“Despite the French king having verbally indicated his favour towards the divorce, the university theologians […] had thwarted his wishes and compiled a long list of signatures [against the divorce]. The bulk of Europe was under Imperial control, and the University of Paris was hard to win over.
George [Boleyn] had been sent to try to procure the direct intervention of the French king by means of a written missive. By then, the French court had left for Paris and gone to Dijon, so George set off […] accompanied by a train of courtiers who had been sent to France to accompany him. His aim was to persuade Francis to write to Pierre Lizet, the President of the Parliament of Paris, a man of great power and influence both in Paris and with the Sorbonne.
Stokesley surmised in his letter to Wiltshire that the mission would fail, as Charles V was holding Francis’s two eldest sons as hostages. He felt it highly unlikely Francis would make any direct move, which would, in the circumstances, have the effect of antagonizing Charles.
George was to use every method at his disposal to get Francis to provide direct support. And to the surprise of all, that was exactly what Francis did. George succeeded in obtaining from him a letter instructing President Lizet to dissuade the theologians from disobeying him, and threatening them with punishment if they did so. Francis’s letter is written in the strongest possible terms, saying he is much dissatisfied with those that gave an opinion [against] the King of England’s divorce, and insisting that the fault must be corrected. Francis also promised George that if Beda continued to oppose Henry VIII’s annulment, he would be banished from France.
Remarkably, George, an inexperienced diplomat, had been successful in persuading the King of France to put his full weight behind Henry’s cause, irrespective of the fact that Catherine of Aragon’s nephew was holding Francis’s sons hostage.”
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