That he might not shock the haughty claims of the pontiff, he resolved not to found the application on any general doubts concerning the papal power to permit marriage in the nearer degrees of consanguinity; but only to insist on particular grounds of nullity in the bull which Julius had granted for the marriage of Henry and Catharine. It was a maxim in the court of Rome, that if the pope be surprised into any concession, or grant any indulgence upon false suggestions, the bull may afterwards be annulled; and this pretence had usually been employed wherever one pope had recalled any deed executed by any of his predecessors. But Julius’s bull, when examined, afforded abundant matter of this kind; and any tribunal favorable to Henry needed not want a specious color for gratifying him in his applications for a divorce. It was said in the preamble, that the bull had been granted upon his solicitation; though it was known that, at that time, he was under twelve years of age; it was also affirmed, as another motive for the bull, that the marriage was requisite, in order to preserve peace between the two crowns; though it is certain that there was not then any ground or appearance of quarrel between them. These false premises in Julius’s bull seemed to afford Clement a sufficient reason or pretence for annulling it, and granting Henry a dispensation for a second marriage.[*] * Collier, Eccles. Hist. vol. ii p. 25, from the Cott. Lib. Vitel. p. 9 But though the pretext for this indulgence had been less plausible, the pope was in such a situation that he had the strongest motives to embrace every opportunity of gratifying the English monarch. He was then a prisoner in the hands of the emperor; and had no hopes of recovering his liberty on any reasonable terms, except by the efforts of the league which Henry had formed with Francis and the Italian powers, in order to oppose the ambition of Charles. When the English secretary, therefore, solicited him in private, he received a very favorable answer: and a dispensation was forthwith promised to be granted to his master.[*] Soon after, the march of a French army into Italy, under the command of Lautrec, obliged the imperialists to restore Clement to his liberty; and he retired to Orvietto, where the secretary, with Sir Gregory Cassali, the king’s resident at Rome, renewed their applications to him. They still found him full of high professions of friendship, gratitude, and attachment to the king; but not so prompt in granting his request as they expected. The emperor, who had got intelligence of Henry’s application to Rome, had exacted a promise from the pope, to take no steps in the affair before he communicated them to the imperial ministers; and Clement, embarrassed by this promise, and still more overawed by the emperor’s forces in Italy, seemed willing to postpone those concessions desired of him by Henry. Importuned, however, by