The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

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10 HISTORY OF THE POPES.
France could not think of new conquests in Italy. In addition
to this, French statesmen had come to the conclusion, since
the last Franco-Spanish war, that it would be much better for
France to give up the policy of seeking for territory in Italy.
The instructions for the French ambassador in Rome, accord-
ingly, were to the effect that if none of the proposed candidates
could be pushed through, it would be well to support someone
else, irrespective of nationality, provided that he were worthy
of the dignity, and free from ambition.
Spain, too, no longer thought of conquests in Italy. The
aims of Philip II. were to preserve peace in his own dominions,
and to strengthen the Catholic Church against the new doc-
trines, and, if only for the latter reason, he was deeply inter-
ested as to who should obtain the tiara. When Philip
appointed Don Juan de Figueroa as his ambassador in Rome,
shortly after the war with Paul IV., he impressed upon his
envoy that his most important task would be his procedure
at the next Papal election.^ However anxious Philip may
have been that no one should be elected to the Papal throne
who would begin a new war with Spain, Figueroa was never-
theless instructed not to endeavour, in the first place, to gain
influence in the conclave in any political sense or from a
political point of view. The king was much more anxious
to have a Pope " who would be zealous for the service of God,
and for the well-being and pacification of Christendom, who
would eradicate religious errors and disputes, and prevent
their spread, and who would devote himself to the urgently-
needed work of reform, and who would preserve Christendom,
and especially Italy, which had been so sorely tried by the war,
^MULLER, 32.
^ So writes Francesco di Guadagno to the Duke of Mantua,
Rome, September, 16, 1559 :
^
*" Giovedi (September 14) sera
entrorno in conclavi li rev^ Ghisa et Strozzi, con ordine, dicono,
di non havere rispetto ne a Francesi ne a Imperiali ma solo a far
un homo da bene et che sia atto a tal carico." (Gonzaga Archives,
Mantua)
** *Instruction for Figueroa on September 25, 1559 (Simancas
Archives). Extract in Muller, 84.
^