But besides that the interests of his kingdom seemed to require an alliance with France, his haughty spirit could not submit to a friendship imposed on him by constraint; and as he had ever been accustomed to receive courtship, deference, and solicitation from the greatest potentates, he could ill brook that dependence to which this unhappy affair seemed to have reduced him.

Amidst the anxieties with which he was agitated, he was often tempted to break off all connections with the court of Rome; and though he had been educated in a superstitious reverence to papal authority, it is likely that his personal experience of the duplicity and selfish politics of Clement had served much to open his eyes in that particular.

He found his prerogative firmly established at home: lie observed that his people were in general much disgusted with clerical usurpations, and disposed to reduce the powers find privileges of the ecclesiastical order: he knew that they had cordially taken part with him in his prosecution of the divorce, and highly resented the unworthy treatment which after so many services and such devoted attachment, he had received from the court of Rome.

Anne Boleyn also could not fail to use all her efforts, and employ every insinuation, in order to make him proceed to extremities against the pope; both as it was the readiest way to her attaining royal dignity, and as her education in the court of the duchess of Alencon, a princess inclined to the reformers, had already disposed her to a belief of the new doctrines.

But notwithstanding these inducements, Henry had strong motives still to desire a good agreement with the sovereign pontiff.