The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon
by James Anthony Froude · English · Gutenberg #33113 · 887,866 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon
Author: James Anthony Froude
Release date: July 8, 2010 [eBook #33113]
Language: English
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THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON
THE DIVORCE
OF
CATHERINE OF ARAGON
THE STORY AS TOLD BY THE IMPERIAL AMBASSADORS
RESIDENT AT THE COURT OF
HENRY VIII.
_IN USUM LAICORUM_
BY
J. A. FROUDE
_BEING A SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME TO THE
AUTHOR'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1891
[_All rights reserved_]
Copyright, 1891,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various
claimants--Catherine incapable of having further children--
Irregularity of her marriage with the King--Papal dispensations--
First mention of the divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles
V.--Policy of Wolsey--Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in
Italy--Appeal of the Pope--Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The
Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the Princess Mary called in
question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court--Alarms of
Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform
of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in
England---Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey 21
CHAPTER II.
Mission of Wolsey to Paris--Visits Bishop Fisher on the way--
Anxieties of the Emperor--Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII.--
Large offers to Wolsey--Address of the French Cardinals to the
Pope--Anne Boleyn chosen by Henry to succeed Catherine--Surprise
and displeasure of Wolsey--Fresh attempts of the Emperor to bribe
him--Wolsey forced to continue to advocate the divorce--Mission
of Dr. Knight to Rome--The Pope at Orvieto--The King applies for
a dispensation to make a second marriage--Language of the
dispensation demanded--Inferences drawn from it--Alleged intrigue
between the King and Mary Boleyn 41
CHAPTER III.
Anxiety of the Pope to satisfy the King--Fears of the Emperor--
Proposed alternatives--France and England declare war in the
Pope's defence--Campeggio to be sent to England--The King's
account of the Pope's conduct--The Pope's distress and alarm--The
secret decretal--Instructions to Campeggio 62
CHAPTER IV.
Anne Boleyn--Letters to her from the King--The Convent at
Wilton--The Divorce--The Pope's promises--Arrival of Campeggio
in England--Reception at the Bridewell Palace--Proposal to
Catherine to take the veil--Her refusal--Uncertainty of the
succession--A singular expedient--Alarms of Wolsey--The true
issue--Speech of the King in the City--Threats of the Emperor--
Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius--Alleged discovery of a brief
supplying them--Distress of Clement 70
CHAPTER V.
Demands of the Imperial Agent at Rome--The alleged Brief--Illness
of the Pope--Aspirations of Wolsey--The Pope recovers--Imperial
menaces--Clement between the anvil and the hammer--Appeal of
Henry to Francis--The trial of the cause to proceed--Instructions
to Campeggio--Opinion at Rome--Recall of Mendoza--Final interview
between Mendoza and the King 86
CHAPTER VI.
The Court at Blackfriars--The point at issue--The Pope's
competency as judge--Catherine appeals to Rome--Imperial pressure
upon Clement--The Emperor insists on the Pope's admission of the
appeal--Henry demands sentence--Interference of Bishop Fisher--
The Legates refuse to give judgment--The Court broken up--Peace
of Cambray 99
CHAPTER VII.
Call of Parliament--Wolsey to be called to account--Anxiety of
the Emperor to prevent a quarrel--Mission of Eustace Chapuys--
Long interview with the King--Alarm of Catherine--Growth of
Lutheranism--The English clergy--Lord Darcy's Articles against
Wolsey--Wolsey's fall--Departure of Campeggio--Letter of Henry to
the Pope--Action of Parliament--Intended reform of the Church--
Alienation of English feeling from the Papacy 110
CHAPTER VIII.
Hope of Wolsey to return to power--Anger of Anne Boleyn and the
Duke of Norfolk--Charles V. at Bologna--Issue of a prohibitory
brief--The Pope secretly on Henry's side--Collection of
opinions--Norfolk warns Chapuys--State of feeling in England--
Intrigues of Wolsey--His illness and death 131
CHAPTER IX.
Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power--The Royal
family of Spain--Address of the English Peers to the Pope--
Compromise proposed by the Duke of Norfolk--The English Agents at
Rome--Arrival of a new Nuncio in England--His interview with the
King--Chapuys advises the King's excommunication--Position of the
English clergy--Statute of Provisors--The clergy in a Praemunire--
Remonstrances of the Nuncio--Despair of Catherine--Her letter to
the Pope--Henry prepares for war--The introduction of briefs from
Rome forbidden--Warnings given to the Spanish Ambassador and the
Nuncio 141
CHAPTER X.
State of feeling in England--Clergy and laity--The Clergy in a
Praemunire--The Royal Supremacy--Hesitation at Rome--Submission of
the Clergy--The meaning of the new title--More and Fisher--Alarm
of the Emperor--Appeal of Catherine to him--Unpopularity of Anne
Boleyn--Threats of excommunication--Determination of Henry--
Deputation of Peers to Catherine--Catherine's reply--Intolerable
pretensions of the Emperor--Removal of Catherine from the Court 157
CHAPTER XI.
Proposals for the reunion of Christendom--Warning addressed to
the Pope--Address of the English nobles to Queen Catherine--
Advances of Clement to Henry--Embarrassments of the Pope and the
Emperor--Unwillingness of the Pope to decide against the King--
Business in Parliament--Reform of the English Church--Death of
Archbishop Warham--Bishop Fisher and Chapuys--Question of
annates--Papal Briefs--The Pope urged to excommunicate Henry--The
Pope refuses--Anger of Queen Catherine's Agent 175
CHAPTER XII.
Henry advised to marry without waiting for sentence--Meeting of
Henry and Francis--Anne Boleyn present at the interview--Value of
Anne to the French Court--Pressure on the Pope by the Agents of
the Emperor--Complaints of Catherine--Engagements of Francis--
Action of Clement--The King conditionally excommunicated--Demand
for final sentence--Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury--
Marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn--Supposed connivance of the
Pope--The Nuncio attends Parliament--The Act of Appeals--The
Emperor entreated to intervene--Chapuys and the King 192
CHAPTER XIII.
The King's claim--The obstinacy of Catherine--The Court at
Dunstable--Judgment given by Cranmer--Debate in the Spanish
Council of State--Objections to armed interference--The English
opposition--Warning given to Chapuys--Chapuys and the Privy
Council--Conversation with Cromwell--Coronation of Anne Boleyn--
Discussions at Rome--Bull supra Attentatis--Confusion of the
Catholic Powers--Libels against Henry--Personal history of
Cromwell--Birth of Elizabeth--The King's disappointment--Bishop
Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England--
Growth of Lutheranism 218
CHAPTER XIV.
Interview between the Pope and Francis at Marseilles--Proposed
compromise--The divorce case to be heard at Cambray--The Emperor
consents--Catherine refuses--The story of the Nun of Kent--Bishop
Fisher in the Tower--Imminent breach with the Papacy--Catherine
and the Princess Mary--Separation of the Princess from her
mother--Catherine at Kimbolton--Appeals to the Emperor--
Encouragement of Lutheranism--Last efforts at Rome--Final
sentence delivered by the Pope--The Pope's authority abolished in
England 243
CHAPTER XV.
The Papal curse--Determined attitude of the Princess Mary--
Chapuys desires to be heard in Parliament--Interview with the
King--Permission refused--The Act of Succession--Catherine loses
the title of Queen--More and Fisher refuse to swear to the
statute--Prospects of rebellion in Ireland--The Emperor unwilling
to interfere--Perplexity of the Catholic party--Chapuys before
the Privy Council--Insists on Catherine's rights--Singular
defence of the Pope's action--Chapuys's intrigues--Defiant
attitude of Catherine--Fears for her life--Condition of Europe--
Prospect of war between France and the Empire--Unwillingness of
the Emperor to interfere in England--Disappointment of
Catherine--Visit of Chapuys to Kimbolton 260
CHAPTER XVI.
Prosecution of Lord Dacre--Failure of the Crown--Rebellion in
Ireland--Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Delight of the Catholic party--
Preparations for a rising in England--The Princess Mary--Lord
Hussey and Lord Darcy--Schemes for insurrection submitted to
Chapuys--General disaffection among the English Peers--Death of
Clement VII.--Election of Paul III.--Expectation at Rome that
Henry would now submit--The expectation disappointed--The Act of
Supremacy--The Italian conjuror--Reginald Pole--Violence and
insolence of Anne Boleyn--Spread of Lutheranism--Intended escape
of the Princess Mary out of England 283
CHAPTER XVII.
Prospects of civil war--England and Spain--Illness of the
Princess Mary--Plans for her escape--Spirit of Queen Catherine--
The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Negotiations for a new treaty
between Henry and Charles--Debate in the Spanish Council of
State--The rival alliances--Disappointment of the confederate
Peers--Advance of Lutheranism in England--Cromwell and Chapuys--
Catherine and Mary the obstacles to peace--Supposed designs on
Mary's life 301
CHAPTER XVIII.
Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor--
Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor--
The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. Butts--The clergy
and the Reformation--The Charterhouse monks--More and Fisher in
the Tower--The Emperor in Africa--The treaty--Rebellion in
Ireland--Absolution of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald for the murder of
the Archbishop of Dublin--Treason of Lord Hussey--Fresh debates
in the Spanish Council--Fisher created cardinal--Trial and
execution of Fisher and More--Effect in Europe 318
CHAPTER XIX.
Campaign of the Emperor in Africa--Uncertainties at Rome--Policy
of Francis--English preparations for war--Fresh appeals to the
Emperor--Delay in the issue of the censures--The Princess Mary--
Letter of Catherine to the Pope--Disaffection of the English
Catholics--Libels against Henry--Cromwell and Chapuys--Lord
Thomas Fitzgerald--Dangerous position of Henry--Death of the Duke
of Milan--Effect on European policy--Intended Bull of Paul III.--
Indecision of Charles--Prospect of war with France--Advice of
Charles to Catherine--Distrust of the Emperor at the Papal
Court--Warlike resolution of the Pope restrained by the Cardinals 347
CHAPTER XX.
Illness of Queen Catherine--Her physicians' report of her
health---Her last letter to the Emperor--She sends for Chapuys--
Interview between Chapuys and Henry--Chapuys at Kimbolton--Death
of Catherine--Examination of the body--Suspicion of poison--
Chapuys's opinion--Reception of the news at the Court--Message of
Anne Boleyn to the Princess Mary--Advice of Chapuys--Unpopularity
of Anne--Court rumours 371
CHAPTER XXI.
Funeral of Catherine--Miscarriage of Anne--The Princess Mary and
the Act of Supremacy--Her continued desire to escape--Effect of
Catherine's death on Spanish policy--Desire of the Emperor to
recover the English alliance--Chapuys and Cromwell--Conditions of
the treaty--Efforts of the Emperor to recover Henry to the
Church--Matrimonial schemes--Likelihood of a separation of the
King from Anne--Jane Seymour--Anne's conduct--The Imperial
treaty--Easter at Greenwich--Debate in Council--The French
Alliance or the Imperial--The alternative advantages--Letter of
the King to his Ambassador in Spain 389
CHAPTER XXII.
Easter at Greenwich--French and Imperial factions at the English
court--Influence of Anne Boleyn--Reports of Anne's conduct
submitted to the King--Flying rumours--Secret Commission of
Enquiry--Arrests of various persons--Sir Henry Norris and the
King--Anne before the Privy Council--Sent to the Tower--Her
behaviour and admissions--Evidence taken before the Commission--
Trials of Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton--Letter of
Weston--Trial of Anne and her brother--Executions--Speech of
Rochford on the scaffold--Anne sentenced to die--Makes a
confession to Cranmer--Declared to have not been the King's
lawful wife--Nature of the confession not known--Execution 412
CHAPTER XXIII.
Competition for Henry's hand--Solicitations from France and from
the Emperor--Overtures from the Pope--Jane Seymour--General
eagerness for the King's marriage--Conduct of Henry in the
interval before Anne's execution--Marriage with Jane Seymour--
Universal satisfaction--The Princess Mary--Proposal for a General
Council--Neutrality of England in the war between France and the
Empire 436
CHAPTER XXIV.
Expectation that Henry would return to the Roman Communion--Henry
persists in carrying out the Reformation--The Crown and the
clergy--Meeting of a new Parliament--Fresh repudiation of the
Pope's authority--Complications of the succession--Attitude of
the Princess Mary--Her reluctant submission--The King empowered
to name his successor by will--Indication of his policy--The
Pilgrimage of Grace--Cost of the Reformation--The martyrs,
Catholic and Protestant 450
INDEX 465
THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON.
INTRODUCTION.
The mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men who play
leading parts on the world's stage gather about them the admiration of
friends and the animosity of disappointed rivals or political enemies. The
atmosphere becomes charged with legends of what they have said or
done--some inventions, some distortions of facts, but rarely or never
accurate. Their outward acts, being public, cannot be absolutely
misstated; their motives, being known only to themselves, are an open
field for imagination; and as the disposition is to believe evil rather
than good, the portraits drawn may vary indefinitely, according to the
sympathies of the describer, but are seldom too favourable. The more
distinguished a man is the more he is talked about. Stories are current
about him in his own lifetime, guaranteed apparently by the highest
authorities; related, insisted upon; time, place, and circumstance
accurately given--most of them mere malicious lies; yet, if written down,
to reappear in memoirs a hundred years hence, they are likely to pass for
authentic, or at least probable. Even where there is no malice,
imagination will still be active. People believe or disbelieve, repeat or
suppress, according to their own inclinations; and death, which ends the
feuds of unimportant persons, lets loose the tongues over the characters
of the great. Kings are especially sufferers; when alive they hear only
flattery; when they are gone men revenge themselves by drawing hideous
portraits of them, and the more distinguished they may have been the more
minutely their weaknesses are dwelt upon. "C'est un plaisir indicible,"
says Voltaire, "de donner des decrets contre des souverains morts quand on
ne peut en lancer contre eux de leur vivant de peur de perdre ses
oreilles." The dead sovereigns go their way. Their real work for good or
evil lives after them; but they themselves are where the opinions
expressed about their character affect them no more. To Caesar or Napoleon
it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their conduct. It
is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts which as
they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts which
are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be duly
honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be correctly
appreciated. To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy is
impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult.
Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the
time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests
rise. The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct.
The student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks
he understands--in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or
sensuality; and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction,
resents or ridicules attempts to look for other motives. So long as his
moral judgment is generally correct, he inflicts no injury, and he suffers
none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects of abhorrence; he learns to
detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus, though the character
described by the great Roman historian may have been a mere creation of
the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of the Prince of
Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip of Protestant
tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of Catholic Europe
which it would be now useless to disturb. The tendency of history is to
fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or not, and to
interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than it aspires
to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of history for
the crimes which they are alleged to have committed. It may be sometimes
shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers had
deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for
some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for
acts which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself.
Preoccupied with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which
he had learnt to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true,
is of no real moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions
of the difference between right and wrong. The whitewashing of the
villains of tradition is, therefore, justly regarded as waste of labour.
If successful, it is of imperfect value; if unsuccessful, it is a misuse
of industry which deserves to be censured. Time is too precious to be
squandered over paradoxes. The dead are gone; the censure of mankind has
written their epitaphs, and so they may be left. Their true award will be
decided elsewhere.
This is the common sense verdict. When the work of a man is done and
ended; when, except indirectly and invisibly, he affects the living world
no more, the book is closed, the sentence is passed, and there he may be
allowed to rest. The case is altered, however, when the dead still live in
their actions, when their principles and the effects of their conduct are
still vigorous and operative, and the movements which they initiated
continue to be fought over. It sometimes happens that mighty revolutions
can be traced to the will and resolution of a single man, and that the
conflict continues when he is gone. The personal character of such a man
becomes then of intrinsic importance as an argument for attack or defence.
The changes introduced by Henry VIII. are still denounced or defended with
renewed violence; the ashes of a conflict which seemed to have been
decided are again blown into a flame; and what manner of man Henry was,
and what the statesmen and churchmen were who stood by him and assisted
him in reshaping the English constitution, becomes a practical question of
our own time. By their fruits ye shall know them. A good tree cannot bear
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Roman
Catholics argue from the act to the man, and from the man back to the act.
