The horror which these executions caused among the enlightened men of the continent was displayed with more liberty and energy. 'I am dead,' exclaimed Erasmus, 'since More is dead: for, as Pythagoras says, we had but one soul between us.'[153]—'O England! O dearly beloved country,' said Reginald Pole; 'he was not only Margaret's father, but thine also!'—'This year is fatal to our order,' said Melanchthon the reformer; 'I hear that More has been killed and others also. You know how such things wring my heart.'[154]—'We banish such criminals,' said Francis I. sharply to the English ambassador, 'but we do not put them to death.'—'If I had two such lights in my kingdom,' said Charles V., 'I would sooner give two of my strongest cities than suffer them to be extinguished.' At Rome in particular the anger was terrible. They were still flattering themselves that Henry VIII. would return to his old sympathies; but now there was no more hope! The king had put to death a prince of the Church, and as he had sworn, the cardinal's hat could find no head to wear it. A consistory was immediately summoned: Cardinal de Tournon's touching letter was read, and all who heard it were moved even to tears. The embarrassed and speechless agents of England knew not what to do; and as they reported, there was everything to be feared. Perhaps nobody was so confounded as the pontiff. Paul III. was circumspect, prudent, deliberative, and temporizing; but when he thought the moment arrived, when he believed further manœuvring was not required, he no longer hesitated, but struck forcibly. It is known that he had two young relations whom, in his blind tenderness, he had created cardinals, notwithstanding their youth and the emperor's representations. 'Alas!' he exclaimed, 'I feel as mortally injured, as if my two nephews had been killed before my eyes.'[155] His most devoted partisans, and above all a cardinal of his creation put to death! There was a violent movement in his heart; he worked himself into a fury; he desired to strike the prince whose cruel deeds had wounded him so deeply. His anger burst out in a thunder-clap. On the 30th of August he issued a bull worthy of Gregory VII., which the more zealous partisans of the papacy would like to remove from the papal records.[156] 'Let King Henry repent of his crimes,' said the pontiff; 'we give him ninety days and his accomplices sixty to appear at Rome. In case of default, we strike him with the sword of anathema, of malediction, and of eternal damnation;[157] we take away his kingdom from him; we declare that his body shall be deprived of ecclesiastical burial; we launch an interdict against his States; we release his subjects from their oath of fidelity; we call upon all dukes, marquises and earls to expel him and his accomplices from England; we unbind all Christian princes from their oaths towards him, command them to march against him and constrain him