370 HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 



the king, and the year of our Lord one thousand five 

 hundred, was the year of jubilee at Rome. But 

 Pope Alexander, to save the hazard and charges of 

 men s journies to Rome, thought good to make over 

 those graces by exchange, to such as would pay a 

 convenient rate, seeing they could not come to fetch 

 them. For which purpose was sent into England, 

 Jasper Pons, a Spaniard, the pope s commissioner, 

 better chosen than were the commissioners of Pope 

 Leo, afterwards employed for Germany ; for he 

 carried the business with great wisdom, and sem 

 blance of holiness : insomuch as he levied great sums 

 of money within this land to the pope s use, with 

 little or no scandal. It was thought the king shared 

 in the money ; but it appeareth by a letter which 

 Cardinal Adrian, the king s pensioner, wrote to the 

 king from Rome some few years after, that this was 

 not so. For this cardinal, being to persuade Pope 

 Julius, on the king s behalf, to expedite the bull of 

 dispensation for the marriage between Prince Henry 

 and the Lady Catharine, finding the pope difficile 

 in granting thereof, doth use it as a principal argu 

 ment concerning the king s merit towards that see, 

 that he had touched none of those deniers which had 

 been levied by Pons in England. But that it might 

 the better appear, for the satisfaction of the common 

 people, that this was consecrated money, the same 

 nuncio brought unto the king a brief from the pope, 

 wherein the king was exhorted and summoned to 

 come in person against the Turk : for that the pope, 

 out of the care of an universal father, seeing almost 