The Reformation, they say, was a rebellion against an authority appointed
by God for the rule of the world; it was a wicked act in itself; the
author or the authors of it were presumably, therefore, themselves wicked;
and the worst interpretation of their conduct is antecedently probable,
because a revolt against the Church of Christ could only have originated
in depraved hearts. Or again, inverting the argument, they say with
sufficient plausibility that the sins and crimes of the King are
acknowledged facts of history; that from so bad a man no good thing could
ever rise; that Henry was a visible servant of the devil, and therefore
the Reformation, of which he was the instrument, was the devil's work. If
the picture drawn of him by his Catholic contemporaries is correct, the
inference is irresistible. That picture, however, was drawn by those whose
faith he wounded and whose interests he touched, and therefore might be
regarded with suspicion. Religious animosity is fertile in calumny,
because it assumes beforehand that every charge is likely to be true in
proportion to its enormity, and Catholic writers were credulous of evil
when laid to the charge of so dangerous an adversary. But the Catholics
have not been Henry's only accusers; all sorts and sects have combined in
the general condemnation. The Anglican High Churchman is as bitter against
him as Reginald Pole himself. He admits and maintains the separation from
Rome which Henry accomplished for him; but he abhors as heartily as Pole
or Lingard the internal principles of the Reformation. He resents the
control of the clergy by the civil power. He demands the restoration of
the spiritual privileges which Henry and his parliaments took away from
them. He aspires to the recovery of ecclesiastical independence. He
therefore with equal triumph points to the blots in Henry's character, and
deepens their shade with every accusation, proved or unproved, which he
can find in contemporary records. With him, too, that a charge was alleged
at the time is evidence sufficient to entitle him to accept it as a fact.
Again, Protestant writers have been no less unsparing from an imprudent
eagerness to detach their cause from a disreputable ally. In Elizabeth's
time it was a point of honour and loyalty to believe in the innocence of
her mother. If Anne Boleyn was condemned on forged or false evidence to
make way for Jane Seymour, what appears so clearly to us must have been
far clearer to Henry and his Council; of all abominable crimes committed
by tyrannical princes there was never one more base or cowardly than
Anne's execution; and in insisting on Anne's guiltlessness they have
condemned the King, his ministers, and his parliaments. Having discovered
him to have murdered his wife, they have found him also to have been a
persecutor of the truth. The Reformation in England was at its outset
political rather than doctrinal. The avarice and tyranny of the Church
officials had galled the limbs of the laity. Their first steps were to
break the chains which fretted them, and to put a final end to the
temporal power of the clergy. Spiritual liberty came later, and came
slowly from the constitution of the English mind. Superstition had been
familiarised by custom, protected by natural reverence, and shielded from
inquiry by the peculiar horror attaching to unbelief. The nation had been
taught from immemorial time that to doubt on the mysteries of faith was
the worst crime which man could commit; and while they were willing to
discover that on their human side the clergy were but brother mortals of
questionable character, they drew a distinction between the Church as a
national institution and the doctrines which it taught. An old creed could
not yield at once. The King did much; he protected individual Lutherans to
the edge of rashness. He gave the nation the English Bible. He made
Latimer a bishop. He took away completely and for ever the power of the
prelates to punish what they called heresy _ex officio_ and on their own
authority; but the zeal of the ultra-Protestants broke loose when the
restraint was taken off; the sense of the country was offended by the
irreverence with which objects and opinions were treated which they
regarded as holy, and Parliament, which had put a bit in the mouth of the
ecclesiastical courts, was driven to a substitute in the Bill of the Six
Articles. The advanced section in popular movements is usually unwise. The
characteristic excellence of the English Reformation is, that throughout
its course it was restrained by the law, and the Six Articles Bill,
tempered as it was in the execution, was a permissible, and perhaps
useful, measure in restraint of intemperance. It was the same in Germany.
Anabaptists continued to be burnt in Saxony and Hesse long after Luther's
revolt; Calvin thought the stake a fitting penalty for doubts upon the
Trinity. John Knox, in Scotland, approved of witch-burning and sending
mass-priests to the gallows. Henry could not disregard the pronounced
feeling of the majority of the English people. He was himself but one of
them, and changed slowly as they changed. Yet Protestant tradition has
assumed that the bloody whip with six strings was an act of arbitrary
ferocity. It considers that the King could, and ought to, have advanced at
once into an understanding of the principle of toleration--toleration of
the new opinions, and a more severe repression of the old. The Puritans
and Evangelicals forgot that he had given them the English Testament. They
forgot that by setting his foot upon the bishops he had opened the pulpits
to themselves, and they classed him among the persecutors, or else joined
in the shallow laughs of the ultramontane Catholics at what they pleased
to call his inconsistency.
Thus from all sides a catena of invective has been wrapped about Henry's
character. The sensible part of the country held its tongue. The speakers
and writers were the passionate and fanatical of both persuasions, and by
them the materials were supplied for the Henry VIII. who has been brought
down to us by history, while the candid and philosophic thinkers of the
last and present centuries have accepted the traditional figure. In their
desire to be impartial they have held the balance equal between Catholics
and Protestants, inclining slightly to the Catholic side, from a wish to
conciliate a respectable body who had been unjustly maligned and
oppressed; while they have lavished invectives upon the early Reformers
violent enough to have satisfied even Pole himself, whose rhetoric has
formed the base of their declamation.
Liberal philosophy would have had a bad time of it in England, perhaps in
all Europe, if there had been no Henry VIII. to take the Pope by the
throat. But one service writers like Macaulay have undoubtedly
accomplished. They have shown that it is entirely impossible to separate
the King from his ministers--to condemn Henry and to spare Cranmer.
Protestant writers, from Burnet to Southey, have tried to save the
reforming bishops and statesmen at Henry's expense. Cranmer, and Latimer,
and Ridley have been described as saints, though their master was a
villain. But the cold impartiality of Macaulay has pointed out
unanswerably that in all Henry's most questionable acts his own ministers
and his prelates were active participants--that his Privy Council, his
parliaments, his judges on the bench, the juries empanelled to try the
victims of his tyranny, were equally his accomplices; some actively
assisting; the rest, if these acts were really criminal, permitting
themselves to be bribed or terrified into acquiescence. The leading men of
all descriptions, the nation itself, through the guilt of its
representatives, were all stained in the same detestable colours. It may
be said, indeed, that they were worse than the King himself. For the King
at least may be pleaded the coarse temptations of a brutal nature; but
what palliation can be urged for the peers and judges who sacrificed Anne
Boleyn, or More, or Fisher, according to the received hypothesis? Not even
the excuse of personal fear of an all-powerful despot. For Henry had no
Janissaries or Praetorians to defend his person or execute his orders. He
had but his hundred yeomen of the guard, not more numerous than the
ordinary followers of a second-rate noble. The Catholic leaders, who were
infuriated at his attacks upon the Church, and would if they could have
introduced foreign armies to dethrone him, insisted on his weakness as an
encouragement to an easy enterprise. Beyond those few yeomen they urged
that he had no protection save in the attachment of the subjects whom he
was alienating. What strange influence was such a king able to exercise
that he could overawe the lords and gentry of England, the learned
professions, the municipal authorities? How was it that he was able to
compel them to be the voluntary instruments of his cruelty? Strangest of
all, he seems to have needed no protection, but rather to have been
personally popular, even among those who disapproved his public policy.
The air was charged with threats of insurrection, but no conspiracy was
ever formed to kill him, like those which so often menaced the life of his
daughter. When the North was in arms in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and a
question rose among the leaders whether in the event of victory the King
was to be deposed, it was found that anyone who proposed to remove him
would be torn in pieces by the people.
Granting that Henry VIII. was, as Dickens said of him, "a spot of blood
and grease" on the page of English history, the contemporary generation of
Englishmen must have been fit subjects of such a sovereign. Every country,
says Carlyle, gets as good a government as it deserves. The England of the
Cromwells and the Cranmers, the Howards and the Fitzwilliams, the
Wriothesleys and the Pagets, seems to have been made of baser materials
than any land of which mankind has preserved a record. Roman Catholics may
fairly plead that out of such a race no spiritual reform is likely to have
arisen which could benefit any human soul. Of all the arguments which can
be alleged for the return of England to the ancient fold, this is surely
the most powerful.
Yet England shows no intention of returning. History may say what it
pleases, yet England remains tenacious of the liberties which were then
won for us, and unconscious of the disgrace attaching to them;
unconscious, also, that the version of the story which it accepts contains
anything which requires explanation. The legislation of Henry VIII., his
Privy Council, and his parliaments is the Magna Charta of the modern
world. The Act of Appeals and the Act of Supremacy asserted the national
independence, and repudiated the interference of foreign bishop, prince,
or potentate within the limits of the English empire. The clergy had held
for many centuries an _imperium in imperio_. Subject themselves to no law
but their own, they had asserted an irresponsible jurisdiction over the
souls and bodies of the people. The Act for the submission of these
persons reduced them to the common condition of subjects under the control
of the law. Popes were no longer allowed to dispense with ordinary
obligations. Clerical privileges were abolished. The spiritual courts,
with their intolerable varieties of iniquity, were swept away, or coerced
within rational limits. The religious houses were suppressed, their
enormous wealth was applied for the defence of the realm, and the worse
than Augean dunghill of abuses was cleared out with resolute hand. These
great results were accomplished in the face of papal curses, in defiance
of superstitious terrors, so despicable when bravely confronted, so
terrible while the spectre of supernatural power was still unexorcised; in
the face, too, of earthly perils which might make stout hearts shake, of
an infuriated priesthood stirring the people into rebellion, of an
exasperated Catholic Europe threatening fire and sword in the name of the
Pope. These were distinguished achievements, not likely to have been done
at all by an infamous prince and infamous ministers; yet done so well that
their work is incorporated in the constitution almost in the form in which
they left it; and this mighty revolution, the greatest and most
far-reaching in modern times, was accomplished without a civil war, by
firmness of hand, by the action of Parliament, and a resolute enforcement
of the law. Nor has the effect of Henry's legislation been confined to
England. Every great country, Catholic or Protestant, has practically
adopted its chief provisions. Popes no longer pretend a power of deposing
princes, absolving subjects from their allegiance, or selling
dispensations for offences against the law of the land. Appeals are no
longer carried from the national courts to the court of the Rota. The
papal treasury is no longer supplied by the plunder of the national
clergy, collected by resident papal officials. Bishops and convocations
have ceased to legislate above and independent of the secular authority,
and clerks who commit crimes bear the same penalties as the profane. The
high quality of the Reformation statutes is guaranteed by their endurance;
and it is hard to suppose that the politicians who conceived and carried
them out were men of base conditions. The question is not of the character
of the King. If nothing was at issue but the merits or demerits of a
single sovereign, he might be left where he lies. The question is of the
characters of the reforming leaders, who, jointly with the King, were the
authors of this tremendous and beneficent revolution. Henry in all that he
did acted with these men and through them. Is it possible to believe that
qualities so opposite as the popular theory requires existed in the same
persons? Is it possible, for instance, that Cranmer, who composed or
translated the prayers in the English Liturgy, was the miserable wretch
which Macaulay or Lingard describes? The era of Elizabeth was the
outspring of the movement which Henry VIII. commenced, and it was the
grandest period in English history. Is it credible that so invigorating a
stream flowed from a polluted fountain?
Before accepting a conclusion so disgraceful--before consigning the men
who achieved so great a victory, and risked and lost their lives in the
battle, to final execration--it is at least permissible to pause. The
difficulty can only be made light of by impatience, by prejudice, or by
want of thought. To me at any rate, who wished to discover what the real
history of the Reformation had been, it seemed so considerable, that,
dismissing the polemical invectives of later writers, I turned to the
accounts of their conduct, which had been left behind by the authors of it
themselves. Among the fortunate anomalies of the situation, Henry departed
from previous custom in holding annual parliaments. At every step which
he took, either in the rearrangement of the realm or in his own domestic
confusions, he took the Lords and Commons into his council, and ventured
nothing without their consent. The preambles of the principal statutes
contain a narrative clear and precise of the motives of everything that he
did--a narrative which at least may have been a true one, which was not
put forward as a defence, but was a mere explanation of acts which on the
surface seemed violent and arbitrary. If the explanation is correct, it
shows us a time of complications and difficulties, which, on the whole,
were successfully encountered. It shows us severe measures severely
executed, but directed to public and necessary purpose, involving no
sycophancy or baseness, no mean subservience to capricious tyranny, but
such as were the natural safeguards during a dangerous convulsion, or
remedies of accidents incidental to hereditary monarchy. The story told is
clear and distinct; pitiless, but not dishonourable. Between the lines can
be read the storm of popular passions, the beating of the national heart
when it was stirred to its inmost depths. We see established institutions
rooted out, idols overthrown, and injured worshippers exasperated to fury;
the air, as was inevitable at such a crisis, full of flying rumours, some
lies, some half lies with fragments of truth attaching to them, bred of
malice or dizzy brains, the materials out of which the popular tradition
has been built. It was no insular revolution. The stake played for was the
liberty of mankind. All Europe was watching England, for England was the
hinge on which the fate of the Reformation turned. Could it be crushed in
England, the Catholics were assured of universal victory, and therefore
tongues and pens were busy everywhere throughout Christendom, Catholic
imagination representing Henry as an incarnate Satan, for which, it must
be admitted, his domestic misadventures gave them tempting opportunities.
So thick fell the showers of calumny, that, bold as he was, he at times
himself winced under it. He complained to Charles V. of the libels
circulated about him in France and Flanders. Charles, too, had suffered in
the same way. He answered, humorously, that "if kings gave occasion to be
spoken about they would be spoken about; kings were not kings of tongues."
Henry VIII. was an easy mark for slander; but if all slanders are to pass
as true which are flung at public men whose policy provides them with an
army of calumniators, the reputation of the best of them is but a spotted
rag. The clergy were the vocal part of Europe. They had the pulpits; they
had the writing of the books and pamphlets. They had cause to hate Henry,
and they hated him with an intensity of passion which could not have been
more savage had he been the devil himself. But there are men whose enmity
is a compliment. They libelled Luther almost as freely as they libelled
the English king. I myself, after reading and weighing all that I could
find forty years ago in prints or manuscripts, concluded that the real
facts of Henry's conduct were to be found in the Statute Book and nowhere
else; that the preambles of the Acts of Parliament did actually represent
the sincere opinion about him of the educated laymen of England, who had
better opportunities of knowing the truth than we can have, and that a
modern Englishman may be allowed to follow their authority without the
imputation of paradox or folly.
With this impression, and with the Statute Book for a guide, I wrote the
opening portion of my "History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the
Defeat of the Armada." The published criticisms upon my work were
generally unfavourable. Catholic writers inherited the traditions and the
temper of their forefathers, and believed the catena of their own
historians. Protestants could not believe in a defence of the author of
the Six Articles Bill. Secular reviewers were easily witty at the "model
husband" whom they supposed me to be imposing upon them, and resented the
interference with a version of the story authenticated by great names
among my predecessors. The public, however, took an interest in what I had
to say. The book was read, and continues to be read; at the close of my
life, therefore, I have to go once more over the ground; and as I am still
substantially alone in maintaining an opinion considered heretical by
orthodox historians, I have to decide in what condition I am to leave my
work behind me. In the thirty-five years which have elapsed since those
early volumes appeared large additions have been made to the materials for
the history of the period. The vast collection of manuscripts in the
English Record Office, which then were only partially accessible, have
been sorted, catalogued, and calendared by the industry of my friends Mr.
Brewer and Mr. Gairdner. Private collections in great English houses have
been examined and reported on by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.
Foreign archives at Paris, Simancas, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Brussels
have been searched to some extent by myself, but in a far larger degree by
able scholars specially appointed for the purpose. In the despatches, thus
made accessible, of the foreign ambassadors resident at Henry's court we
have the invaluable, if not impartial, comments of trained and responsible
politicians who related from day to day the events which were passing
under their eyes. Being Catholics, and representatives of Catholic
powers, they were bitterly hostile to the Reformation--hostile alike on
political grounds and religious--and therefore inclined to believe and
report the worst that could be said both of it and of its authors. But
they wrote before the traditions had become stereotyped; their accounts
are fresh and original; and, being men of the world, and writing in
confidence to their own masters, they were as veracious as their
prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too, they render another
service of infinite importance. Being in close communication with the
disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged with them secretly in
promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V. reveal with extraordinary
clearness the dangers with which the Government had to deal. They make it
perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with its stern and peremptory
demands, was no more than a legitimate and necessary defence against
organised treason.
It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to what I had
already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a flower
or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are resolved
into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The effect of
these despatches is precisely the same--we see with the eyes, we hear with
the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they describe.
Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their
origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with
the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or
malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in
modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal
witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader
must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are
false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be
equally certain that lies were told as freely then as now. He will
probably allow his sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what
fits in with his creed or his theory. He will share the general
disposition to believe evil, especially about kings and great men. The
exaggerated homage paid to princes, when they are alive, has to be
compensated by suspecting the worst of them as soon as they are gone. But
the perusal of all these documents leaves the broad aspect of the story,
in my opinion, precisely where it was. It is made more interesting by the
greater fulness of particulars; it is made more vivid by the clear view
which they afford of individual persons who before were no more than
names. But I think now, as I thought forty years ago, that through the
confusions and contradictions of a stormy and angry time, the statute-book
remains the safest guide to follow. If there be any difference, it is that
actions which till explained appeared gratuitously cruel, like the
execution of Bishop Fisher, are seen beyond dispute to have been
reasonable and just. Bishop Fisher is proved by the words of the Spanish
Ambassador himself to have invited and pressed the introduction of a
foreign Catholic army into England in the Pope's interest.
