was inclining to substitute for both the well-dowered Infanta Isabella
[Footnote: Otherwise called Elizabeth. The names are interchangeable.] of
Portugal. Among all the surprising matrimonial complications of this
half-century, one particular feature appears to be tolerably constant--that
when Charles was not actually married, he was rarely without at least one
fiancee actual, and another prospective.

At any rate, the total result in 1520 was that Henry was in separate
alliance with Francis on one side and with Charles on the other; alliances
which neither could afford to break, but on which neither could rely.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's aims]

The main interest of Wolsey's career, from the national point of view,
attaches to his conduct of foreign policy: and in the confusion of
alliances and counter-alliances it is not always easy to recognise the
objects of that policy or its fundamental consistency. The aim always in
view was to prevent any Power or combination of Powers from dominating
Europe; to substitute diplomacy for the actual arbitrament of arms; to
secure for England recognition as the true arbiter without involving her in
war. The three first-class Powers of the earlier years were reduced to two
by the combination under one head, Charles V., of Spain and the Empire,
with France as the sole Continental rival.

But behind Wolsey's own policy was the traditional one of hostility to
France, popular in the country, supported by the nobility, and offering
attractions to an ambitious and martial-minded monarch who was not yet
thirty years of age: whose Queen moreover was by birth and sympathy a
strong partisan of Spain. Hence the Cardinal was liable to be forced out of
his mediatorial position into one of hostility to France.