CHAPTER XX. ENGLAND SEPARATES GRADUALLY FROM THE PAPACY. (1533.) [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn.] When Fryth mounted the scaffold, Anne Boleyn had been seated a month on the throne of England. The salvoes of artillery which had saluted the new queen had re-echoed all over Europe. There could be no more doubt: the Earl of Wiltshire’s daughter, radiant with grace and beauty, wore the Tudor crown; every one, especially the imperial family, must bear the consequences of the act. One day Sir John Hacket, English envoy at Brussels, arrived at court just as Mary, regent of the Low Countries, was about to mount her horse. ‘Have you any news from England?’ she asked him in French.—‘None,’ he replied. Mary gave him a look of surprise,[335] and added: ‘Then I have, and not over good methinks.’ She then told him of the king’s marriage, and Hacket rejoined with an unembarrassed air: ‘Madam, I know not if it has taken place, but everybody who considers it coolly and without family prejudice will agree that it is a lawful and a conscientious marriage.’ Mary, who was niece of the unhappy Catherine, replied: ‘Mr. Ambassador, God knows I wish all may go well; but I do not know how the emperor and the king my brother will take it, for it touches them as well as me.’—‘I think I may be certain,’ returned Sir John, ‘that they will take it in good part.’—‘That I do not know, Mr. Ambassador,’ said the regent, who doubted it much; and then mounting her horse, she rode out for the chase.[336] Charles V. was exasperated: he immediately pressed the pope to intervene, and on the 12th of May, Clement cited the king to appear at Rome. The pontiff was greatly embarrassed: having a particular liking for Benet, Henry’s agent, he took him aside, and said to him privately:[337] ‘It is an affair of such importance that there has been none like it for many years. I fear to kindle a fire that neither pope nor emperor will be able to quench.’ And then he added unaffectedly: ‘Besides, I cannot pronounce the king’s excommunication before the emperor has an army ready to constrain him.’ Henry being told of this _aside_ made answer: ‘Having the justice of our cause for us, with the entire consent of our nobility, commons, and subjects, we do not care for what the pope may do.’ Accordingly he appealed from the pope to a general council. The pope was now more embarrassed than ever; ‘I cannot stand still and do nothing,’ he said.[338] On the 12th of July he revoked all the English proceedings and excommunicated the king, but suspended the effects of his sentence until the end of September. ‘I hope,’ said Henry contemptuously, ‘that before then the pope will understand his folly.’[339]