Thus I find nothing to withdraw in what I then wrote, and little to alter
save in correcting some small errors of trivial moment; but, on the other
hand, I find much to add; and the question rises in what way I had better
do it, with fair consideration for those who have bought the book as it
stands. To take the work to pieces and introduce the new material into
the text or the notes will impose a necessity of buying a new copy, or of
being left with an inferior one, on the many friends who least deserve to
be so treated. I have concluded, therefore, on writing an additional
volume, where such parts of the story as have had important light thrown
upon them can be told over again in ampler form. The body of the history I
leave as it stands. It contains what I believe to be a true account of the
time, of the immediate causes which brought about the changes of the
sixteenth century, and of the characters and principles of the actors in
them. I have only to fill up certain deficiencies and throw light into
places hitherto left dark. For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality.
I believe the Reformation to have been the greatest incident in English
history; the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the
Anglo-Saxon race over the globe, and imprinted the English genius and
character on the constitution of mankind. I am unwilling to believe more
evil than I can help of my countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a
work, and in a book written with such convictions the mythical element
cannot be wholly wanting. Even things which immediately surround us,
things which we see and touch, we do not perceive as they are; we perceive
only our own sensations, and our sensations are a combined result of
certain objects and of the faculties which apprehend them. Something of
ourselves must always be intermixed before knowledge can reach us; in
every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon
us, there is still a subjective element. It is so in physical science. It
is so in art. It is so in our speculations on our own nature. It is so in
religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. The curved and rectilineal
figures on which we reason are our own creation, and have no existence
exterior to the reasoning mind. Most of all is it so in history, where we
have no direct perceptions to help us, but are dependent on the narratives
of others whose beliefs were necessarily influenced by their personal
dispositions. The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against
his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence. In
judging of the truth of particular statements, the conclusion which he
will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly upon what he
conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice, where witnesses
can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree be
eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been
often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but
rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and
we are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the
Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to
the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse,
or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who
regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For
myself, I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I
possess. I have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing
which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently
proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or
prejudice. But whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to
follow the rule that incidents must not be lightly accepted as authentic
which are inconsistent with the universal laws of human nature, and that
to disprove a calumny it is sufficient to show that there is no valid
witness for it.
Finally, I do not allow myself to be tempted into controversy with
particular writers whose views disagree with my own. To contradict in
detail every hostile version of Henry VIII.'s or his ministers' conduct
would be as tedious as it would be irritating and unprofitable. My censors
have been so many that a reply to them all is impossible, and so
distinguished that a selection would be invidious. Those who wish for
invectives against the King, or Cranmer, or Cromwell, can find them
everywhere, from school manuals to the grave works of elaborate
historians. For me, it is enough to tell the story as it presents itself
to my own mind, and to leave what appears to me to be the truth to speak
for itself.
The English nation throughout their long history have borne an honourable
reputation. Luther quotes a saying of Maximilian that there were three
real sovereigns in Europe--the Emperor, the King of France, and the King
of England. The Emperor was a king of kings. If he gave an order to the
princes of the Reich, they obeyed or disobeyed as they pleased. The King
of France was a king of asses. He ordered about his people at his will,
and they obeyed like asses. The King of England was king of a loyal nation
who obeyed him with heart and mind as loyal and faithful subjects. This
was the character borne in the world by the fathers of the generation whom
popular historians represent as having dishonoured themselves by
subserviency to a bloodthirsty tyrant. It is at least possible that
popular historians have been mistaken, and that the subjects of Henry
VIII. were neither much better nor much worse than those who preceded or
came after them.
CHAPTER I.
Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various claimants--
Catherine incapable of having further children--Irregularity of her
marriage with the King--Papal dispensations--First mention of the
divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles V.--Policy of Wolsey--
Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in Italy--Appeal of the Pope--
Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the
Princess Mary called in question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court--
Alarms of Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform
of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in England--
Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey.
In the year 1526 the political prospects of England became seriously
clouded. A disputed succession had led in the previous century to a
desperate civil war. In that year it became known in private circles that
if Henry VIII. was to die the realm would again be left without a certain
heir, and that the strife of the Roses might be renewed on an even more
distracting scale. The sons who had been born to Queen Catherine had died
in childbirth or had died immediately after it. The passionate hope of the
country that she might still produce a male child who would survive had
been constantly disappointed, and now could be entertained no longer. She
was eight years older than her husband. She had "certain diseases" which
made it impossible that she should be again pregnant, and Henry had for
two years ceased to cohabit with her. He had two children still
living--the Princess Mary, Catherine's daughter, then a girl of eleven,
and an illegitimate son born in 1519, the mother being a daughter of Sir
John Blount, and married afterwards to Sir Gilbert Talboys. By
presumptive law the Princess was the next heir; but no woman had ever sat
on the throne of England alone and in her own right, and it was doubtful
whether the nation would submit to a female sovereign. The boy, though
excluded by his birth from the prospect of the crown, was yet brought up
with exceptional care, called a prince by his tutors, and probably
regarded by his father as a possible successor should his sister go the
way of her brothers. In 1525, after the King had deliberately withdrawn
from Catherine, he was created Duke of Richmond--a title of peculiar
significance, since it had been borne by his grandfather, Henry VII.--and
he was granted precedence over the rest of the peerage. Illegitimacy was a
serious, but, it might be thought, was not an absolute, bar. The Conqueror
had been himself a bastard. The Church, by its habits of granting
dispensations for irregular marriages or of dissolving them on pleas of
affinity or consanguinity or other pretext, had confused the distinction
between legitimate and illegitimate. A Church Court had illegitimatised
the children of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Grey, on the ground of one of
Edward's previous connections; yet no one regarded the princes murdered in
the Tower as having been illegitimate in reality; and to prevent disputes
and for an adequate object, the Duke of Richmond, had he grown to manhood,
might, in the absence of other claims, have been recognised by Parliament.
But the Duke was still a child, and might die as Henry's other sons had
died; and other claims there were which, in the face of the bar sinister,
could not fail to be asserted. James V. of Scotland was next in blood,
being the son of Henry's eldest sister, Margaret. There were the Greys,
inheriting from the second sister, Mary. Outside the royal house there
were the still popular representatives of the White Rose, the Marquis of
Exeter, who was Edward IV.'s grandson; the Countess of Salisbury, daughter
of Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence, and sister of the murdered Earl
of Warwick; and Henry's life was the only obstacle between the collision
of these opposing pretensions. James, it was quite certain, would not be
allowed to succeed without a struggle. National rivalry forbade it. Yet it
was no less certain that he would try, and would probably be backed by
France. There was but one escape from convulsions which might easily be
the ruin of the realm. The King was in the flower of his age, and might
naturally look for a Prince of Wales to come after him if he was married
to a woman capable of bearing one. It is neither unnatural nor, under the
circumstances, a matter to be censured if he and others began to reflect
upon the peculiar character of his connection with Catherine of Aragon. It
is not sufficiently remembered that the marriage of a widow with her
husband's brother was then, as it is now, forbidden by the laws of all
civilised countries. Such a marriage at the present day would be held
_ipso facto_ invalid and not a marriage at all. An irregular power was
then held to rest with the successors of St. Peter to dispense, under
certain conditions, with the inhibitory rules. The popes are now
understood to have never rightly possessed such an authority, and
therefore, according to modern law and sentiment, Henry and Catherine
never were husband and wife at all. At the time it was uncertain whether
the dispensing power extended so far as to sanction such a union, and when
the discussion rose upon it the Roman canonists were themselves divided.
Those who maintained the widest view of the papal faculty yet agreed that
such a dispensation could only be granted for urgent cause, such as to
prevent foreign wars or internal seditions, and no such cause was alleged
to have existed when Ferdinand and Henry VII. arranged the marriage
between their children. The dispensation had been granted by Pope Julius
with reluctance, had been acted upon after considerable hesitation, and
was of doubtful validity, since the necessary conditions were absent. The
marriages of kings were determined with little reference to the personal
affection of the parties. Between Henry and Catherine there was probably
as much and as little personal attachment as there usually is in such
cases. He respected and perhaps admired her character; but she was not
beautiful, she was not attractive, while she was as proud and intractable
as her mother Isabella. Their union had been settled by the two fathers to
cement the alliance between England and Spain. Such connections rest on a
different foundation from those which are voluntarily entered into between
private persons. What is made up for political reasons may pardonably be
dissolved when other reasons of a similar kind require it; and when it
became clear that Catherine could never bear another child, that the
penalty threatened in the Levitical law against marriages of this precise
kind had been literally enforced in the death of the male offspring, and
that civil war was imminent in consequence upon the King's death, Henry
may have doubted in good faith whether she had ever been his wife at
all--whether, in fact, the marriage was not of the character which
everyone would now allow to attach to similar unions. Had there been a
Prince of Wales, the question would never have arisen, and Henry, like
other kings, would have borne his fate. But there was no prince, and the
question had risen, and there was no reason why it should not. There was
no trace at the outset of an attachment to another woman. If there had
been, there would be little to condemn; but Anne Boleyn, when it was first
mooted, was no more to the King than any other lady of the court. He
required a wife who could produce a son to secure the succession. The
powers which had allowed an irregular marriage could equally dissolve it,
and the King felt that he had a right to demand a familiar concession
which other sovereigns had often applied for in one form or another, and
rarely in vain.
Thus as early as 1526 certainly, and probably as much as a year before,
Cardinal Wolsey had been feeling his way at Rome for a separation between
Henry and Catherine. On September 7 in that year the Bishop of Bath, who
was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal of the arrival
there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent had spoken to
the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that there would
be difficulties about it.[1] The "blessed divorce"--_benedictum divorcium_
the Bishop calls it--had been already under consideration at Rome. The
difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the time
obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably
referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the
Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released
at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had
reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages
for the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half
German, remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of
Italy; and Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury
which the world believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines
of the New World, seemed advancing to universal empire.
France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary enemy of
England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of
Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established
alliance. She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as a
link in the confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times
were changing. Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through
English influence; but Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger
to Europe than France had been. The Italian princes were too weak to
resist the conqueror of Pavia. Italy once conquered, the Papacy would
become a dependency of the empire, and, with Charles's German subjects in
open revolt against it, the Church would lose its authority, and the
organisation of the Catholic world would fall into hopeless decrepitude.
So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of English ministers. He
believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the best defence of order
and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a change of partners.
England held the balance between the great rival powers. If the English
alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the Emperor could
be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised. Wolsey was
utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an unnatural one. Charles, busy
with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with suspicious
forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were
disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by
plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and
ravished nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been
as little spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was
another inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's
master meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to
Clement as perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded,
and desperate condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution
was possible. To the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering
to its fall, and Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might
precipitate the catastrophe. To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal
offence to the Spanish nation by agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of
Aragon was to ask him to sign his death-warrant. No wonder, therefore,
that he found difficulties. Yet it was to France and England that Clement
had to look for help in his extremities. The divorce perhaps had as yet
been no more than a suggestion, a part of a policy which was still in its
infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more convenient season. Meantime
he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally
he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See
in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he
said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been
devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of
Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The
Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last,
but they would open them too late. So piteous was the entreaty that Henry
when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears.[2] Clement had not been
idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to oppose Bourbon;
he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend himself. He was
called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war with the most
Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless the Western
powers interfered the end would come.
If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with France. The
change of policy was ill understood, and was not popular among Henry's
subjects. The divorce as yet had not been spoken of. No breath of such a
purpose had gone abroad. But English sentiment was imperial, and could
endure with equanimity even the afflictions of a pope. The King was more
papal than his people; he allowed Wolsey to guide him, and negotiations
were set on foot at once for a special treaty with France, one of the
conditions of which was to be the marriage of the Princess Mary--allotted
like a card in a game--either to Francis or to one of his sons; another
condition being that the English crown should be settled upon her should
Henry die without a legitimate son. Sir John Russell was simultaneously
despatched to Rome with money to help the Pope in paying his troops and
garrisoning the city. The ducats and the "kind words" which accompanied
them "created incredible joy," encouraged his Holiness to reject unjust
conditions which had been offered, and restored him, if for the moment
only, "from death to life."[3] If Russell described correctly what he saw
in passing through Italy, Clement had good cause for anxiety. "The
Swabians and Spaniards," he wrote, "had committed horrible atrocities.
They had burnt houses to the value of two hundred million ducats, with all
the churches, images, and priests that fell into their hands. They had
compelled the priests and monks to violate the nuns. Even where they were
received without opposition they had burned the place; they had not spared
the boys, and they had carried off the girls; and whenever they found the
Sacrament of the Church they had thrown it into a river or into the vilest
place they could find. If God did not punish such cruelty and wickedness,
men would infer that He did not trouble Himself about the affairs of this
world."[4]
The news from Italy gave a fresh impulse to Wolsey's policy and the
Anglo-French Alliance, which was pushed forward in spite of popular
disapproval. The Emperor, unable to pay, and therefore unable to control,
his troops, became himself alarmed. He found himself pressed into a course
which was stimulating the German revolt against the Papacy, and he
professed himself anxious to end the war. Inigo de Mendoza, the Bishop of
Burgos, was despatched to Paris to negotiate for a general pacification.
From Paris he was to proceed to London to assure Henry of the Emperor's
inalienable friendship, and above all things to gain over Wolsey by the
means which experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart.
The great Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was
several years in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the
arrears should be immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be
secured to him on the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make
him a further grant of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish
bishoprics. No means was to be spared to divert the hostility of so
dangerous an enemy.[5]
Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large schemes which
he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions Francis I. was
as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were brightening.
Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by creating six
new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition of these
sacred offices.[6] A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its
head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's
defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were
refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the
marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret
projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with
Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with
Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and
probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in
Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's
marriage with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the
discussion of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired
whether it was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate.
Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the "Foreign and Domestic
Calendar of State Papers," doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the
kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the
best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during
subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris,
and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly
appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in
the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various
repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that the
Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was made of his name,
and impossible equally to suppose that he would have allowed his name to
be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was unquestionably the first person
to bring the question publicly forward. It is likely enough, however, that
his introduction of so startling a topic had been privately arranged
between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the further steps which were
immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this time been finally
resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration of the balance
of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever were alleged
for similar separations. The Pope's hesitation, it might be assumed, would
now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon England and
France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse than they
were.
The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken
entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under
consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had
reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by
the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred
to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she
was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of
Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained
that she was kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting
herself to the utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to
arrest Wolsey's policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the
divorce she had not heard a word. It was to come upon her like a
thunderstroke.[7]
Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out of place of the
two persons who were to play the principal parts on the stage, as they
were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador in
England. Of Catherine his account is brief.
"The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and very
religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved by
the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five years
old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and one
daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives."
On the King, Falieri is more elaborate.
"In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise
and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the
superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is;
his head bald like Caesar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English
custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well,
tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent
well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with
the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated
also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his
childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and
writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is
kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he
is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two
masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable,
giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and
cripples."[8]
Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous
pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws
had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European
world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of
decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If
the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English
courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had
he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the
Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have
been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of
itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the
difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first
entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.
On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he
called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham
sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having
stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage,
enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of
his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King
assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced and
considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon lawyers
must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled bishops.
The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged Bishop of
Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly that the
marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient.
These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy which had hitherto
been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and her friends learnt
now for the first time the measure which was in contemplation. Mendoza,
writing on the day following the York Place meeting to the Emperor,
informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable authority, that
Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to divorce the
Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself to speak
of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been invited to
sign a declaration that, being his brother's widow, she could not be the
wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take part
against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal
Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken
against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet
had been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might
be kept as private as possible.[9]
That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify Henry at Charles's
expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the German Emperor
were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and England were the
only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week before the
meeting of Wolsey's court he had experienced in the most terrible form
what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that same
month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm. The
city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through the
streets on mules' backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns were
abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may have
been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy
persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days
were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently
conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo,
looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have
appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the
final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider
it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been
animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic
Christendom. Charles himself is not likely to have intended the
humiliation of the Holy See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings,
and Wolsey's policy was not without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles's
Minister at Genoa, and Lope de Soria's opinions, freely uttered, may have
been shared by many a Catholic besides himself. On the 25th of May, a
fortnight after the storm, he wrote to his master the following noticeable
letter:--
"The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God, who permits
his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other Christian
princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust wars
which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom, the
faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated.... Should the Emperor think that
the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope's temporal
power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I cannot but
remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious action,
to reform the Church; so that the Pope's authority be confined exclusively
to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to Caesar,
since by right what is God's belongs to God, and what is Caesar's to Caesar.
