158) enough that Dacre had done them magnificent service.[446] [Footnote 443: _L.

and P._, iii., 2362.] [Footnote 444: _Ibid._, iii., 2541.] [Footnote 445: _Ibid._, iii., 2551.] [Footnote 446: _L.

and P._, iii., 2537.] The results of the war from the English point of view had as yet been contemptible, but great things were hoped for the following year.
Bourbon, Constable of France, and the most powerful peer in the kingdom, intent on the betrayal of Francis, was negotiating with Henry and Charles the price of his treason.[447] The commons in France, worn to misery by the taxes of Francis and the ravages of his enemies, were eager for anything that might promise some alleviation of their lot.
They would even, it appears, welcome a change of dynasty; everywhere, Henry was told, they cried "Vive le roi d'Angleterre!"[448] Never, said Wolsey, would there be a better opportunity for recovering the King's right to the French crown; and Henry exclaimed that he trusted to treat Francis as his father did Richard III.

"I pray God," wrote Sir Thomas More to Wolsey, "if it be good for his grace and for this realm, that then it may prove so, and else in the stead thereof, I pray God send his grace an honourable and profitable peace."[449] He could scarcely go further in hinting his preference for peace to the fantastic design which now occupied the minds of his masters.

Probably his opinion of the war was not far from that of old Bishop Fox, who declared: "I have determined, and, betwixt God and me, utterly renounced the meddling with worldly matters, specially concerning war or anything to it appertaining (whereof, for the many intolerable enormities that I have seen ensue by the said war in time past, I (p.