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162 ANNUAL REGISTER
I shall submit to the consideration of the reader.
After the councils of Basil and Constance, European sovereigns found the court of Rome as tractable as before it had been the reverse. The affair of Henry VIIIth's divorce, presents us with an extraordinary example of a resistance and resolution the more astonishing, as they were less to be expected from the character of Clement VII. Cardinal Wolsey conceived the first idea of this divorce, in circumstances when every thing seemed to insure its success. He had just acceded upon his master's account to the alliance between France, the pope, and the Venetians: he looked upon the divorce as a secure battery against the emperor; but he did not foresee the pillaging of Rome, the imprisonment of the pope, his complete reconciliation with Charles V. and the superiority which these extraordinary accidents were likely to give this prince, whose opposition formed the only knot of a difficulty, which it was in vain to attempt to solve by Leviticus, by Deuteronomy, and by the suffrage of scholastic doctors and the opinions of universities. The pope exhausted all the artifices of his countrymen to avoid coming to a decision, and endeavoured to shew Henry VIII. that it was out of his power to determine the matter. He even went so far as to suggest to him to have an affair examined into and decided in England, without his concurrence, expressing his regret that the king had not followed the advice, which, at the very beginning of the affair, had been given him by the prelates of his kingdom, an advice which had been opposed by Cardinal Wolsey upon pretext of deference for the Holy See, but in reality because he then found as much facility as security in recurring to Rome.
The English historians, even Mr. Hume himself, have neglected to discuss this point, which is of the greater importance as it determined the disgraec of Wolsey, and as it seems to disculpate the court of Rome of the inflexibility which it is accused of, and which it could not avoid shewing, since it was become entirely dependent on Charles V*.
We
For the YEAR 1772. 163
We shall conclude these extracts with the whimsical opinion of our author, as to the cause which enabled the people of this country to export such vast quantities of wheat.
The English bread is very good, and very fine, though it has a great deal of crumb. It was the English, that first thought of using yest or the flower of beer for leaven to make bread: a custom, which, with great difficulty, began to obtain at Paris about the middle of the last century. The first edition of the History of the Police of Paris presents us with extraordinary papers relative to the contests which it occasioned. The parliament of Paris, taking cognizance of this affair, consulted the most eminent citizens, together with the gentlemen of the faculty, and were almost for consulting the Sorbonne; their contradictory opinions increasing the difficulty, instead of diminishing it, the little loaves continued in possession of the yest or flower of beer. The case will, no doubt, be the same with regard to inoculation, for which likewise all Europe is indebted to England. Those who are interested on either side of the question, cannot read the pieces relative to this affair, collected by the commissioner la Marre, without the highest satisfaction; especially the opinion of the famous bookseller Vitré: that piece could not discover more humour, if Moliere himself had drawn it up.
The butter and tea, which the Londonners live upon from morning till three or four o'clock in the afternoon, occasion the chief consumption of bread, which is cut in slices, and so thin, that it does as much honour to the address of the person who cuts it, as to the sharpness of the knife. Two or three of these slices furnish out a breakfast. They are no less sparing in their other meals: what would be scarce enough for a Frenchman of an ordinary appetite, would suffice three hungry Englishman. They seem to eat bread merely through fear of being thought to eat none at their meals: as this is the national taste, their physicians look upon bread as the heaviest of all aliments, and the hardest of digestion. 'Tis this taste, and the custom established in consequence of it, which enables the English to export a prodigious quantity of
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*I meet with a proof of this fact, in a letter written to legate Campeggio, in the pope's name, by Cardinal Salviati, and inserted in a Collection of Lettere di XIII. Huomini Illustr. fol. 28. N. S. (Il papa) sá e daglt effetti a conosciuto l'ottima mente del reverenfissimo ed illustrissimo Monsignor Eboracensé, verlo le cose della sede Apostolica; ed há per certo che con medesimo animo si movesse S. S. reverendissima a fare che il serenissimo Ré domandasse un legato per questa cosa, con tutto che da Prelati del regno li fosse detto che poteva far senza. Ma volesse Iddio che S. S. Reverendissima avasse lasciato corren la cosa, perche see il ré l'avesse determinata senza l'autorita della santitá suo, o male o bene che avesse fatto, saria flato senza colpa sua e biasimo suo! "Our lord, the pope, knows and from facts has discovered the good intentions of the most reverend and illustrious Cardinal of York, with regard to the affairs of the apostolical see; and it is his firm opinion, that the most reverend cardinal should, with the same good intention, endeavour to persuade the most serene king to apply for a legate to transact that affair, though he has been told by the prelates of his
kingdom,
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kingdom, that he might do without one. But would to God, that the most reverend lord cardinal had let the affairs run on, because, if the king had determined it without the authority of his holiness, whether he had done well or ill, it would have passed without any fault of his, and without his incurring any censure!"
The pope himself spoke in this manner to the agent of Henry VIII. who gives that prince an account of what his holiness said in a Latin dispatch of the 17th of September 1528, inserted in the Proofs of the History of the Divorce, by the Abbé le Grand, p. 16. Agant, said the pope to him, agant per se ipsos quod volunt, legatum remittant, eo prætextu quod in causam ulterius procedi nolint; et deinceps, ut ipsis videbitur, rem conficiant, modo ne, me auctore, injuste quidquam agatur. "Let them, said the pope, do whatever they think proper of themselves, let them send back the legate upon pretext that they do not chuse to proceed any farther in the affair; and then let them determine as they think proper, provided they do not do any injustice by my authority."
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