I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the
Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that
time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a
remedy to that evil."[10]
Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who could
recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes and
Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles
himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria's words might have been
dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment
placed himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would
have been different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this
might be what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything
most objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical
administration of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles
was the surest method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was
an incident in the situation, but not the least important. Catherine
represented the Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to
make the breach with her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon
himself to assure the King that after the last outrage the Pope would
agree to anything that France and England demanded of him, and would trust
to his allies to bear him harmless. That the divorce was a thing
reasonable in itself to ask for, and certain to be conceded by any pope
who was free to act on his own judgment, was assumed as a matter of
course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the English agent at Rome, was instructed to
obtain access to Clement in St. Angelo, to convey to him the indignation
felt in England at his treatment, and then to insist on the illegality of
the King's relations with Catherine, on the King's own scruples of
conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects that there should be a male
heir to the crown. The "urgent cause" such as was necessary to be produced
when exceptional actions were required of the popes was the imminence or
even certainty of civil war if no such heir was born.
Catherine meanwhile had again communicated with Mendoza. She had spoken to
her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was impossible, had told
her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a separation was
necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears and
reproaches.[11] The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a
matter where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her
gently, till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in
the matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis,
and consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence
of the Pope's imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself
helpless, might become a puppet in the Emperor's hands. Under such
circumstances he could not be trusted by other countries with the
spiritual authority attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed
for some interim arrangement by which France and England were to
constitute themselves into a separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its
head as Archbishop of Rouen. Mendoza says that this proposal had been
actually made to Wolsey by the French Ambassador.[12] In Spain it was even
believed to be contemplated as a permanent modification of the
ecclesiastical system. The Imperial Councillors at Valladolid told the
Venetian Minister that the Cardinal intended to separate the Churches of
England and France from that of Rome, saying that as the Pope was a
prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that even if the Emperor released
him, he still would not be free unless his fortresses and territory now in
the Emperor's hands were restored to him.[13] Wolsey had reason for
anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the Emperor insisting
that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey's Legatine powers.
In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it soon became
known throughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The nation
generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their hereditary
friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen, but did not
touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an injured
wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he should
not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to a
project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the
most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand
men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join
them.[14] He saw Wolsey--he reasoned with him, and when he found reason
ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give.
Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He
spoke of the Papacy: "how the chair was now in the Emperor's hands, and
the Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation."
The glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been
Wolsey's highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had
served the Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still
trusted that the Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church.
Mendoza's answer was not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that
both the spiritual and temporal powers were now centred in his master, and
he advised Wolsey, if he desired an arrangement, to extend his journey
from France, go on to Spain, and see the Emperor in person. It was
precisely this _centering_ which those who had charge of English liberties
had a right to resent. Divorce or no divorce, they could not allow a power
possessed of so much authority in the rest of Christendom to be the
servant of a single prince. The divorce was but an illustration of the
situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza contemplated would reduce England
and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the Empire.
CHAPTER II.
Mission of Wolsey to Paris--Visits Bishop Fisher on the way--Anxieties of
the Emperor--Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII.--Large offers to
Wolsey--Address of the French Cardinals to the Pope--Anne Boleyn chosen by
Henry to succeed Catherine--Surprise and displeasure of Wolsey--Fresh
attempts of the Emperor to bribe him--Wolsey forced to continue to
advocate the divorce--Mission of Dr. Knight to Rome--The Pope at Orvieto--
The King applies for a dispensation to make a second marriage--Language of
the dispensation demanded--Inferences drawn from it--Alleged intrigue
between the King and Mary Boleyn.
It was believed at the time--and it was the tradition afterwards--that
Wolsey, in his mission to Paris, intended to replace Catherine by a French
princess, the more surely to commit Francis to the support of Henry in the
divorce, and to strengthen the new alliance. Nothing can be inherently
more likely. The ostensible reason, however, was to do away with any
difficulties which might have been suggested by the objection of the
Bishop of Tarbes to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary. If illegitimate,
she would be no fitting bride for the Duke of Orleans. But she had been
born _bona fide parentum_. There was no intention of infringing her
prospective rights or of altering her present position. Her rank and title
were to be secured to her in amplest measure.
The Cardinal went upon his journey with the splendour attaching to his
office and befitting a churchman who was aspiring to be the spiritual
president of the two kingdoms. On his way to the coast he visited two
prelates whose support to his policy was important. Archbishop Warham had
been cold about the divorce, if not openly hostile. Wolsey found him "not
much changed from his first fashion," but admitting that, although it
might be unpleasant to the Queen, truth and justice must prevail. Bishop
Fisher was a more difficult subject. He had spoken in the Legate's court
in Catherine's favour. It was from him, as the King supposed, that
Catherine herself had learnt what was impending over her. Wolsey called at
his palace as he passed through Rochester. He asked the Bishop plainly if
he had been in communication with the Queen. The Bishop, after some
hesitation, confessed that the Queen had sought his advice, and said that
he had declined to give an opinion without the King's command. Before
Wolsey left London, at a last interview at York Place, the King had
directed him to explain "the whole matter" to the Bishop. He went through
the entire history, mentioned the words of the Bishop of Tarbes, and
discussed the question which had risen upon it, on account of which he had
been sent into France. Finally, he described the extreme violence with
which Catherine had received the intelligence.
The Bishop greatly blamed the conduct of the Queen, and said he thought
that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission. He agreed,
or seemed to agree, that the marriage had been irregular, though he did
not himself think that it could now be broken. Others of the bishops, he
thought, agreed with him; but he was satisfied that the King meant nothing
against the laws of God, and would be fully justified in submitting his
misgivings to the Pope.[15]
Mendoza's and the Queen's letters had meanwhile been despatched to Spain,
to add to the anxieties which were overwhelming the Emperor. Nothing
could have been less welcome at such a juncture than a family quarrel with
his uncle of England, whose friendship he was still hoping to retain. The
bird that he had caged at Rome was no convenient prisoner. The capture of
Rome had not been ordered by himself, though politically he was obliged to
maintain it. The time did not suit for the ambitious Church reforms of
Lope de Soria. Peace would have to be made with the Pope on some moderate
conditions. His own Spain was hardly quieted after the revolt of the
_Comunidades_. Half Germany was in avowed apostasy from the Church of
Rome. The Turks were overrunning Hungary, and sweeping the Mediterranean
with their pirate fleets, and the passionate and restless Francis was
watching his opportunity to revenge Pavia and attack his captor in the Low
Countries and in Italy. The great Emperor was moderate, cautious, prudent
to a fault. In a calmer season he might have been tempted to take the
Church in hand; and none understood better the condition into which it had
fallen. But he was wise enough to know that if a reform of the Papacy was
undertaken at all it must be undertaken with the joint consent of the
other Christian princes, and all his present efforts were directed to
peace. He was Catherine's natural guardian. Her position in England had
been hitherto a political security for Henry's friendship. It was his duty
and his interest to defend her, and he meant to do it; not, however, by
sending roving expeditions to land in Cornwall and raise a civil war; all
means were to be tried before that; to attempt such a thing, he well knew,
would throw Europe into a blaze. The letters found him at Valladolid. He
replied, of course, that he was shocked at a proceeding so unlooked for
and so scandalous, but he charged Mendoza to be moderate and to confine
himself to remonstrance.[16] He wrote himself to Henry--confidentially, as
from friend to friend, and ciphering his letter with his own hand. He was
unable to believe, he said, that Henry could contemplate seriously
bringing his domestic discomforts before the world. Even supposing the
marriage illegitimate--even supposing that the Pope had no power to
dispense in such cases--"it would be better and more honourable to keep
the matter secret, and to work out a remedy." He bade Mendoza remind the
King that to question the dispensing power affected the position of other
princes besides his own; that to touch the legitimacy of his daughter
would increase the difficulties with the succession, and not remove them.
He implored the King "to keep the matter secret, as he would do himself."
Meanwhile, he told Mendoza, for Catherine's comfort, that he had written
to demand a mild brief from the Pope to stop the scandal. He had requested
him, as Catherine had suggested, to revoke Wolsey's powers, or at least to
command that neither he nor any English Court should try the case. If
heard at all it must be heard before his Holiness and the Sacred
College.[17] But he could not part with the hope that he might still bring
Wolsey to his own and the Queen's side. A council of Cardinals was to meet
at Avignon to consider the Pope's captivity. The Cardinal of England was
expected to attend. Charles himself might go to Perpignan. Wolsey might
meet him there, discuss the state of Europe, and settle the King's secret
affair at the same time. Should this be impossible, he charged Mendoza
once more to leave no stone unturned to recover Wolsey's friendship. "In
our name," he said, "you will make him the following offers:--
"1. The payment of all arrears on his several pensions, amounting to 9,000
ducats annually.
"2. Six thousand additional ducats annually until such a time as a
bishoprick or other ecclesiastical endowment of the same revenue becomes
vacant in our kingdom.
"3. The Duke, who is to have Milan, to give him a Marquisate in that
Duchy, with an annual rent of 12,000 ducats, or 15,000 if the smaller sum
be not enough; the said Marquisate to be held by the Cardinal during his
life, and to pass after him to any heir whom he shall appoint."[18]
As if this was not sufficient, the Emperor paid a yet further tribute to
the supposed all-powerful Cardinal. He wrote himself to him as to his
"good friend." He said that if there was anything in his dominions which
the Cardinal wished to possess he had only to name it, as he considered
Wolsey the best friend that he had in the world.[19]
For the ministers of great countries deliberately to sell themselves to
foreign princes was the custom of the age. The measure of public virtue
which such a custom indicates was not exalted; and among the changes
introduced by the Reformation the abolition or suspension of it was not
the least beneficial. Thomas Cromwell, when he came to power, set the
example of refusal, and corruption of public men on a scale so
scandalously enormous was no more heard of. Gold, however, had flowed in
upon Wolsey in such enormous streams and from so many sources that the
Emperor's munificence and attention failed to tempt him. On reaching Paris
he found Francis bent upon war, and willing to promise anything for
Henry's assistance. The belief at the French Court was that the Emperor,
hearing that the Churches of England and France meant to decline from
their obedience to the Roman Communion, would carry the Pope to Spain;
that Clement would probably be poisoned there, and the Apostolic See would
be established permanently in the Peninsula.[20] Wolsey himself wrote
this, and believed it, or desired Henry to believe it, proving the extreme
uncertainty among the best-informed of contemporary politicians as to the
probable issue of the capture of Rome. The French Cardinals drew and sent
an address to the Pope, intimating that as long as he was in confinement
they could accept no act of his as lawful, and would not obey it. Wolsey
signed at the head of them. The Cardinals Salviati, Bourbon, Lorraine, and
the Chancellor Cardinal of Sens, signed after him.[21] The first stroke in
the game had been won by Wolsey. Had the Pope recalled his powers as
legate, an immediate schism might have followed. But a more fatal blow had
been prepared for him by his master in England. Trusting to the Cardinal's
promises that the Pope would make no difficulty about the divorce, Henry
had considered himself at liberty to choose a successor to Catherine. He
had suffered once in having allowed politics to select a wife for him.
This time he intended to be guided by his own inclination. When Elizabeth
afterwards wished to marry Leicester, Lord Sussex said she had better fix
after her own liking; there would be the better chance of the heir that
her realm was looking for. Her father fixed also after his liking in
selecting Elizabeth's mother.
Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a Norfolk knight
of ancient blood, and himself a person of some distinction in the public
service. Lady Boleyn was a Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Anne
was born in 1507, and by birth and connection was early introduced into
the court. When a girl she was taken to Paris to be educated. In 1522 she
was brought back to England, became a lady-in-waiting, and, being a witty,
brilliant young woman, attracted and encouraged the attentions of the
fashionable cavaliers of the day. Wyatt, the poet, was among her adorers,
and the young Percy, afterwards Earl of Northumberland. It was alleged
afterwards that between her and Percy there had been a secret marriage
which had been actually consummated. That she had been involved in some
dangerous intrigue or other she herself subsequently confessed. But she
was attractive, she was witty; she drew Henry's fancy, and the fancy
became an ardent passion. Now, for the first time, in Wolsey's absence,
the Lady Anne's name appears in connection with the divorce. On the 16th
of August Mendoza informed Charles, as a matter of general belief, that if
the suit for the divorce was successful the King would marry a daughter of
Master Boleyn, whom the Emperor would remember as once ambassador at the
Imperial court.[22] There is no direct evidence that before Wolsey had
left England the King had seriously thought of Anne at all. Catherine
could have had no suspicion of it, or her jealous indignation would have
made itself heard. The Spanish Ambassador spoke of it as a new feature in
the case.
The Boleyns were Wolsey's enemies, and belonged to the growing faction
most hostile to the Church. The news as it came upon him was utterly
distasteful.[23] Anne in turn hated Wolsey, as he probably knew that she
would, and she compelled him to stoop to the disgrace of suing for her
favour. The inference is reasonable, therefore, that the King took the
step which in the event was to produce such momentous consequences when
the Cardinal was not at hand to dissuade him. He was not encouraged even
by her own family. Her father, as will be seen hereafter, was from the
first opposed to his daughter's advancement. He probably knew her
character too well. But Henry, when he had taken an idea into his head,
was not to be moved from it. The lady was not beautiful: she was rather
short than tall, her complexion was dark, her neck long, her mouth broad,
her figure not particularly good. The fascinating features were her long
flowing brown hair, a pair of effective dark eyes, and a boldness of
character which might have put him on his guard, and did not.
The immediate effect was to cool Wolsey's ardour for the divorce. His
mission in France, which opened so splendidly, eventuated in little. The
French cardinals held no meeting at Avignon. They had signed the address
to Clement, but they had not made the Cardinal of York into their
patriarch. Rouen was not added to his other preferments. Could he but have
proposed a marriage for his sovereign with the Princess of Alencon, all
might have been different, but it had fared with him as it fared with the
Earl of Warwick, whom Henry's grandfather had sent to France to woo a
bride for him, and in his absence married Elizabeth Grey. He perhaps
regretted the munificent offers of the Emperor which he had hastily
rejected, and he returned to England in the autumn to feel the
consequences of the change in his situation. Mr. Brewer labours in vain to
prove that Wolsey was unfavourable to the divorce from the beginning.
Catherine believed that he was the instigator of it. Mendoza was of the
same opinion. Unquestionably he promoted it with all his power, and made
it a part of a great policy. To maintain that he was acting thus against
his conscience and to please the King is more dishonouring to him than to
suppose that he was either the originator or the willing instrument. All,
however, was altered when Anne Boleyn came upon the stage, and she made
haste to make him feel the change. "The Legate has returned from France,"
wrote Mendoza on the 26th of October. He went to visit the King at
Richmond, and sent to ask where he could see him. The King was in his
chamber. It happened that the lady, who seemed to entertain no great
affection for the Cardinal, was in the room with the King, and before the
latter could answer the message she said for him, "Where else is the
Cardinal to come? Tell him he may come here where the King is." The Legate
felt that such treatment boded no good to him, but concealed his
resentment. "The cause," said Mendoza, "is supposed to be that the said
lady bears the Legate a grudge, for other reasons, and because she has
discovered that during his visit to France the Legate proposed to have an
alliance for the King found in that country."[24] Wolsey persuaded Mendoza
that the French marriage had been a fiction, but at once he began to
endeavour to undo his work, and prevent the dissolution of the marriage
with Catherine. He tried to procure an unfavourable opinion from the
English Bishops before legal proceedings were commenced. Mendoza, however,
doubted his stability if the King persisted in his purpose, and advised
that a papal decision on the case should be procured and forwarded as soon
as possible.[25]
The Pope's captivity, however, would destroy the value of any judgment
which he might give while he continued in durance. The Emperor, encouraged
by the intimation that Wolsey was wavering, reverted to his previous hope.
In a special memorandum of measures to be taken, the most important,
notwithstanding the refusal of the previous offers, was still thought to
be to "bribe the Cardinal." He must instantly be paid the arrears of his
pensions out of the revenues of the sees of Palencia and Badajoz. If there
was not money enough in the treasury, a further and larger pension of
twelve or fourteen thousand crowns was to be given to him out of some rich
bishopric in Castile. The Emperor admitted that he had promised the Cortes
to appoint no more foreigners to Spanish sees, but such a promise could
not be held binding, being in violation of the liberties of the Church.
Every one would see that it was for the good of the kingdom.
The renewed offer was doubtless conveyed to Wolsey, but he probably found
that he had gone too deep to retire. If he made such an effort as Mendoza
relates, he must have speedily discovered that it would be useless. He had
encouraged the King in a belief that the divorce would be granted by the
Pope as a matter of course, and the King, having made up his own mind, was
not to be moved from it. If Wolsey now drew back, the certain inference
would be that he had accepted an imperial bribe. There was no recourse,
therefore, but to go on.
