said to have been forwarded by the Pope to the court of Spain.[6] As
the English agents had been instructed to seek not merely the
appointment of a commission to declare the invalidity of the
dispensation, and consequently of the marriage, but also for a
dispensation which would permit the king to marry a woman related to
him in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity had been
contracted by a lawful or unlawful connexion, it was thought prudent
not to lay stress on the argument that marriage with the deceased
brother's wife was prohibited by the divine law, and that, therefore,
the Pope could not grant a dispensation such as had been issued by
Julius II. At a later date great stress was laid upon this argument.

Clement VII., while not unwilling to grant the dispensation
requested,[7] did not think it consistent with his own honour or that
of the king, to grant the commission according to the terms drawn up
for him in England. A new embassy, consisting of Edward Foxe, and Dr.
Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey's secretary, was dispatched, and arrived at
Orvieto in March 1528. The victorious progress of the French armies in
Italy (1527-28), by relieving Clement VII. from the pressure of the
imperial party, favoured the petition of Henry VIII. Arguments drawn
from canon law and from theology were driven home by Gardiner with a
fluency and wealth of knowledge that astonished the papal advisers,
and when arguments failed, recourse was had to threats of an appeal to
a general council, and of the complete separation of England from the
Holy See. The decretal commission demanded by the English ambassadors
was, however, refused; but, in its place, a decree was issued
empowering Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio to try the case in
England and to pronounce a verdict in accordance with the evidence
submitted to them. As this fell very far short of what had been
demanded by the English envoys, new demands were made for a more ample