation was gone. Henry had now a daughter, Mary, and Francis a son. "I will unite them," said Wolsey; and in October, 1518, not only was a treaty of marriage and alliance signed between England and France, but a general peace for Europe. Leo X. sent Campeggio with blessings of peace from the Vicar of Christ, though he was kept chafing at Calais for three months, till he could bring with him Leo's appointment of Wolsey as legate and the deposition of Wolsey's enemy, Hadrian, from the Bishopric of Bath and Wells. The ceremonies exceeded in splendour even those of the year before. They included, says Giustinian, a "most sumptuous supper" at Wolsey's house, "the like of which, I fancy, was never given by Cleopatra or Caligula; the whole banqueting hall being so decorated with huge vases of gold and silver, that I fancied myself in the tower of Chosroes, when that monarch caused Divine honours to be paid him. After supper... twelve male and twelve female dancers made their appearance in the richest and most sumptuous array possible, being all dressed alike.... They were disguised in one suit of fine green satin, all over covered with cloth of gold, undertied together with laces of gold, and had masking hoods on their heads; the ladies had tires made of braids of damask gold, with long hairs of white gold. All these maskers danced at one time, and after they had danced they put off their visors, and then they were all known.... The two leaders were the King and the Queen Dowager of France, and all the others were lords and ladies." These festivities were followed by the formal ratification of peace. Approval of it was general, and the old councillors who had been alienated by Wolsey's Milan expedition, hastened to applaud. "It was the best deed," wrote Fox to Wolsey, "that ever was done for England, and, next to the King, the praise of it is due to you." Once more the wheel had come round, and the stone of Sisyphus was lodged more secure than before some way up the side of the hill.

This general peace, which closed the wars begun ten years before by the League of Cambrai, was not entirely due to a universal desire to beat swords into ploughshares or to even turn them against the Turk. That was the everlasting pretence, but eighteen months before, Maximilian had suffered a stroke of apoplexy; men, said Giustinian, commenting on the fact, did not usually survive such strokes a year, and rivals were preparing to enter the lists for the Empire. Maximilian himself, faithful to the end to his guiding principle, found a last inspiration in the idea of disposing of his succession for ready money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French. "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis was "going about covertly and laying many baits," to attain the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another design for extracting Henry's gold "for the electors would never allow the crown to go out of their nation". The Emperor had first proposed it while serving under Henry's banners in France. He renewed the suggestion in 1516, inviting Henry to meet him at Coire. The brothers in arms were thence to cross the Alps to Milan, where the Emperor would invest the English King with the duchy; he would then take him on to Rome, resign the Empire himself, and have Henry crowned. Not that Maximilian desired to forsake all earthly authority; he sought to combine a spiritual with a temporal glory; he was to lay down the imperial crown and place on his brows the papal tiara. Nothing was too fantastic for the Emperor Maximilian; the man who could not wrest a few towns from Venice was always deluding himself with the hope of leading victorious hosts to the seat of the Turkish Empire and the Holy City of Christendom; the sovereign whose main incentive in life was gold, informed his daughter that he intended to get himself canonised, and that after his death she would have to adore him. He died at Welz on 12th January, 1519, neither Pope nor saint, with Jerusalem still in the hands of the Turk, and the succession to the Empire still undecided.

The contest now broke out in earnest, and the electors prepared to garner their harvest of gold. The price of a vote was a hundredfold more than the most corrupt parliamentary elector could conceive in his wildest dreams of avarice. There were only seven electors and the prize was the greatest on earth. Francis I. said he was ready to spend 3,000,000 crowns, and Charles could not afford to lag far behind. The Margrave of Brandenburg, "the father of all greediness," as the Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother, the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French Princess Renée; Charles bid higher by offering his sister Catherine. Francis relied much on his personal graces, the military renown he had won by the conquest of Northern Italy, and the assistance of Leo. With the Pope he concluded a fresh treaty that year for the conquest of Ferrara, the extension of the papal States, and the settlement of Naples on Francis's second son, on condition that it was meanwhile to be administered by papal legates, and that its king was to abstain from all interference in spiritual matters. Charles, on the other hand, owed his advantages to his position and not to his person. Cold, reserved and formal, he possessed none of the physical or intellectual graces of Francis I. and Henry VIII. He excelled in no sport, was unpleasant in features and repellent in manners. No gleam of magnanimity or chivalry lightened his character, no deeds in war or statecraft yet sounded his fame. He was none the less heir of the Austrian House, which for generations had worn the imperial crown; as such, too, he was a German prince, and the Germanic constitution forbade any other the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. Against this was the fact that his enormous dominions, including Naples and Spain, would preclude his continued residence in Germany and might threaten the liberties of the German people.

