The deadlock with regard to the validity of the marriage could not continue indefinitely, for the legitimacy of the Princess Mary having been called into question, the matter now vitally touched the succession to the English crown. Katharine was immovable. She would neither retire to a convent nor accept a decision from an English tribunal, and, through her proctor in Rome, she passionately pressed for a decision there in her favour. Norfolk, at the end of his not very extensive mental resources, could only wish that both Katharine and Anne were dead and the King married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry's marriage should be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England he dreaded before all things. But Charles's troops were in Rome and his agents for ever bullying the wretched Pope, and the latter was obliged to reply finally to the English peers with a rebuke. There were those both in England and abroad who urged Henry to marry Anne at once, and depend upon the recognition of the _fait accompli_ by means of negotiation afterwards, but this did not satisfy either the King or the favourite. Every interview between the King and the Nuncio grew more bitter than the previous one. No English cause, swore Henry, should be tried outside his realm where he was master; and if the Pope insisted in giving judgment for the Queen, as he had promised the Emperor to do, the English Parliament should deal with the matter in spite of Rome.