the Parliament's assistance in any measures designed to invigorate
the Church. At last arises in the divorce question the accident
which brings to an issue on its most vital point the question of
Papal power in England, and which finally draws down ruin upon Wolsey
himself.

This appears to have begun in the winter of 1526-27. It was proposed
to marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The Bishop
of Tarbes, who conducted the negotiations, advised himself,
apparently by special instigation of the evil spirit, to raise a
question as to her legitimacy.

No more ingenious plan for convulsing England could have been
devised. The marriage from which Mary sprang only stood on a
reluctant and doubtful dispensation of the Pope's. Henry had entered
into it at the entreaty of his ministers, contrary to a solemn
promise given to his father, and in spite of the remonstrances of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. No blessing seemed to have rested on it.
All his children had died young, save this one sickly girl: a sure
note of divine displeasure in the eyes of that coarse-minded Church
which has always declared the chief, if not the only, purpose of
marriage to be the procreation of children.

But more: to question Mary's legitimacy was to throw open the
question of succession to half a dozen ambitious competitors. It
was, too probably, to involve England at Henry's death in another
civil war of the Roses, and in all the internecine horrors which were
still rankling in the memories of men; and probably, also, to bring
down a French or Scotch invasion. There was then too good reason, as
Mr. Froude shows at length, for Wolsey's assertion to John Cassalis--