But was there no third candidate? Leo at heart regarded the election of either as an absolute evil. He had always dreaded Maximilian's claims to the temporal power of the Church, though Maximilian held not a foot of Italian soil. How much more would he dread those claims in the hands of Francis or Charles! One threatened the papal States from Milan, and the other from Naples. Of the two, he feared Francis the less; for the union of Naples with the Empire had been such a terror to the Popes, that before granting the investiture of that kingdom, they bound its king by oath not to compete for the Empire. But a third candidate would offer an escape from between the upper and the nether mill-stone; and Leo suggested at one time Charles's brother Ferdinand, at another a German elector. Precisely the same recommendations had been secretly made by Henry VIII. In public he followed the course he commended to Leo; he advocated the claims of both Charles and Francis, when asked so to do, but sent trusty envoys with his testimonials to explain that no credence was to be given them. He told the French King that he favoured the election of Francis, and the Spanish King the election of Charles, but like Leo he desired in truth the election of neither. Why should he not come forward himself? His dominions were not so extensive that, when combined with the imperial dignity, they would threaten to dominate Europe; and his election might seem to provide a useful check in the balance of power. In March he had already told Francis that his claims were favoured by some of the electors, though he professed a wish to promote the French King's pretensions. In May, Pace was sent to Germany with secret instructions to endeavour to balance the parties and force the electors into a deadlock, from which the only escape would be the election of a third candidate, either Henry himself or some German prince. It is difficult to believe that Henry really thought his election possible or was seriously pushing his claim. He had repeatedly declined Maximilian's offers; he had been as often warned by trusty advisers that no non-German prince stood a chance of election; he had expressed his content with his own islands, which, Tunstall told him with truth, were an Empire worth more than the barren imperial crown. Pace went far too late to secure a party for Henry, and, what was even more fatal, he went without the persuasive of money. Norfolk told Giustinian, after Pace's departure, that the election would fall on a German prince, and such, said the Venetian, was the universal belief and desire in England. After the election, Leo expressed his "regret that Henry gave no attention to a project which would have made him a near, instead of a distant, neighbour of the papal States". Under the circumstances, it seems more probable that the first alternative in Pace's instructions no more represented a settled design in Henry's mind than his often-professed intention of conquering France, and that the real purport of his mission was to promote the election of the Duke of Saxony or another German prince.

Whether that was its object or not the mission was foredoomed to failure. The conclusion was never really in doubt. Electors might trouble the waters in order to fish with more success. They might pretend to Francis that if he was free with his money he might be elected, and to Charles that unless he was free with his money he would not, but no sufficient reason had been shown why they should violate national prejudices, the laws of the Empire, and prescriptive hereditary right, in order to place Henry or Francis instead of a German upon the imperial throne. Neither people nor princes nor barons, wrote Leo's envoys, would permit the election of the Most Christian King; and even if the electors wished to elect him, it was not in their power to do so. The whole of the nation, said Pace, was in arms and furious for Charles; and had Henry been elected, they would in their indignation have killed Pace and all his servants. The voice of the German people spoke in no uncertain tones; they would have Charles and no other to be their ruler. Leo himself saw the futility of resistance, and making a virtue of necessity, he sent Charles an absolution from his oath as King of Naples. As soon as it arrived, the electors unanimously declared Charles their Emperor on 28th June.