While Wolsey had been hesitating, the King had, unknown to him, sent his
secretary, Dr. Knight, to Rome with directions to obtain access if
possible to the Pope, and procure the dispensation which had been already
applied for to enable him to marry a second time without the formalities
of a judgment. Such an expedient would be convenient in many ways. It
would leave Catherine's position unaffected and the legitimacy of the
Princess Mary unimpugned. Knight went. He found that without a passport he
could not even enter the city, still less be allowed an interview. "With
ten thousand crowns he could not bribe his way into St. Angelo." He
contrived, however, to have a letter introduced, which the Pope answered
by telling Knight to wait in some quiet place. He (the Pope) would "there
send him all the King's requests in as ample a form as they were desired."
Knight trusted in a short time "to have in his custody as much, perfect,
sped, and under lead, as his Highness had long time desired."[26]
Knight was too sanguine. The Emperor, finding the Pope's detention as a
prisoner embarrassing, allowed him, on the 9th of December, to escape to
Orvieto, where he was apparently at liberty; but he was only in a larger
cage, all his territories being occupied by Imperial troops, and he
himself watched by the General of the Observants, and warned at his peril
to grant nothing to Catherine's prejudice. Henry's Secretary followed him,
saw him, and obtained something which on examination proved to be
worthless. The negotiations were left again in Wolsey's hands, and were
pressed with all the eagerness of a desperate man.
Pope Clement had ceased to be a free agent. He did not look to the rights
of the case. He would gladly have pleased Henry could he have pleased him
without displeasing Charles. The case itself was peculiar, and opinions
differed on the rights and wrongs of it. The reader must be from time to
time reminded that, as the law of England has stood ever since, a marriage
with a brother's widow was not a marriage. As the law of the Church then
stood, it was not a marriage unless permitted by the Pope; and according
to the same law of England the Pope neither has, nor ever had, any
authority to dispense with the law. Therefore Henry, on the abstract
contention, was in the right. He had married Catherine under an error. The
problem was to untie the knot with as little suffering to either as the
nature of the case permitted. That the negotiations were full of
inconsistencies, evasions, and contradictions, was natural and inevitable.
To cut the knot without untying it was the only direct course, but that
all means were exhausted before the application of so violent a remedy was
rather a credit than a reproach.
The first inconsistency was in the King. He did not regard his marriage as
valid; therefore he thought himself at liberty to marry again; but he did
not wish to illegitimatise his daughter or degrade Catherine. He disputed
the validity of the dispensation of Julius II.; yet he required a
dispensation from Clement which was equally questionable to enable him to
take a second wife. The management of the case having reverted to Wolsey,
fresh instructions were sent to Sir Gregory Casalis, the regular English
agent at the Papal court, to wait on Clement. Casalis was "bid consider
how much the affair concerned the relief of the King's conscience, the
safety of his soul, the preservation of his life, the continuation of his
succession, the welfare and repose of all his subjects now and hereafter."
The Pope at Orvieto was personally accessible. Casalis was to represent to
him the many difficulties which had arisen in connection with the
marriage, and the certainty of civil war in England should the King die
leaving the succession no better provided for. He was, therefore, to
request the Pope to grant a commission to Wolsey to hear the case and to
decide it, and (perhaps as an alternative) to sign a dispensation, a draft
of which Wolsey enclosed. The language of the dispensation was peculiar.
Wolsey explained it by saying that "the King, remembering by the example
of past times what false claims [to the crown] had been put forward, to
avoid all colour or pretext of the same, desired this of the Pope as
absolutely necessary." If these two requests were conceded, Henry
undertook on his part to require the Emperor to set the Pope at liberty,
or to declare war against him if he refused.
A dispensation, which was to evade the real point at issue, yet to convey
to the King a power to take another wife, was a novelty in itself and
likely to be carefully worded. It has given occasion among modern
historians to important inferences disgraceful to everyone concerned. The
sinister meaning supposed to be obvious to modern critics could not have
been concealed from the Pope himself. Here, therefore, follow the words
which have been fastened on as for ever fatal to the intelligence and
character of Henry and his Ministers.
The Pope, after reviewing the later history of England, the distractions
caused by rival claimants of the crown, after admitting the necessity of
guarding against the designs of the ambitious, and empowering Henry to
marry again, was made to address the King in these words:[27]--
"In order to take away all occasion from evil doers, we do in the
plenitude of our power hereby suspend _hac vice_ all canons forbidding
marriage in the fourth degree, also all canons _de impedimento publicae
honestatis_ preventing marriage in consequence of clandestine espousals,
further all canons relating to precontracts clandestinely made but not
consummated, also all canons affecting impediments created by affinity
rising _ex illicito coitu_, in any degree even in the first, so far as the
marriage to be contracted by you, the petitioner, can be objected to or in
any wise be impugned by the same. Further, to avoid canonical objections
on the side of the woman by reason of former contract clandestinely made,
or impediment of public honesty or justice arising from such clandestine
contract, or of any affinity contracted in any degree even the first, _ex
illicito coitu_: and in the event that it has proceeded beyond the second
or third degrees of consanguinity, whereby otherwise you, the petitioner,
would not be allowed by the canons to contract marriage, we hereby license
you to take such woman for wife, and suffer you and the woman to marry
free from all ecclesiastical objections and censures."
The explanation given by Wolsey of the wording of this document is that it
was intended to preclude any objections which might be raised to the
prejudice of the offspring of a marriage in itself irregular. It was
therefore made as comprehensive as possible. Dr. Lingard, followed by Mr.
Brewer, and other writers see in it a transparent personal application to
the situation in which Henry intended to place himself in making a wife of
Anne Boleyn. Two years subsequent to the period when this dispensation was
asked for, when the question of the divorce had developed into a battle
between England and the Papacy, and the passions of Catholics and
Reformers were boiling over in recrimination and invective, the King's
plea that he was parting from Catherine out of conscience was met by
stories set floating in society that the King himself had previously
intrigued with the mother and sister of the lady whom he intended to
marry; precisely the same obstacle existed, therefore, to his marriage
with Anne, being further aggravated by incest. No attempt was ever made to
prove these charges; no particulars were given of time or place. No
witnesses were produced, nor other evidence, though to prove them would
have been of infinite importance. Queen Catherine, who if any one must
have known it if the accusation was true, never alludes to Mary Boleyn in
the fiercest of her denunciations. It was heard of only in the
conversation of disaffected priests or secret visitors to the Spanish
Ambassador, and was made public only in the manifesto of Reginald Pole,
which accompanied Paul III.'s Bull for Henry's deposition. Even this
authority, which was not much in itself, is made less by the fact that in
the first draft of "Pole's Book," sent to England to be examined in 1535,
the story is not mentioned. Evidently, therefore, Pole had not then heard
of it or did not believe it. The guilt with the mother is now abandoned as
too monstrous. The guilt with the sister is peremptorily insisted on, and
the words of the dispensation are appealed to as no longer leaving room
for doubt. To what else, it is asked, can such extraordinary expressions
refer unless to some disgraceful personal _liaison_?
The uninstructed who draw inferences of fact from the verbiage of legal
documents will discover often what are called "mare's nests." I will
request the reader to consider what this supposition involves. The
dispensation would have to be copied into the Roman registers, subject to
the inspection of the acutest canon lawyers in the world. If the meaning
is so clear to us, it must have been clear to them. We are, therefore, to
believe that Henry, when demanding to be separated from Catherine, as an
escape from mortal sin, for the relief of his conscience and the surety of
his succession, was gratuitously putting the Pope in possession of a
secret which had only to be published to extinguish him and his plea in an
outburst of scorn and laughter.
There was no need for such an acknowledgment, for the intrigue could not
be proved. It could not be required for the legitimation of the children
that were to be born; for a man of Wolsey's ability must have known that
no dispensation would be held valid that was granted after so preposterous
a confidence. It was as if a man putting in a claim for some great
property, before the case came on for trial privately informed both judge
and jury that it was based on forgery.
We are called on to explain further, why, when all Europe was shaken by
the controversy, no hint is to be found in any public document of a fact
which, if true, would be decisive; and yet more extraordinary, why the
Pope and the Curia, when driven to bay in all the exasperation of a
furious controversy, left a weapon unused which would have assured them an
easy victory. Wolsey was not a fool. Is it conceivable that he would have
composed a document so fatal and have drawn the Pope's pointed attention
to it? My credulity does not extend so far. We cannot prove a negative; we
cannot prove that Henry had not intrigued with Mary Boleyn, or with all
the ladies of his court. But the language of the dispensation cannot be
adduced as an evidence of it, unless King, Pope, and all the interested
world had parted with their senses.
As to the story itself, there is no ground for distinguishing between the
mother and the daughter. When it was first set circulating both were named
together. The mother only has been dropped, lest the improbability should
seem too violent for belief. That Mary Boleyn had been the King's mistress
before or after her own marriage is now asserted as an ascertained fact by
respectable historians--a fact sufficient, can it be proved, to cover with
infamy for ever the English separation from Rome, King, Ministers,
Parliaments, Bishops, and every one concerned with it. The effectiveness
of the weapon commends it to Catholic controversialists. I have only to
repeat that the evidence for the charge is nothing but the floating gossip
of Catholic society, never heard of, never whispered, till the second
stage of the quarrel, when it had developed into a passionate contest;
never even then alleged in a form in which it could be met and answered.
It could not have been hid from Queen Catherine if it was known to
Reginald Pole. We have many letters of Catherine, eloquent on the story of
her wrongs; letters to the Emperor, letters to the Pope; yet no word of
Mary Boleyn. What reason can be given save that it was a legend which grew
out of the temper of the time? Nothing could be more plausible than to
meet the King's plea of conscience with an allegation which made it
ridiculous. But in the public pleadings of a cause which was discussed in
every capital in Europe by the keenest lawyers and diplomatists of the
age, an accusation which, if maintained, would have been absolutely
decisive, is never alluded to in any public document till the question had
passed beyond the stage of discussion. The silence of all responsible
persons is sufficient proof of its nature. It was a mere floating calumny,
born of wind and malice.
Mr. Brewer does indeed imagine that he has discovered what he describes as
a tacit confession on Henry's part. When the Act of Appeals was before the
House of Commons which ended the papal jurisdiction in England, a small
knot of Opposition members used to meet privately to deliberate how to
oppose it. Among these one of the most active was Sir George Throgmorton,
a man who afterwards, with his brother Michael, made himself useful to
Cromwell and played with both parties, but was then against the divorce
and against all the measures which grew out of it. Throgmorton, according
to his own account, had been admitted to an interview with the King and
Cromwell. In 1537, after the Pilgrimage of Grace, while the ashes of the
rebellion were still smouldering, after Michael Throgmorton had betrayed
Cromwell's confidence and gone over to Reginald Pole, Sir George was
reported to have used certain expressions to Sir Thomas Dyngley and to two
other gentlemen, which he was called on by the Council to explain. The
letter to the King in which he replied is still extant. He said that he
had been sent for by the King after a speech on the Act of Appeals, "and
that he saw his Grace's conscience was troubled about having married his
brother's wife." He professed to have said to Dyngley that he had told the
King that if he did marry Queen Anne his conscience would be more troubled
at length, for it was thought he had meddled both with the mother and the
sister; that his Grace said: "Never with the mother," and my Lord Privy
Seal (Cromwell), standing by, said, "nor with the sister neither, so put
that out of your mind." Mr. Brewer construes this into an admission of the
King that Mary Boleyn had been his mistress, and omits, of course, by
inadvertence, that Throgmorton, being asked why he had told this story to
Dyngley, answered that "he spake it only out of vainglory, to show he was
one that durst speak for the Commonwealth." Nothing is more common than
for "vainglorious" men, when admitted to conversations with kings, to make
the most of what they said themselves, and to report not very accurately
what was said to them. Had the conversation been authentic, Throgmorton
would naturally have appealed to Cromwell's recollection. But Mr. Brewer
accepts the version of a confessed boaster as if it was a complete and
trustworthy account of what had actually passed. He does not ask himself
whether if the King or Cromwell had given their version it might not have
borne another complexion. Henry was not a safe person to take liberties
with. Is it likely that if one of his subjects, who was actively opposing
him in Parliament, had taxed him with an enormous crime, he would have
made a confession which Throgmorton had only to repeat in the House of
Commons to ruin him and his cause? Mr. Brewer should have added also that
the authority which he gave for the story was no better than Father Peto,
afterwards Cardinal Peto, as bitter an enemy of the Reformation as Pole
himself. Most serious of all, Mr. Brewer omits to mention that Throgmorton
was submitted afterwards to a severe cross-examination before a Committee
of Council, the effect of which, if he had spoken truly, could only be to
establish the authenticity of a disgraceful charge.[28]
The last evidence alleged is the confession made by Anne Boleyn, after her
condemnation, of some mystery which had invalidated her marriage with the
King and had been made the ground of an Act of Parliament. The confession
was not published, and Catholic opinion concluded, and concludes still,
that it must have been the Mary Boleyn intrigue. Catholic opinion does not
pause to inquire whether Anne could have been said to confess an offence
of the King and her sister. The cross-examination of Throgmorton turns the
conjecture into an absurdity. When asked, in 1537, whom he ever heard say
such a thing, he would have had but to appeal to the proceedings in
Parliament in the year immediately preceding.
Is it likely finally that if Throgmorton's examination proves what Mr.
Brewer thinks it proves, a record of it would have been preserved among
the official State Papers?
If all the stories current about Henry VIII. were to be discussed with as
much detail as I have allowed to this, the world would not contain the
books which should be written. An Irish lawyer told me in my youth to
believe nothing which I heard in that country which had not been sifted in
a court of justice, and only half of that. Legend is as the air
invulnerable, and blows aimed at it, if not "malicious mockery" are waste
of effort. Charges of scandalous immorality are precious to
controversialists, for if they are disproved ever so completely the stain
adheres.
CHAPTER III.
Anxiety of the Pope to satisfy the King--Fears of the Emperor--Proposed
alternatives--France and England declare war in the Pope's defence--
Campeggio to be sent to England--The King's account of the Pope's
conduct--The Pope's distress and alarm--The secret decretal--Instructions
to Campeggio.
The story returns to Orvieto. The dispensation was promised on condition
that it should not be immediately acted on.[29] Catherine having refused
to acquiesce in a private arrangement, Wolsey again pressed the Pope for a
commission to decide the cause in England, and to bind himself at the same
time not to revoke it, but to confirm any judgment which he might himself
give. "There were secret causes," he said, "which could not be committed
to writing which made such a concession imperative: certain diseases in
the Queen defying all remedy, for which, as for other causes, the King
would never again live with her as his wife."
The Pope, smarting from ill-treatment and grateful for the help of France
and England, professed himself earnestly anxious to do what Henry desired.
But he was still virtually a prisoner. He had been obliged by the General
of the Observants, when in St. Angelo, to promise to do nothing "whereby
the King's divorce might be judged in his own dominions." He pleaded for
time. He promised a commission of some kind, but he said he was undone if
action was taken upon it while the Germans and Spaniards remained in
Italy. He saw evident ruin before him, he said, but he professed to be
willing to run the hazard rather than that Wolsey should suspect him of
ingratitude. He implored the Cardinal, _cum suspiriis et lacrymis_, not to
precipitate him for ever, and precipitated he would be if, on receiving
the commission, the Cardinal at once began the process.[30] A fortnight
later Casalis described a long conversation with the Pope and Cardinals on
the course to be pursued. Henry had desired that a second Legate should be
sent from Rome to act with Wolsey. To consent to this would directly
compromise the Papal Court. Clement had no objection to the going forward
with the cause, but he did not wish to be himself responsible. He signed
an imperfect commission not inconsistent with his promise to the General
of the Observants. On this Wolsey might act or, if he preferred it, might
proceed on his own Legatine authority. For himself, instead of engaging to
confirm Wolsey's sentence, he said that no doctor could better resolve the
point at issue than the King himself. If he was resolved, said the Pope,
let him commit his cause to the Legate, marry again, follow up the trial,
and then let a public application be made for a Legate to be sent from the
Consistory. If the Queen was cited first, she would put in no answer, save
to protest against the place and judges. The Imperialists would demand a
prohibition, and then the King could not marry, or, if he did, the
offspring would be illegitimate. They would also demand a commission for
the cause to be heard at Rome, which the Pope would be unable to refuse.
But the King being actually married again, they could not ask for a
prohibition. They could only ask that the cause should be re-examined at
Rome, when the Pope would give sentence and a judgment could be passed
which would satisfy the whole world.[31] This was the Pope's own advice,
but he did not wish it to be known that it had come from himself. Casalis
might select the Legate to England after the first steps had been taken.
