He instructs Wyatt to reproach Charles with ingratitude.
In April, parliament was to meet—the same parliament which had passed the Six Articles Bill with acclamation. It was to be seen in what temper they would bear the suspension of their favourite measure. The bearing of the parliament, was, however, for the moment, of comparative indifference. The king and his ministers were occupied with other matters too seriously to be able to attend it. A dispute had arisen between the Emperor and the Duke of Cleves, on the duchy of Gueldres, to which Charles threatened to assert his right by force; and, galling as Henry found his marriage, the alliance in which it had involved him, its only present recommendation, was too useful to be neglected. The treatment of English residents in Spain, the open patronage of Brancetor, and the haughty and even insolent language which had been used to Wyatt, could not be passed over in silence, whatever might be the consequences; and, with the support of Germany, he believed that he might now, perhaps, repay the Emperor for the alarms and anxieties of years. After staying a few days in Paris, Charles had gone on to Brussels. On the receipt of Wyatt’s despatch with the account of his first interview, the king instructed him to require in reply the immediate surrender of the English traitor; to insist that the proceedings of the Inquisition should be redressed and punished; and to signify, at the same time, that the English government desired to mediate between himself and the king’s brother-in-law. Nor was the imperiousness of the message to be softened in the manner of delivery. More than once Henry had implied that Charles was under obligations to England for the Empire. Wyatt was instructed to allude pointedly to these and other wounding memories, and particularly, and with marked emphasis, to make use of the word “ingratitude.” The object was, perhaps, to show that Henry was not afraid of him; perhaps to express a real indignation which there was no longer reason to conceal.
Indignation of the Emperor.
The directions were obeyed; and Wyatt’s English haughtiness was likely to have fulfilled them to the letter. The effect was magical. The Emperor started, changed colour, hesitated, and then burst in anger. “It is too much,” he said, “to use the term ingrate to me. The inferior may be ingrate to the greater. The term is scant sufferable between like.” Perhaps, he added, as Wyatt was speaking in a foreign language, he might have used a word which he imperfectly comprehended. Wyatt assured him placidly that there was no error: the word was in his instructions, and its meaning perfectly understood. “The king took it so.” “Kings’ opinions are not always the best,” Charles replied. “I cannot tell, sir,” the ambassador answered, “what ye mean by that; but if ye think to note the king my master of anything that should touch him, I assure you he is a prince to give reason to God and the world sufficient in his opinions.” Leaving the word as it stood, he required an answer to the material point.
He will not surrender Brancetor.
If English merchants dislike the Inquisition, they had better avoid Spain.
Henry makes overtures to Francis.
He accuses Charles of aiming at universal empire,
And suggests a coalition which may end in his capture and imprisonment.
If Henry was indifferent to a quarrel, the Emperor seemed to be equally willing; Wyatt gathered from his manner, either that he was careless of consequences, or that he desired to provoke the English to strike the first blow. He answered as before, that Brancetor had committed no crime that he knew of. If the King of England would be more explicit in his accusations, he would consider them. His dispute with the Duke of Cleves he intended to settle by himself, and would allow of no interference; and as to the merchants, he had rather they should never visit his countries at all, than visit them to carry thither their heresy.[554] Irritation is a passion which it is seldom politic to excite; and a message like that of Wyatt had been better undelivered, unless no doubt existed of being able to support it by force. A fixed idea in Cromwell’s mind, which we trace in all his correspondence, was the impossibility of a genuine coalition between Charles and Francis. Either misled by these impressions, or deceived by rumours, Henry seems to have been acting, not only in a reliance on the Germans, but in a belief that the Emperor’s visit to Paris had closed less agreeably than it had opened, that the Milan quarrel had revived, and that the hasty partnership already threatened a dissolution. Some expectations of the kind he had unquestionably formed, for, on the arrival of Wyatt’s letter with the Emperor’s answer, he despatched the Duke of Norfolk on a mission into France, which, if successful, would have produced a singular revulsion in Europe. Francis was to be asked frankly how the Italian question stood. If the Emperor was dealing in good faith with him, or if he was himself satisfied, nothing more need be desired; if, on the contrary, he felt himself “hobbled with a vain hope,” there was now an opportunity for him to take fortune prisoner, to place his highest wishes within his grasp, and revenge Pavia, and his own and his children’s captivity. The ingratitude story was to be repeated, with Charles’s overbearing indignation; redress for the open and iniquitous oppression of English subjects had been absolutely refused; and the Emperor’s manner could be interpreted only as bearing out what had long been suspected of him, that he “aspired to bring Christendom to a monarchy;” that “he thought himself superior to all kings,” and, “by little and little,” would work his way to universal empire. His insolence might be punished, and all dangers of such a kind for ever terminated, at the present juncture. A league was in process of formation, for mutual defence, between the King of England, the Duke of Cleves, the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave, and other princes of the Empire. Let Francis join them, and “they would have the Emperor in such a pitfall, that percase it might be their chance to have him prisoner at their pleasure, his being so environed with them, and having no way to start.”[555]