Thus was completed the shuffling of the cards for the struggle which lasted till Henry's death. Francis had now succeeded to Louis, Charles to both his grandfathers, and Henry at twenty-eight was the doyen of the princes of Europe. He was two years older than Francis and eight years older than Charles. Europe had passed under the rule of youthful triumvirs whose rivalry troubled its peace and guided its destinies for nearly thirty years. The youngest of all was the greatest in power. His dominions, it is true, were disjointed, and funds were often to seek, but these defects have been overrated. It was neither of these which proved his greatest embarrassment. It was a cloud in Germany, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, but soon to darken the face of Europe. Ferdinand and Maximilian had at times been dangerous; Charles wielded the power of both. He ruled over Castile and Aragon, the Netherlands and Naples, Burgundy and Austria; he could command the finest military forces in Europe; the infantry of Spain, the science of Italy, the lance-knights of Germany, for which Ferdinand sighed, were at his disposal; and the wealth of the Indies was poured out at his feet. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus, and the only hope of lesser men lay in the maintenance of Francis's power. Were that to fail, Charles would become arbiter of Christendom, Italy a Spanish kingdom, and the Pope little more than the Emperor's chaplain. "Great masters," said Tunstall, with reference to a papal brief urged by Charles in excuse for his action in 1517, "could get great clerks to say what they liked." The mastery of Charles in 1517 was but the shadow of what it became ten years later; and if under its dominance "the great clerk" were called upon to decide between "the great master" and Henry, it was obvious already that all Henry's services to the Papacy would count for nothing.

For the present, those services were to be remembered. They were not, indeed, inconsiderable. It would be absurd to maintain that, since his accession, Henry had been actuated by respect for the Papacy more than by another motive; but it is indisputable that that motive had entered more largely into his conduct than into that of any other monarch. James IV. and Louis had been excommunicated, Maximilian had obstinately countenanced a schismatic council and wished to arrogate to himself the Pope's temporal power. Ferdinand's zeal for his house had eaten him up and left little room for less selfish impulses; his anxiety for war with the Moor or the Turk was but a cloak; and the value of his frequent demands for a Reformation may be gauged by his opinion that never was there more need for the Inquisition, and by his anger with Leo for refusing the Inquisitors the preferments he asked. From hypocrisy like Ferdinand's Henry was, in his early years, singularly free, and the devotion to the Holy See, which he inherited, was of a more than conventional type. "He is very religious," wrote Giustinian, "and hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He hears the office every day in the Queen's chamber, that is to say, vesper and compline." The best theologians and doctors in his kingdom were regularly required to preach at his Court, when their fee for each sermon was equivalent to ten or twelve pounds. He was generous in his almsgiving, and his usual offering on Sundays and saints' days was six shillings and eightpence or, in modern currency, nearly four pounds; often it was double that amount, and there were special offerings besides, such as the twenty shillings he sent every year to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. In January, 1511, the gentlemen of the King's chapel were paid what would now be seventy-five pounds for praying for the Queen's safe delivery, and similar sums were no doubt paid on other occasions. In 1513, Catherine thought Henry's success was all due to his zeal for religion, and a year or two later Erasmus wrote that Henry's Court was an example to all Christendom for learning and piety.

Piety went hand in hand with a filial respect for the head of the Church. Not once in the ten years is there to be found any expression from Henry of contempt for the Pope, whether he was Julius II. or Leo X. There had been no occasion on which Pope and King had been brought into conflict, and almost throughout they had acted in perfect harmony. It was the siege of Julius by Louis that drew Henry from his peaceful policy to intervene as the champion of the Papal See, and it was as the executor of papal censures that he made war on France. If he had ulterior views on that kingdom, he could plead the justification of a brief, drawn up if not published, by Julius II., investing him with the French crown. A papal envoy came to urge peace in 1514, and a Pope claimed first to have suggested the marriage between Mary and Louis. The Milan expedition of 1516 was made under cover of a new Holy League concluded in the spring of the previous year, and the peace of 1518 was made with the full approval and blessings of Leo. Henry's devotion had been often acknowledged in words, and twice by tangible tokens of gratitude, in the gift of the golden rose in 1510 and of the sword and cap in 1513. But did not his services merit some more signal mark of favour? If Ferdinand was "Catholic," and Louis "Most Christian," might not some title be found for a genuine friend? And, as early as 1515, Henry was pressing the Pope for "some title as protector of the Holy See". Various names were suggested, "King Apostolic," "King Orthodox," and others; and in January, 1516, we find the first mention of "Fidei Defensor". But the prize was to be won by services more appropriate to the title than even ten years' maintenance of the Pope's temporal interests. His championship of the Holy See had been the most unselfish part of Henry's policy since he came to the throne; and his whole conduct had been an example, which others were slow to follow, and which Henry himself was soon to neglect.