The king, who pretended to be neutral, engaged them to send their ambassadors to Calais, there to negotiate a peace under the mediation of Wolsey and the pope's nuncio.

The emperor was well apprised of the partiality of these mediators; and his demands in the conference were so unreasonable as plainly proved him conscious of the advantage.

He required the restitution of Burgundy, a province which many years before had been ceded to France by treaty, and which, if in his possession, would have given him entrance into the heart of that kingdom: and he demanded to be freed from the homage which his ancestors had always done for Flanders and Artois, and which he himself had by the treaty of Noyon engaged to renew.
{1521.} On Francis's rejecting these terms, the congress of Calais broke up; and Wolsey soon after took a journey to Bruges, where he met with the emperor.

He was received with the same state, magnificence, and respect, as if he had been the king of England himself; and he concluded, in his master's name, an offensive alliance with the pope and the emperor against France.

He stipulated that England should next summer invade that kingdom with forty thousand men; and he betrothed to Charles the princess Mary, the king's only child, who had now some prospect of inheriting the crown.