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—‘If his Holiness, which God forbid, shall show himself unwilling to listen to the King’s demands, to me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for the innumerable evils which I foresee will follow . . . Nothing before us but universal and inevitable ruin.’ Too good reason there was for the confession of the Pope himself to Gardner, ‘What danger it was to the realm to have this thing hang in suspense . . . That without an heir-male, etc., the realm was like to come to dissolution.’ Too good reason for the bold assertion of the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna, that ‘he knew the guise of England as few men did, and that if the King should die without heirs-male, he was sure that it would cost two hundred thousand men’s lives; and that to avoid this mischief by a second marriage, he thought, would deserve heaven.’ Too good reason for the assertion of Hall, that ‘all indifferent and discreet persons judged it necessary for the Pope to grant Henry a divorce, and, by enabling him to marry again, give him the hope of an undisputed heir-male.’ The Pope had full power to do this; in fact, such cases had been for centuries integral parts of his jurisdiction as head of Christendom. But he was at once too timid and too time-serving to exercise his acknowledged authority; and thus, just at the very moment when his spiritual power was being tried in the balance, he chose himself to expose his political power to the same test. Both were equally found wanting. He had, it appeared, as little heart to do justice among kings and princes as he had to seek and to save the souls of men; and the Reformation followed as a matter of course.