Wolsey himself, Gardiner, Foxe, Casale, and every English envoy employed in the case, warned and threatened Clement that, if he refused Henry's demands, he would involve Wolsey and the Papal cause in England in a common ruin.

"He alleged," says Campeggio of Wolsey, "that if the King's desire were not complied with...

there would follow the speedy and total ruin of the kingdom, of his Lordship and of the Church's influence in this kingdom."[585] "I cannot reflect upon it," wrote Wolsey himself, "and close my eyes, for I see ruin, infamy and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the See Apostolic if this course is persisted in.

You see in what dangerous times we are.

If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt remedies which are injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement confessed that, though the Pope was supposed to carry the papal laws locked up in his breast, Providence had not vouchsafed him the key wherewith to unlock them; and Gardiner roughly asked in retort whether in that case the papal laws should not be committed to the flames.[587] He told how the Lutherans were instigating Henry to do away with the temporal (p.