and P._, i., 4560.] [Footnote 158: _Ibid._, i., 5203.] [Footnote 159: _Ven.Cal_., ii., 295.

Charles was fourteen, Mary eighteen years of age.] Henry was learning by bitter experience.

Not only was he left to face single-handed the might of Louis; but Ferdinand and Maximilian had secretly bound themselves to make war on him, if he carried out the treaty to which they had all three publicly agreed.

The man whom he said he loved as a natural father, and the titular sovereign of Christendom, had combined to cheat the boy-king who had come to the throne with youthful enthusiasms and natural, generous instincts.

"Nor do I see," said Henry to Giustinian, "any faith in the world save in me, and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs."[160] This absorbing belief in himself and his righteousness led to strange aberrations in later years, but in 1514 it had some justification.