Campeggio he thought the fittest, being already an English bishop.[32] At
any rate, the Pope bade Casalis say he would do his best to satisfy the
King, though he knew that the Emperor would never forgive him.
It is not certain what would have followed had Henry acted on the Pope's
suggestion. The judgment which Clement promised might have been in his
favour. Clement evidently wished him to think that it would. But he might,
after all, have found himself required to take Catherine back. Either
alternative was possible. At any rate he did not mean, if he could help
it, to have recourse to violent methods. Charles himself, though he
intended to prevent, if he could, a legal decision against his aunt, had
hinted at the possibility and even desirableness of a private arrangement,
if Catherine would agree. Catherine, unfortunately, would agree to
nothing, but stood resolutely upon her rights, and Charles was forced to
stand by her. Henry was equally obstinate, and the Pope was between the
rock and the whirlpool.
The Pope had promised, however, and had promised with apparent sincerity.
The Papal states remaining occupied by the Imperial troops, Henry carried
out his own part of the engagement by joining France in a declaration of
war against the Emperor. Toison d'or and Clarencieulx appeared before
Charles at Burgos on the 22nd of January, Charles sitting on his throne to
receive their defiance. Toison d'or said that the Emperor had opened
Christendom to the Turks, had imprisoned the Pope, had allowed his armies
to sack Rome and plunder churches and monasteries, had insulted the holy
relics, slain or robbed princes of the Church, cardinals, patriarchs,
archbishops, outraged nunneries and convents, had encouraged Lutheran
heretics in committing these atrocities, &c. For these reasons France
declared open war with the Emperor. The English herald--he was accused
afterwards of having exceeded his instructions--was almost as peremptory.
Henry, in earlier times, had lent Charles large sums of money, which had
not been repaid. Clarencieulx said that, unless the Pope was released and
the debt settled, the King of England must make common cause with his
brother of France. Six weeks' interval was allowed for the Emperor to
consider his answer before hostilities on the side of England should
commence.
The Emperor replied with calmness and dignity. War with France was
inevitable. As to England, he felt like Cicero, when doubting whether he
should quarrel with Caesar, that it was inconvenient to be in debt to an
enemy. If England attacked him he said he would defend himself, but he
declined to accept the defiance. Mendoza was not recalled from London. At
the end of the six weeks the situation was prolonged by successive truces
till the peace of Cambray. But Henry had kept his word to the Pope.
England appeared by the side of France in the lists as the armed champion
of the Papacy, and the Pope was expected to fulfil his promises without
disguise or subterfuge.
Clement's method of proceeding with the divorce was rejected. The
dispensation and commission which had been amended with a view to it were
rejected also as worthless. Dr. Fox and Stephen Gardiner were despatched
to Orvieto with fuller powers and with a message peremptory and even
menacing. They were again to impress on the Pope the danger of a disputed
succession. They were to hint that, if relief was refused in deference to
the Emperor, England might decline from obedience to the Holy See. The
Pope must, therefore, pass the commission and the dispensation in the form
in which it had been sent from England. If he objected that it was
unusual, they were to announce that the cause was of great moment. The
King would not be defrauded of his expectation through fear of the
Emperor. If he could not obtain justice from the Pope, he would be
compelled to seek it elsewhere.[33]
The language of these instructions shows that the King and Wolsey
understood the Proteus that they were dealing with, and the necessity of
binding his hands if he was not to slip from them. It was not now the
fountain of justice, the august head of Christendom, that they were
addressing, but a shifty old man, clad by circumstances with the robe of
authority, but whose will was the will of the power which happened to be
strongest in Italy. It was not tolerable that the Emperor should dictate
on a question which touched the vital interests of an independent kingdom.
Spanish diplomatists had afterwards to excuse and explain away Clement's
concessions on the ground that they were signed when he was angry at his
imprisonment, had been extorted by threats, and were therefore of no
validity. He struggled hard to avoid committing himself. The unwelcome
documents were recast into various forms. The dispensation was not signed
after all, but in the place of it other briefs were signed of even graver
importance. The Pope yielded to the demand to send a second Legate to try
the cause with Wolsey in England, where it was assumed as a matter of
course that judgment would be given for the King. The Legate chosen was
Campeggio, who was himself, as was said, an English bishop. The Pope also
did express in writing his own opinion on the cause as favourable to the
King's plea. What passed at Orvieto was thus afterwards compendiously
related by Henry in a published statement of his case.
"On his first scruple the King sent to the Bishop of Rome, as Christ's
Vicar, who had the keys of knowledge, to dissolve his doubts. The said
Bishop refused to take any knowledge of it and desired the King to apply
for a commission to be sent into the realm, authorised to determine the
cause, thus pretending that it might no wise be entreated at Rome, but
only within the King's own realm. He delegated his whole powers to
Campeggio and Wolsey, giving them also a special commission in form of a
decretal, wherein he declared the King's marriage null and empowered him
to marry again. In the open commission also he gave them full authority to
give sentence for the King. Secretly he gave them instructions to burn the
commission decretal and not proceed upon it; (but) at the time of sending
the commission he also sent the King a brief, written in his own hand,
admitting the justice of his cause and promising _sanctissime sub verbo
Pontificis_ that he would never advocate it to Rome."[34]
Engagements which he intended to keep or break according to the turns of
the war between Francis and Charles did not press very heavily perhaps on
Clement's conscience, but they were not extorted from him without many
agonies. "He has granted the commission," Casalis wrote. "He is not
unwilling to please the King and Wolsey, but fears the Spaniards more than
ever he did. The Friar-General has forbidden him in the Emperor's name to
grant the King's request. He fears for his life from the Imperialists if
the Emperor knows of it. Before he would grant the brief he said, weeping,
that it would be his utter ruin. The Venetians and Florentines desired his
destruction. His sole hope of life was from the Emperor. He asked me to
swear whether the King would desert him or not. Satisfied on this point,
he granted the brief, saying that he placed himself in the King's arms, as
he would be drawn into perpetual war with the Emperor. Wolsey might
dispose of him and the Papacy as if he were Pope himself."[35]
The Emperor had insisted, at Catherine's desire, that the cause should not
be heard in England. The Pope had agreed that it should be heard in
England. Consent had been wrung from him, but his consent had been given,
and Campeggio was to go and make the best of it. His open commission was
as ample as words could make it. He and Wolsey were to hear the cause and
decide it. The secret "decretal" which he had wept over while he signed it
declared, before the cause was heard, the sentence which was to be given,
and he had pledged his solemn word not to revoke the hearing to Rome. All
that Clement could do was to instruct the Legate before he started to
waste time on his way, and, on his arrival in England, to use his skill to
"accommodate matters," and to persuade the Queen--if he found her
persuadeable--to save him from his embarrassments by taking the veil. This
was a course which Charles himself in his private mind would have
recommended, but was too honourable to advise it. The fatal decretal was
to be seen only by a very few persons, and then, as Henry said, Campeggio
was to burn it. He was instructed also to pass no sentence without first
referring back to Rome, and, if driven to extremity, was to find an excuse
for postponing a decision; very natural conduct on the part of a weak,
frightened mortal--conduct not unlike that of his predecessor, Alexander
III., in the quarrel between Becket and Henry II.--but in both cases
purely human, not such as might have been looked for in a divinely guided
Vicar of Christ.
CHAPTER IV.
Anne Boleyn--Letters to her from the King--The Convent at Wilton--The
Divorce--The Pope's promises--Arrival of Campeggio in England--Reception
at the Bridewell Palace--Proposal to Catherine to take the veil--Her
refusal--Uncertainty of the succession--A singular expedient--Alarms of
Wolsey--The true issue--Speech of the King in the City--Threats of the
Emperor--Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius--Alleged discovery of a brief
supplying them--Distress of Clement.
The marriage with Anne Boleyn was now a fixed idea in Henry's mind. He had
become passionately attached to her, though not perhaps she to him. The
evidence of his feeling remains in a series of letters to her--how
preserved for public inspection no one knows. Some of them were said to
have been stolen by Campeggio. Perhaps they were sold to him; at any rate,
they survive. A critic in the "Edinburgh Review" described them as such as
"might have been written by a pot-boy to his girl." The pot-boy must have
been a singular specimen of his kind. One, at any rate, remains to show
that, though Henry was in love, he did not allow his love to blind him to
his duty as a prince. The lady, though obliged to wait for the full
gratification of her ambition, had been using her influence to advance her
friends, while Wolsey brought upon himself the rebuke of his master by
insufficient care in the distribution of Church patronage. The
correspondence throws an unexpected light upon the King's character.
The Abbess of Wilton had died. The situation was a pleasant one. Among
the sisters who aspired to the vacant office was a certain Eleanor Carey,
a near connection of Anne, and a favourite with her. The appointment
rested virtually with the Crown. The Lady Anne spoke to the King. The King
deputed Wolsey to inquire into the fitness of the various candidates, with
a favourable recommendation of Eleanor Carey's claims. The inquiry was
made, and the result gives us a glimpse into the habits of the devout
recluses in these sacred institutions.[36]
"As for the matter of Wilton," wrote Henry to Anne, "my Lord Cardinal here
had the nuns before him, and examined them in the presence of Master Bell,
who assures me that she whom we would have had Abbess has confessed
herself to have had two children by two different priests, and has since
been kept not long ago by a servant of Lord Broke that was. Wherefore I
would not for all the gold in the world clog your conscience nor mine, to
make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour, nor I trust
you would not that, neither for brother nor sister,[37] I should so
distain mine honour or conscience. And as touching the Prioress [Isabella
Jordan] or Dame Eleanor's elder sister, though there is not any evident
cause proved against them, and the Prioress is so old that of many years
she could not be as she was named, yet notwithstanding, to do you pleasure
I have done that neither of them shall have it, but that some other good
and well-disposed woman shall have it, whereby the house shall be better
reformed, whereof I assure you it hath much need, and God much the better
served."
This letter is followed by another to the Cardinal. Wolsey, in whose hands
the King had left the matter, in a second letter which is lost, instead of
looking out for the "good and well-disposed woman," though Isabella
Jordan's reputation was doubtful, yet chose to appoint her, and the King's
observations upon this action of his are worth attending to, as addressed
by such a person as Henry is supposed to have been to a Cardinal
Archbishop and Legate of the Holy See. Many of the letters signed by the
King were the composition of his ministers and secretaries. This to Wolsey
was his own.
"The great affection and love I bear you, causeth me, using the doctrine
of my Master, _quem diligo castigo_, thus plainly as now ensueth to break
to you my mind, ensuring you that neither sinister report, affection to my
own pleasure, interest, nor mediation of any other body beareth part in
this case, wherefore whatsoever I do say, I pray you think it spoken of no
displeasure, but of him that would you as much good both of body and soul
as you would yourself.
"Methinks it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant
when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and
judgement--especially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and
interest, to elect and choose a person who was by him defended. And yet
another thing which displeaseth me more. That is to cloke your offence
made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my
determinate mind in that behalf. Alas, my lord, what can be more evident
or plainer than these words, specially to a wise man--'His Grace careth
not who, but referreth it all to you, so that none of those who either be
or have been spotted with incontinence, like as by report the Prioress
hath been in her youth, have it;' and also in another place in the letter,
'And therefore his Highness thinketh her not meet for that purpose;'
thirdly, in another place in the same letter by these words, 'And though
his Grace speaketh not of it so openly, yet meseemeth his pleasure is that
in no wise the Prioress have it, nor yet Dame Eleanor's eldest sister, for
many considerations the which your Grace can and will best consider.'
"Ah, my Lord, it is a double offence both to do ill and to colour it too;
but with men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my
Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more
hateth it. These things having been thus committed, either I must have
reserved them _in pectore_, whereby more displeasure might happen to
breed, or else thus soundly and plainly to declare them to you, because I
do think that _cum amico et familiari sincere semper est agendum_, and
especially the master to his best beloved servant and friend, for in so
doing the one shall be more circumspect in his doing, the other shall
declare and show the lothness that is in him to have any occasion to be
displeased with him.
"And as touching the redress of Religion [convent discipline], if it be
observed and continued, undoubtedly it is a gracious act. Notwithstanding,
if all reports be true, _ab imbecillis imbecilla expectantur_. How be it,
Mr. Bell hath informed me that the Prioress's age, personage and manner,
_prae se fert gravitatem_. I pray God it be so indeed, seeing she is
preferred to that room. I understand furthermore, which is greatly to my
comfort, that you have ordered yourself to Godward as religiously and
virtuously as any Prelate or father of Christ's Church can do, where in
so doing and persevering there can be nothing more acceptable to God, more
honour to yourself, nor more desired of your friends, among the which I
reckon myself not the least....
"I pray you, my Lord, think it not that it is upon any displeasure that I
write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge before God, being
in the room that I am in, and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you,
not undeserved in your behalf. Wherefore I pray you take it so; and I
assure you, your fault acknowledged, there shall remain in me no spark of
displeasure, trusting hereafter you shall recompense that with a thing
much more acceptable to me. And thus fare you well; advertising you that,
thanked be God, I and all my folk be, and have been since we came to
Ampthill, which was on Saturday last, July 11, in marvellous good health
and clearness of air.
"Written with the hand of him that is, and shall be your loving Sovereign
Lord and friend,--HENRY R."[38]
Campeggio meanwhile was loitering on his way as he had been directed,
pretending illness, pretending difficulties of the road. In sending him at
all the Pope had broken his promise to Charles. He engaged, however, that
no sentence should be given which had not been submitted first to
Charles's approval. The Emperor, anxious to avoid a complete rupture with
England, let the Legate go forward, but he directed Mendoza to inform
Wolsey that he must defend his aunt's honour; her cause was his and he
would hold it as such.[39] Wolsey, though afraid of the consequence of
opposing the divorce to himself and the Church, yet at heart had ceased
to desire it. Mendoza reported that English opinion was still
unfavourable, and that he did not believe that the commission would have
any result. The Pope would interpose delays. Wolsey would allow and
recognise them. Both Legates would agree privately to keep the matter in
suspense. The English Cardinal appeared to be against the Queen, but every
one knew that secretly he was now on her side.[40] Catherine only was
seriously frightened. She had doubtless been informed of the secret
decretal by which the Pope appeared to have prejudged her cause. She
supposed that the Pope meant it, and did not understand how lightly such
engagements sate upon him. The same Clement, when Benvenuto Cellini
reproached him for breaking his word, replied, smiling, that the Pope had
power to bind and to loose. Catherine came before long to know him better
and to understand the bearings of this singular privilege; but as yet she
thought that words meant what they seemed to say. When she heard that
Campeggio was actually coming, she wrote passionately to the Emperor,
flinging herself upon him for protection. Charles calmed her alarm. She
was not, he said, to be condemned without a hearing. The Pope had assured
him that the Legates should determine nothing to her detriment. The case
should be decided at Rome, as she had desired. Campeggio's orders were to
advise that it should be dropped. Apart from his present infatuation, the
King was a good Christian and would act as one. If he persisted, she might
rely on the Pope's protection. She must consent to nothing which would
imply the dissolution of her marriage. If the worst came, the King would
be made conscious of his duties.[41]
In the middle of October the Legate arrived. He had been ill in earnest
from gout and was still suffering. He had to rest two days in Calais
before he could face the Channel. The passage was wild. A deputation of
Peers and Bishops waited to receive him at Dover. Respectful
demonstrations had been prepared at the towns through which he was to
pass, and a state ceremonial was to accompany his entrance into London.
But he was, or pretended to be, too sick to allow himself to be seen. He
was eight days on the road from the coast, and on reaching his destination
he was carried privately in a state barge to the house provided for his
residence. Wolsey called the next morning. The King was absent, but
returned two days later to the Bridewell palace. There Campeggio waited on
him, accompanied by Wolsey. The weather continued to frown. "I wish,"
wrote Gerardo Molza to the Marchioness of Mantua, "that you could have
seen the two Cardinals abreast, one on his mule, the other carried in his
chair, the rain falling fast so that we were all drenched." The King,
simple man, believed that the documents which he held secured him. The
Pope in sending the Legate had acted in the teeth of the Emperor's
prohibition, and no one guessed how the affair had been soothed down. The
farce was well played, and the language used was what Henry expected.
Messer Floriano, one of Campeggio's suit, made a grand oration, setting
out the storming of Rome, the perils of the Church, and the misery of
Italy, with moving eloquence. The crowd was so dense in the hall of
audience that some of the Italians lost their shoes, and had to step back
barefoot to their lodgings through the wet streets.
The Legate was exhausted by the exertion, but he was not allowed to rest,
and the serious part of the business began at once behind the scenes. He
had hoped, as the Emperor said, that the case might be dropped. He found
Henry immoveable. "An angel from heaven," he wrote on the 17th of
October,[42] "would not be able to persuade the King that his marriage was
not invalid. The matter had come to such a pass that it could no longer be
borne with. The Cardinal of York and the whole kingdom insisted that the
question must be settled in some way." One road out of the difficulty
alone presented itself. The Emperor had insisted that the marriage should
not be dissolved by Catherine's consent, objecting reasonably that a
judgment invalidating it would shake other royal marriages besides hers.
