Gardiner's outspoken remonstrances were useless against one who pleaded
an amiable incompetence. Against the churnings of Henry's conscience
Clement set up the churnings of his own conscience, and no one could
gainsay the Pope's right to a conscience as much as the English king.
After pursuing this course during the month of March the Pope at length
with sighs and tears devised a compromise, in which he feared that he
had outstepped the bounds of discretion. He accepted one of the
documents which the English envoys had brought, the permission for the
king to marry whom he would as soon as his marriage with Katharine had
been dissolved. He altered the terms of the other document, which
provided for the appointment of a commission with plenary powers to
pronounce on the validity of the king's marriage; he granted the
commission, but did not give it plenary power; at the same time he chose
as the commissioner who was to sit with Wolsey Cardinal Campeggio, who
was the protector of England in the Papal Court, and who was rewarded
for his services by holding the bishopric of Hereford. In this way he
showed every mark of goodwill to Henry short of acquiescing entirely in
the procedure which he proposed; but he kept the final decision of the
matter in his own hands.
Gardiner was not wholly pleased with this result of his skill and
firmness: after all his efforts to obtain a definite solution the Pope
had managed to escape from giving any binding promise. Still, Foxe put a
good face on Gardiner's exploits when he returned to England in the end
of April. Henry and Anne Boleyn were delighted, and Wolsey, though he
was more dissatisfied than Gardiner, thought it best to be hopeful. He
tried to bind the Pope more firmly, and instructed Gardiner to press
that the law relating to Henry's case should be laid down in a papal
decretal, so that the legates should only have to determine the question
of fact; this decretal he promised to keep entirely secret; besides
this, he urged that there should be no delay in sending Campeggio.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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