"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the world. How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath sufficiently declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had contemned the order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity of your Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to you both, nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done what he has done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as now, if without such respect he would have followed his pleasure." The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's forbearance, and after that to say:-- "Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step right forth out of the maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an end in seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the matter hath been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath in it common justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common order, his Grace hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath found the true order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and hath done as becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering his cause from the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and think, that among mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must once have an end, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness cannot as he would, then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey to be perfected must, if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his matter with the pope, he shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he taketh for his friend, and as to a friend he openeth these matters to you, trusting to find your Majesty no less friendly than he hath done heretofore."[437] If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of the relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that he could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most pleasant merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness of it," that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by God's grace he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this expectation he was a little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would have acknowledged, yet plain speech is never without its value; and Charles himself after he had tried other expedients, and they had not succeeded with him, found it more prudent to acquiesce in what could no longer be altered, and to return to cordiality.