Henry.[70] Clement now recurred to it, and having sent privately for Da Casale, he said to him: ‘This is what we have hit upon: we permit his Majesty to have two wives.’[71] The infallible pontiff proposed bigamy to a king. Da Casale was still more astonished than he had been at the time of Clement’s first communication. ‘Holy father,’ he said to the pope, ‘I doubt whether such a mode will satisfy his Majesty, for he desires above all things to have the burden removed from his conscience.’[72] This guilty proposal led to nothing; the king, sure of the lords and of the people, advanced rapidly in the path of independence. The day after that on which the pope authorized him to take two wives, Henry issued a bold proclamation, pronouncing against whosoever should ask for or bring in a papal bull contrary to the royal prerogative ‘imprisonment and further punishment of their bodies according to his Majesty’s good pleasure.[73] Clement, becoming alarmed, replied to the address: ‘We desire as much as you do that the king should have male children; but, alas! we are not God to give him sons.’[74] Men were beginning to stifle under these manœuvres and tergiversations of the papacy; they called for air, and some went so far as to say that if air was not given them, they must snap their fetters and break open the doors. Footnote 58: Stokesley to the Earl of Wiltshire, January 16, 1530: _State Papers_, vii. p. 227. Footnote 59: Le Grand, _Preuves du Divorce_, p. 459. This letter is from Du Bellay, and not from Montmorency, as a distinguished historian has supposed. Footnote 60: The opinions of these universities are given in Burnet’s _Records_, i. p. 83. Footnote 61: ‘Tale conjugium horrendum esse, execrabile, detestandum, viroque christiano etiam cuilibet infideli prorsus abominabile.’—Rymer, _Acta_, vi. p. 155. Footnote 62: Burnet, _Records_, iii. p. 87. Footnote 63: _State Papers_, vii. p. 242. Footnote 64: Burnet, _Records_, i. p. 82. Footnote 65: Calvin’s letter or dissertation (_Calvini Epistolæ_, p. 384) harmonizes the apparently contradictory passages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy; but I much doubt if it belongs to this period. Footnote 66: ‘Tam grande peccatum futurum permitti non debet.’—Lutheri _Epp._ iv. p. 265. Footnote 67: Burnet, _Records_, i. p. 88. Footnote 68: Fuller, _Church History_, p. 182. Footnote 69: ‘Malorum pelagus reipublicæ nostræ imminere cernimus ac certum quoddam diluvium comminari.’—Rymer, _Acta_, vi. p. 160. Footnote 70: ‘Rex aliam uxorem ducat.’—Letter of G. Da Casale, Orvieto, January 13, 1528. Footnote 71: ‘Ut duas uxores habeat.’—Rome, September 28, 1530. Herbert, p. 330. Footnote 72: ‘An conscientiæ satisfieri posset, quam V. M. imprimis exonerare cupit.’—Herbert, p. 330. Footnote 73: Collier, ii. p. 60. Footnote 74: ‘Sed pro Deo non sumus, ut liberos dare possimus.’—Herbert, p. 338.