196 REMARKS ON THE SUPPOSITION THAT HENRY VIII. WAS 



Stood forth as the champion of the Holy See, and for his services 

 Leo X. had presented to him a consecrated sword and hat ;* a com- 

 pliment not even paid to those who wore royal and imperial crowns, 

 unless they had obtained, in person, a signal victory in defence of 

 the church. But his towering pride could ill brook the thought 

 that, while his subjects had almost raised his power to a level with 

 the attributes of divinity, himself alone of the great potentates of 

 Europe should remain uninvested with one of those high swelling 

 titles which the church conferred upon her kingly vassals ; for 

 monarchs then were proud to throw themselves at her feet, and let 

 their kingdoms be held in spiritual chains.t That he, then, who 

 stood among the foremost of all the Roman catholic sovereigns 

 should be thus undistinguished, so chafed and fretted his ambitious 

 spirit, that Wolsey at last received instructions to apply to the 

 College of CardinalsJ to bestow upon his master a title equivalent 



Angloruni rex Henricus, Leo Maxime, mittit 

 Hoc opus, et fidei testem, et amicitiae. 



In giving this distich, Roscoe in his life of Leo the tenth, vol. iv., p. 58, 

 has printed Decime instead of Maxime; but the latter I believe to be the 

 correct word, and it is so used in Butler's Historical Memoirs of the English 

 Catholics, vol. i. p. 143. 



• In Rymer's Fcsdera. Tom vi. par. i. p. 57. De Pileo et Gladio conse- 

 cratis ad llegim missis — there is a letter from the Pontiff to Henry, which 

 explains the use and value of these rare gifts. 



-|- As a proof of the extreme obstinacy and absurd pride of Henry upon 

 this point, and of his adopting the precise line of argument, fit only to be 

 taken by those princes who were under the immediate fear of being conquered 

 and detlironed by the Pope, but certainly not by the head of a nation of high 

 spirited free-men ; I will give the reader his reply to Sir Thomas More, 

 whose wise policy suggested that in his book, '■'■The Pope's authority be more 

 slenderly totiched" " To that, answered his Highness, we will set forth that 

 authority to the uttermost, for we receive from that See our Crown imperial." 

 See Roper\H Life of More, p. TJ. Yet as Henry's ideas were ever warped by 

 prejudice and passion, we find after his defection from the Romish Commu- 

 nion, that every thing rage or malice could discover to blacken and render it 

 odious, was practised by this capricious King. There is a missal which be- 

 longed to him still preserved in the British Museum : in the Kalendar he 

 had erased all the Saints that had been Popes. 



X The noted Cardinal Campeggio was employed to make the application. 

 See Colt. MSS., Vitfel., B. iv., p. 116. The curious reader who may be 

 desirous of obtaining full information of the proceedings at Rome respect- 

 ing Henry's book, should consult Pallavicino's History of the Council of Trent, 

 in which they are discussed at length, and with apparent impartiality. To 

 this learned and acute Cardinal was confided the task of writing a true His- 

 tory of the Council of Trent as a proper antidote or set off, according to hi^ 