But no such judgment would be necessary if Catherine could be induced to
enter "lax religion," to take vows of chastity which, at her age and under
her conditions of health, would be a mere form. The Pope could then allow
Henry to take another wife without offence to any one. The legitimacy of
the Princess would not be touched, and the King undertook that the
succession should be settled upon her if he had no male heir. The Queen in
consenting would lose nothing, for the King had for two years lived apart
from her, and would never return to cohabitation. The Emperor would be
delivered from an obligation infinitely inconvenient to him, and his own
honour and the honour of Spain would be equally untouched.
These arguments were laid before the Queen by both the Legates, and urged
with all their eloquence. In the interests of the realm, in the interests
of Europe, in the interests of the Church, in her own and her daughter's
interest as well, it would have been wiser if she had complied. Perhaps
she would have complied had the King's plea been confined, as at first, to
the political exigencies of the succession. But the open and premature
choice of the lady who was to take her place was an indignity not to be
borne. She had the pride of her race. Her obstinacy was a match for her
husband's. She was shaken for a moment by the impassioned entreaties of
Campeggio, and she did not at once absolutely refuse. The Legate postponed
the opening of his court. He referred to Rome for further instructions,
complaining of the responsibility which was thrown upon him. Being on the
spot he was able to measure the danger of disappointing the King after the
secret commission, the secret decretal, and the Pope's private letter
telling Henry that he was right. Campeggio wrote to Salviati, after his
first interview with Catherine, that he did not yet despair. Something
might be done if the Emperor would advise her to comply. He asked Fisher
to help him, and Fisher seemed not wholly unwilling; but, after a few
days' reflection, Catherine told him that before she would consent she
would be torn limb from limb; she would have an authoritative sentence
from the Pope, and would accept nothing else; nothing should make her
alter her opinion, and if after death she could return to life, she would
die over again rather than change it.[43]
Wolsey was in equal anxiety. He had set the stone rolling, but he could
not stop it. If Clement failed the King now, after all that he had
promised, he might not only bring ruin on Wolsey himself, but might bring
on the overthrow of the temporal power of the Church of England. Catherine
was personally popular; but in the middle classes of the laity, among the
peers and gentlemen of England, the exactions of the Church courts, the
Pope's agents and collectors, the despotic tyranny of the Bishops, had
created a resentment the extent of which none knew better than he. The
entire gigantic system of clerical dominion, of which Wolsey was himself
the pillar and representative, was tottering to its fall. If the King was
driven to bay, the favour of a good-natured people for a suffering woman
would be a poor shelter either for the Church or for him. Campeggio turned
to Wolsey for advice on Catherine's final refusal. The Pope, he said, had
hoped that Wolsey would advise the King to yield. Wolsey had advised. He
told Cavendish that he had gone on his knees to the King, but he could
only say to Campeggio that "the King--fortified and justified by reasons,
writings, and counsels of many learned men who feared God--would never
yield." If he was to find that the Pope had been playing with him, and the
succession was to be left undetermined, "the Church would be ruined and
the realm would be in infinite peril."
How great, how real, was the dread of a disputed succession, appears from
an extraordinary expedient which had suggested itself to Campeggio
himself, and which he declares that some perplexed politicians had
seriously contemplated. "They have thought," he wrote on the 28th of
October, "of marrying the Princess Mary to the King's natural son [the
Duke of Richmond] if it could be done by dispensation from His Holiness."
The Legate said that at first he had himself thought of this as a means
of establishing the succession; but he did not believe it would satisfy
the King's desire.[44] If anything could be more astonishing than a
proposal for the marriage of a brother and sister, it was the reception
which the suggestion met with at Rome. The Pope's secretary replied that
"with regard to the dispensation for marrying the son to the daughter of
the King, if on the succession being so established the King would abandon
the divorce, the Pope would be much more inclined to grant it."[45]
Clement's estimate of the extent of the dispensing power was large. But
the situation was desperate. He had entangled himself in the meshes. He
had promised what he had no intention of performing. He was finding that
he had been trifling with a lion, and that the lion was beginning to rouse
himself. Again and again Wolsey urged the dangers upon him. He wrote on
the 1st of November to Casalis that "the King's honour was touched, having
been so great a benefactor to the Holy See. The Pope would alienate all
faith and devotion to the Apostolic See. The sparks of opposition which
had been extinguished with such care and vigilance would blaze out to the
utmost anger of all, both in England and elsewhere."[46] Clement and his
Cardinals heard, but imperfectly believed. "He tells us," wrote Sanga,
"that if the divorce is not granted the authority of the Apostolic See in
England will be annihilated; he is eager to save it because his own
greatness is bound up with ours." The Curia was incredulous, and thought
that Wolsey was only alarmed for himself. Wolsey, however, was right.
Although opinions might have varied on the merits of the King's request,
people were beginning to ask what value as a supreme judge a pope could
have, who could not decide on a point of canon law.
The excitement was growing. Certain knowledge of what was going on was
confined to the few who had access to the secret correspondence, and they
knew only what was meant for their own eyes. All parties, English and
Imperial alike, distrusted the Pope. He had impartially lied to both, and
could be depended on by neither, except so far as they could influence his
fears. Catherine was still the favourite with the London citizens. She had
been seen accidentally in a gallery of the Palace, and had been
enthusiastically cheered. The King found it necessary to explain himself.
On the 8th of November he summoned the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the Privy
Council, and a body of Peers, and laid the situation before them from his
own point of view. He spoke of his long friendship with the Emperor, and
of his hope that it would not be broken, and again of his alliance with
France, and of his desire to be at peace with all the world. "He had
wished," he said, "to attach France more closely to him by marrying his
daughter to a French prince, and the French Ambassador, in considering the
proposal, had raised the question of her legitimacy. His own mind had long
misgiven him on the lawfulness of his marriage. M. de Tarbes' words had
added to his uneasiness. The succession to the crown was uncertain; he had
consulted his bishops and lawyers, and they had assured him that he had
been living in mortal sin.... He meant only to do what was right, and he
warned his subjects to be careful of forming hasty judgments on their
Prince's actions."
Apart from the present question the King was extremely popular, and
reports arriving from Spain touched the national pride. There was a talk
of calling Parliament. Mendoza and Catherine again urged Charles to speak
plainly. The Pope must inhibit Parliament from interfering. The Nuncio in
London would present the order, and Parliament, they thought, would
submit.[47] They were mistaking the national temper. Mendoza's letters had
persuaded the Spanish Council that the whole of England was in opposition
to the King. The Spanish Chancellor had said publicly that if the cause
was proceeded with there would be war, and "the King would be dethroned by
his own subjects." The words were reported to Wolsey, and were confirmed
by an English agent, Sylvester Darius, who had been sent to Valladolid on
business connected with the truce.[48] Darius had spoken to the Chancellor
on the probability of England taking active part with France. "Why do you
talk of the King of England?" the Chancellor had answered; "if we wished,
we could expel him from his kingdom in three months. What force had the
King? his own subjects would expel him. He knew how matters were."[49] It
was one thing for a free people to hold independent opinions on the
arrangements of their own royal family. It was another to be threatened
with civil war at the instigation of a foreign sovereign. Wolsey quoted
the dangerous language at a public meeting in London; and a voice
answered, "The Emperor has lost the hearts of a hundred thousand
Englishmen."[50] A fresh firebrand was thrown into the flames immediately
after. The national pride was touched on a side where it was already
sensitive from interest. There were 15,000 Flemish artisans in London.
English workmen had been jealous of their skill, and had long looked
askance at them. The cry rose that they had an army of traitors in their
midst who must be instantly expelled. The Flemings' houses were searched
for arms, and watched by a guard, and the working city population,
traders, shopkeepers, mechanics, apprentices, came over to the King's
side, and remained there.
Meantime the cause itself hung fire. A new feature had been introduced to
enable Campeggio to decline to proceed and the Pope to withdraw decently
from his promises. The original Bull of Pope Julius permitting the
marriage had been found to contain irregularities of form which were
supposed fatal to it. The validity of the objection was not denied, but
was met by the production of a brief alleged to have been found in Spain,
and bearing the same date with the Bull, which exactly met that objection.
No trace of such a brief could be found in the Vatican Register. It had
informalities of its own, and its genuineness was justly suspected, but it
answered the purpose of a new circumstance. A copy only was sent to
England, which was shown by Catherine in triumph to Henry, but the
original was detained. It would be sent to Rome, but not to London;
without it Campeggio could pretend inability to move, and meanwhile he
could refuse to proceed on his commission. Subterfuges which answer for
the moment revenge themselves in the end. Having been once raised, it was
absolutely necessary that a question immediately affecting the succession
should be settled in some way, and many of the peers who had been
hitherto cool began to back the King's demands. An address was drawn up,
having among others the Duke of Norfolk's signature, telling the Pope that
the divorce must be conceded, and complaints were sent through Casalis
against Campeggio's dilatoriness. The King, he was to say, would not
submit to be deluded.
Casalis delivered his message, and describes the effect which it produced.
"The Pope," he wrote, "very angry, laid his hand on my arm and forbade me
to proceed, saying there was but too good ground for complaint, and he was
deluded by his own councillors. He had granted the decretal only to be
shown to the King, and then burnt. Wolsey now wished to divulge it. He saw
what would follow, and would gladly recall what had been done, even with
the loss of one of his fingers."
Casalis replied that Wolsey wished only to show it to a few persons whose
secrecy might be depended on. Was it not demanded for that purpose? Why
had the Pope changed his mind? The Pope, only the more excited, said he
saw the Bull would be the ruin of him, and he would make no more
concessions. Casalis prayed him to consider. Waving his arms violently,
Clement said, "I do consider. I consider the ruin which is hanging over
me. I repent what I have done. If heresies arise, is it my fault? I will
not violate my conscience. Let them, if they like, send the Legate back,
because he will not proceed. They can do as they please, provided they do
not make me responsible."
Did the Pope mean, then, Casalis asked, that the commission should not
proceed? The Pope could not say as much as that; he had told Campeggio, he
said, to dissuade the King and persuade the Queen. "What harm could there
be," Casalis inquired, "in showing the decretal, under oath, to a few of
the Privy Council?"
The Pope said the decretal ought to have been burnt, and refused to
discuss the matter further.[51]
CHAPTER V.
Demands of the Imperial Agent at Rome--The alleged Brief--Illness of the
Pope--Aspirations of Wolsey--The Pope recovers--Imperial menaces--Clement
between the anvil and the hammer--Appeal of Henry to Francis--The trial of
the cause to proceed--Instructions to Campeggio--Opinion at Rome--Recall
of Mendoza--Final interview between Mendoza and the King.
Human pity is due to the unfortunate Pope--Vicar of Christ, supreme judge
in Europe, whose decrees were the inspirations of the Holy Ghost--spinning
like a whipped top under the alternate lashes of the King of England and
the Emperor. He had hoped that his decretal would not be known. It could
not be concealed from Mendoza, who discovered, putting the worst
interpretation upon it, "that the Pope and King had been endeavouring to
intimidate the Queen into retiring into a convent." Finding that he, too,
could put no faith in Clement, the Emperor's representative at Rome now
forced a new promise from him. The proceedings in England were not to be
opened without a fresh direct order from the Pope, and this the Pope was
to be forbidden to give. If the King was obstinate and the Queen demanded
it, Campeggio was to leave England, and, notwithstanding his engagements
to the contrary, Clement was to advocate the cause to Rome. The new brief
was sufficient plea. Without it the Legates could come to no conclusion,
"the whole right of the Queen being based upon its contents." The Emperor
had it in his hands, and by refusing to allow it to be examined, except at
Rome, might prevent them from moving.
There was little doubt that the brief had been forged for the occasion.
The Pope having sent a commission to England, the King considered that he
had a right to the production of documents essential to the case. He
required Catherine to write to Charles to ask for it. Catherine did as he
desired, and the messenger who carried her letter to the Spanish Court was
sworn to carry no private or separate missive from her. Mendoza dared not
write by the same hand himself, lest his despatches should be examined. He
made the messenger, therefore, learn a few words by heart, telling the
Emperor that the Queen's letter was not to be attended to. "We thought,"
he said, "that the man's oath was thus saved."[52] Thus time drifted on.
The new year came, and no progress had been made, though Campeggio had
been three months in England. The Pope, more helpless than dishonest,
continued to assure the King that he would do all that by law could be
required of him, and as much as he could do _ex plenitudine potestatis_.
No peril should prevent him. "If the King thought his resigning the Papacy
would conduce to his purpose, he could be content, for the love he bore
his Highness, rather than fail to do the same."
If the Pope was so well disposed, the King could not see where the
difficulty lay. The Queen had refused his entreaty that she should enter
religion. Why should not the Pope, then, allow the decretal to be put in
execution? But Cardinal Salviati informed Casalis that a sentence given
in virtue of the decretal would have no effect, but would only cause the
Pope's deposition.[53] Visibly and unpleasantly it became now apparent to
Henry to what issues the struggle was tending. He had not expected it.
Wolsey had told him that the Pope would yield; and the Pope had promised
what was asked; but his promises were turning to vapour. Wolsey had said
that the Emperor could not afford to quarrel with him. The King found that
war with the Emperor in earnest was likely enough unless he himself drew
back, and draw back he would not. The poor Pope was as anxious as Henry.
He had spoken of resigning. He was near being spared the trouble. Harassed
beyond his strength, he fell ill, and was expected to die; and before
Wolsey there was now apparently the strange alternative either of utter
disgrace or of himself ascending the chair of St. Peter as Clement's
successor. His election, perhaps, was really among the chances of the
situation. The Cardinals had not forgiven the sack of Rome. A French or
English candidate had a fair prospect of success, and Wolsey could command
the French interest. He had boundless money, and money in the Sacred
College was only not omnipotent. He undertook, if he was chosen, to resign
his enormous English preferments and reside at Rome, and the vacancy of
his three bishoprics and his abbey would pour a cataract of gold into the
Cardinals' purses. The Bulls for English bishoprics had to be paid for on
a scale which startled Wolsey himself. Already archbishop of York, bishop
of Winchester, and abbot of St. Albans, he had just been presented to
Durham. He had paid 8,000 ducats to "expedite" his Bulls for Winchester.
The Cardinals demanded 13,000 ducats for Durham. The ducat was worth five
shillings, and five shillings in 1528 were worth fifty shillings of modern
money. At such a rate were English preferments bled to support the College
of Cardinals; and if all these great benefices were again vacated there
would be a fine harvest to be gathered. For a week or two the splendid
vision suspended even the agitation over the divorce; but the Pope
revived, and the Legates and he had to resume their ungrateful burden.
It was still really uncertain what Clement would do. Weak, impulsive men
often leave their course to fate or chance to decide for them. Casalis,
when he was able to attend to business again, told him in Wolsey's name
that he must take warning from his late danger. "By the wilfully suffering
a thing of such high importance to be unreformed to the doing whereof
Almighty God worked so openly he would incur God's displeasure and peril
his soul." The Imperialists were as anxious as Wolsey, and equally
distrustful. In the Sacred College English gold was an influence not to be
despised, and Henry had more to give than Charles. Micer Mai, the Imperial
agent at Rome, found, as the spring came on, that the Italian Cardinals
were growing cold. Salviati insisted to him that Catherine must go into a
convent. Casalis denounced the new brief as a forgery, and the Sacred
College seemed to be of the same opinion. The fiery Mai complained in the
Pope's presence of the scant courtesy which the Ministers of the Emperor
were meeting with, while the insolent and overbearing were regaled like
the Prodigal Son.[54] The Pope assured him that, come what might, he
would never authorise the divorce; but Mai only partially believed him. At
trying moments Mai was even inclining to take the same view of the Papacy
as Lope de Soria. "At other times," he said, "many things could be got out
of the Pope by sheer intimidation; but now that could not be tried, for he
would fall into despair, and the Imperialists would lose him altogether.
They owed him something for what he had done for them before, otherwise he
would be of opinion that it would be for God's service to reduce them to
their spiritual powers."[55]
Occasionally Mai's temper broke through, and he used language worth
observing. One of the Cardinals had spoken slightingly of the Emperor.
"I did not call on his Holiness," he wrote to Charles, "but sent him a
message, adding that, if ever it came to my notice that the same Cardinal,
or any member of the College, had dared to speak in such an indecent
manner of the Emperor, I took my most solemn oath that I would have him
beheaded or burnt alive within his own apartment. I had this time
refrained out of respect for his Holiness; but should the insult be
repeated I would not hesitate. They might do as they would with their
Bulls and other rogueries--grant or refuse them as they liked; but they
were not to speak evil of princes, or make themselves judges in the
affairs of kingdoms."[56]
This remarkable message was conveyed to the Pope, who seemed rather
pleased than otherwise. Mai, however, observed that the revolt of the
Lutherans was not to be wondered at, and in what they said of Rome he
considered that they were entirely right, except on points of faith.[57]
Cardinals had been roughly handled in the sack of the Holy City at but a
year's distance. The possibility was extremely real. The Imperial
Minister, it appeared, could still command the services of the Spanish
garrisons in the Papal territories if severity was needed, and the members
of the Sacred College had good reason to be uneasy; but King Henry might
reasonably object to the trial of his cause in a country where the
assessors of the supreme judge were liable to summary execution if they
were insubordinate. That Charles could allow his representative to write
in such terms to him proves that he and Mai, and Henry himself, were in
tolerable agreement on Church questions. The Pope knew it; one of his
chief fears was that the Emperor, France, England, and the German Princes,
might come to an understanding to his own disadvantage. Perhaps it might
have been so had not the divorce kept Henry and Charles apart. Campeggio
wrote to Sanga on the 3rd of April that certain advances had been made by
the Lutherans to Henry, in which they promised to relinquish all heresies
on articles of faith, and to believe according to Divine law if he and the
King of France would reduce the ecclesiastical state to the condition of
the Primitive Church, taking from it all its temporalities. He had told
the King this was the Devil dressed in angel's clothing, a mere design
against the property of the Church; and that it had been ruled by councils
and theologians that it was right for the Church to hold temporal
property. The King said those rules had been made by Churchmen
themselves, and now the laity must interfere. He said also that Churchmen
were said to be leading wicked lives, especially about the Court of
Rome.[58]
Growled at on both sides, in terror for himself, in terror for the Church,
the Pope drifted on, hoping for some accident to save him which never
came, and wishing perhaps that his illness had made an end of him.
The Emperor complained of Campeggio as partial to the King because he held
an English bishopric. "If the Pope leaves the succession undetermined,"
insisted Wolsey, on the other side, "no Prince would tolerate such an
injury." "Nothing was done," wrote the Pope's secretary to Campeggio, "and
nothing would be done. The Pope was in great trouble between the English
and Imperial Ambassadors. He wished to please the King, but the King and
Cardinal must not expect him to move till they had forced the Venetians to
restore the Papal territories." Stephen Gardiner, who knew Clement well
and watched him from day to day, said: "He was a man who never resolved
anything unless compelled by some violent affection. He was in great
perplexity, and seemed willing to gratify the King if he could, but when
it came to the point did nothing. He would be glad if the King's cause
could be determined in England by the Legates; and if the Emperor made any
suit against what should be done there, they would serve him as they now
served the King, and put off the time." So matters would go on, "unless
Campeggio would frankly promise to give sentence in the King's favour;
otherwise such delays would be found as the counterfeit Brief had
caused."[59] Sir Francis Bryan, who was also at the Papal court, wrote to
the King that the Pope would do nothing for him, and whoever had told the
King that he would, had not done him the best service. "He was very sorry
to write thus, but the King must not be fed with their flattering
words."[60]
To wait longer on the Pope's action was now seen in England to be useless.
The Pope dared not offend the Emperor further, and the Emperor had
interposed to prohibit future action. Clement had himself several times
suggested that the best way was to decide the case first in England in the
Legate's court, and leave Catherine to appeal; he had promised Charles
that no judgment should be given in England by the Legates; but he had
worn so double a face that no one could say which truly belonged to him.
Gardiner and Bryan were recalled. The King, finding the Pope's
ingratitude, "resolved to dissemble with him, and proceed on the
commission granted to Wolsey and Campeggio."[61] The Cardinal of York
encouraged his brother Legate by assuring him that if the marriage was now
dissolved means would be found to satisfy the Emperor. Catherine would be
left with her state undiminished, would have anything that she desired
"except the person of the King." The Emperor's natural daughter might be
married to the Duke of Richmond, and all would be well.[62]
So Wolsey wrote, but his mind was less easy than he pretended. Unless
Henry was supported actively by the French, he knew that the Pope would
fail him in the end; and Francis had been disappointed in the hope that
Henry would stand actively by him in the war. Without effectual help from
that quarter, Wolsey saw that he was himself undone. The French Ambassador
represented to his Court that Wolsey was sincerely attached to the French
alliance, that the King had only been induced to enterprise the affair by
the assurance which the Cardinal had always given that he had nothing to
fear from the Emperor; Wolsey had advanced the divorce as a "_means to
break off for ever the alliance with the Emperor_"; and Francis, by now
declaring himself, would confer a very great favour on the King, and would
oblige Wolsey as much as if he had made him pope.[63] His master was not
only now concerned for the discharge of his conscience and his desire to
have issue, but the very safety and independence of England was at stake.
He could not have it said that he left the succession to the throne
uncleared for the threats of his enemy.[64]
The Duke of Suffolk was despatched to Paris to bring Francis to the point.
Francis professed the warmest good-will to his brother of England. He
undertook to advise the Pope. He assured Suffolk that if the Emperor
attempted force Henry would find him at his side; but further he would not
pledge himself. The time was past for a Wolsey patriarchate, and Francis,
curiously enough, expressed doubts whether Wolsey was not after all
betraying Henry. "There are some," he said, "which the King my brother
doth trust in that matter that would it should never take effect.
Campeggio told me he did not think the divorce would be brought about, but
should be dissembled well enough. When the Cardinal of England was with
me, as far as I could perceive, he desired the divorce might take place,
for he loved not the Queen; but I advise my brother not to trust any man
too much, and to look to his own matters. The Cardinal has great
intelligence with the Pope, and Campeggio and they are not inclined to
it."[65]
Things could not go on thus for ever. There would have been an excuse for
Clement, if with a consciousness of his high office he had refused to
anticipate a judgment till the case had been heard and considered. But
from the first the right or wrong of the cause itself had been disregarded
as of no moment. Nothing had been thought of but the alternate dangers to
be anticipated from the King or the Emperor. Had the French driven the
Imperialists out of Italy, the divorce would have been granted without
further question. The supreme tribunal in Christendom was transparently
influenced by no motive save interest or fear. Clement, in fact, had
anticipated judgment, though he dared not avow it. He had appointed a
commission, and by the secret decretal had ruled what the decision was to
be. The decretal could not be produced, but, with or without it, the King
insisted that the court should sit. Campeggio had been sent to try the
cause, and try it he should. Notice was given that the suit was to be
heard at the end of June. Wolsey perhaps had chosen a date not far from
the close of term, that the vacation might suspend the process, and give
time for further delay.
Since a trial of some kind could not be avoided, final instructions were
sent from Rome to Campeggio. "If," wrote Sanga to him, "the Pope was not
certain that he remembered the injunctions which he gave him by word of
mouth, and which had been written to him many times, he would be very
anxious. His Holiness had always desired that the cause should be
protracted in order to find some means by which he could satisfy the King
without proceeding to sentence. The citation of the cause to Rome, which
he had so often insisted on, had been deferred, not because it was doubted
whether the matter could be treated with less scandal at Rome than there,
but because His Holiness had ever shrunk from a step which would offend
the King. But, since Campeggio had not been able to prevent the
commencement of the proceedings, His Holiness warned him that the process
must be slow, and that no sentence must in any manner be pronounced. He
would not lack a thousand means and pretexts, if on no other point, at
least upon the brief which had been produced."[66]
According to Casalis the view taken of the general situation at Rome was
this.
"The Pope would not declare openly for the Emperor till he saw how matters
went. He thought the Emperor would come to Italy, and if there was a war
would be victorious, so that it would be for His Holiness's advantage to
obtain his friendship beforehand. If peace was made the Emperor would
dictate terms, and more was to be hoped from his help than from the
French King. The Emperor was the enemy of the Allies, and sought to
recover the honour which he lost by the sack of Rome by making himself
protector of the Pope."[67]
Wolsey's dream was over, and with it the dreams of Lope de Soria and Micer
Mai. The fine project to unite France and England in defence of the Papacy
was proving baseless as the sand on which it was built. Henry VIII. was to
lead the reform of the Church in England. Charles, instead of beheading
cardinals, was to become the champion of the Roman hierarchy. The air was
clearing. The parties in the great game were drifting into their natural
situations. The fate which lay before Wolsey himself, the fate which lay
before the Church of England, of the worst corruptions of which he was
himself the chief protector and example, his own conscience enabled him
too surely to foresee.
Mendoza was recalled, and before leaving had an interview with the King.
"The Emperor," he said, "was obliged to defend his aunt. It was a private
affair, which touched the honour of his family." The King answered that
the Emperor had no right to interfere. He did not meddle himself with the
private affairs of other princes. Mendoza was unable to guess what was
likely to happen. The suit was to go on. If a prohibitory mandate arrived
from the Pope, it was uncertain whether Wolsey would obey it, and it was
doubtful also whether any such mandate would be sent. He suspected Clement
of possible deliberate treachery. He believed that orders had been sent to
the Legate to proceed, and give sentence in virtue of the first
commission. In that case the sentence would certainly be against the
Queen, and not a moment must be lost in pressing an appeal to Rome.[68]
CHAPTER VI.
The Court at Blackfriars--The point at issue--The Pope's competency as
judge--Catherine appeals to Rome--Imperial pressure upon Clement--The
Emperor insists on the Pope's admission of the appeal--Henry demands
sentence--Interference of Bishop Fisher--The Legates refuse to give
judgment--The Court broken up--Peace of Cambray.
The great scene in the hall at the Blackfriars when the cause of Henry
VIII. and Catherine of Aragon was pleaded before Wolsey and Campeggio is
too well known to require further description. To the Legates it was a
splendid farce. They knew that it was to end in nothing. The world
outside, even the parties chiefly concerned, were uncertain what the Pope
intended, and waited for the event to determine their subsequent conduct.
There was more at issue than the immediate question before the Court. The
point really at stake was, whether the interests of the English nation
could be trusted any longer to a judge who was degrading his office by
allowing himself to be influenced by personal fears and interests; who,
when called on to permit sentence to be delivered, by delegates whom he
had himself appointed, yet confessed himself unable, or unwilling, to
decide whether it should be delivered or not. Abstractly Henry's demand
was right. A marriage with a brother's wife was not lawful, and no Papal
dispensation could make it so; but long custom had sanctioned what in
itself was forbidden. The Pope could plead the undisputed usage of
centuries, and if when the case was first submitted to him he had
unequivocally answered that a marriage contracted _bona fide_ under his
predecessor's sanction could not be broken, English opinion, it is likely,
would have sustained him, even at the risk of a disputed succession, and
the King himself would have dropped his suit. But the Pope, as a weak
mortal, had wished to please a powerful sovereign. He had entertained the
King's petition; he had hesitated, had professed inability to come to a
conclusion, finally had declared that justice was on the King's side, and
had promised that it should be so declared. If he now drew back, broke his
engagements, and raised new difficulties in the settlement of a doubt
which the long discussion of it had made serious; if he allowed it to be
seen that his change of purpose was due to the menaces of another secular
Prince, was such a judge to be any longer tolerated? Was not the Papacy
itself degenerate, and unfit to exercise any longer the authority which it
had been allowed to assume? This aspect of the matter was not a farce at
all. The Papal supremacy itself was on its trial.
On the 16th of June the King and Queen were cited to appear in court.
Catherine was unprepared. She had been assured by the Emperor that her
cause should not be tried in England. She called on Campeggio to explain.
Campeggio answered that the Pope, having deputed two Legates for the
process, could not revoke their commission without grave consideration. He
exhorted her to pray God to enlighten her to take some good advice,
considering the times. He was not without hope that, at the last
extremity, she would yield and take the vows. But she did not in the least
accede to his hints, and no one could tell what she meant to do.[69] She
soon showed what she meant to do. On the 18th the court sate. Henry
appeared by a proctor, who said for him that he had scruples about the
validity of his marriage, which he required to be resolved. Catherine
attended in person, rose, and delivered a brief protest against the place
of trial and the competency of the judges. Wolsey was an English subject,
Campeggio held an English bishopric. They were not impartial. She demanded
to be heard at Rome, delivered her protest in writing, and withdrew.
It was at once answered for the King that he could not plead in a city
where the Emperor was master. The court adjourned for three days that the
Cardinals might consider. On the 21st they sate again. The scene became
more august. Henry came now himself, and took his place under a canopy at
the Legates' right hand. Catherine attended again, and sate in equal state
at their left. Henry spoke. He said he believed that he had been in mortal
sin. He could bear it no longer, and required judgment. Wolsey replied
that they would do what was just; and then Catherine left her seat,
crossed in front of them, and knelt at her husband's feet. She had been
his lawful wife, she said, for twenty years, and had not deserved to be
repudiated and put to shame. She begged him to remember their daughter, to
remember her own relations, Charles and Ferdinand, who would be gravely
offended. Crowds of women, gathered about the palace gates, had cheered
her as she came in, and bade her care for nothing. If women had to decide
the case, said the French Ambassador, the Queen would win. Their voices
availed nothing. She was told that her protest could not be admitted. She
then left the court, was thrice summoned to come back, and, as she
refused, was pronounced contumacious.
For the King to appear as a suitor at Rome was justly regarded as
impossible. Casalis was directed to tell Clement that, being in the
Emperor's hands, he could not be accepted as a judge in the case, and that
sovereign princes were exempted by prerogative from pleading in courts
outside their own dominions. If he admitted the Queen's appeal, he would
lose the devotion of the King and of England to the See Apostolic, and
would destroy Wolsey for ever.[70] Had the Legates been in earnest there
would have been no time to learn whether the appeal was allowed at Rome or
not; they would have gone on and given sentence under their commission. It
appeared as if this was what they intended to do. The court continued
sitting. Catherine being contumacious, there was nothing left to delay the
conclusion. She was in despair; she believed herself betrayed. Mendoza,
who might have comforted her, was gone. She wrote to him that she was lost
unless the Emperor or the Pope interposed. Even Campeggio seemed to be
ignorant how he was to avoid a decision. Campeggio, the French Ambassador
wrote, was already half conquered. If Francis would send a word to him, he
might gather courage to pass sentence, and Henry would be brought to his
knees in gratitude. The very Pope, perhaps, in his heart would not have
been displeased if the Legates had disobeyed the orders which he had
given, and had proceeded to judgment, as he had often desired that they
might. Micer Mai's accounts to Charles of the shifts of the poor old man,
as the accounts from England reached him, are almost pathetic. Pope,
Cardinals, canon lawyers, Mai regarded as equally feeble, if not as
equally treacherous. One reads with wonder the Spaniard's real estimate of
the persons for whose sake and in whose name Charles and Philip were to
paint Europe red with blood.
"Salviati," said Mai, "who, though a great rogue, has not wit enough to
hide his tricks, showed me the minute of a letter they had written to
Campeggio: a more stupid or rascally composition could not have been
concocted in hell."[71] Campeggio was directed in this letter to reveal to
no one that he had received orders not to give sentence. He was to go on
making delays, which was what "those people desired," because, if he was
to say that he would make no declaration in the affair, the Archbishop of
York would act by himself, the Pope's mandate having been originally
addressed to the two Legates conjointly or to one individually. The letter
had gone on to direct Campeggio, if he could not manage this, to carry on
the proceedings until the final sentence, but not deliver sentence without
first consulting Rome. If possible, he was to keep this part of his
instructions secret, for fear of displeasing the King.
"I lost all patience," Mai continued. "Andrea de Burgo and I went to the
Pope, and told him we had seen the instructions sent to Campeggio, which
were of such a nature that if we were to inform your Majesty of their
contents you would undoubtedly resent the manner in which you were being
treated. We would not do that, but we would speak our minds plainly. The
letter to Campeggio was a breach of faith so often pledged by his Holiness
to your Majesty that the divorce suit should be advocated to Rome. The
violation of such a promise and the writing to Campeggio to go on with
the proceeding was a greater insult and offence to your Majesty than the
commission given to him in the first instance. It was a wonder to see how
lightly his Holiness held promises made in accordance with justice and
reason. An offence of such a kind bore so much on the honour of your
Majesty and the princes of the Imperial family, that your Majesty would
not put up with it. The King would have but to ask Campeggio whether he
would or would not give sentence, and, if he refused, the duty would then
devolve on the other Legate. His Holiness should be careful how he added
fuel to the fire now raging in Christendom."[72]
It was not enough for Mai that the cause should be revoked to Rome. The
English agents said that if an independent sovereign was to be forced to
plead at Rome, the Pope must at least hear the suit in person. He must not
refer it to the Rota. Mai would not hear of this. To the Rota it must go
and nowhere else. The Pope might mean well, but he might die and be
succeeded by a pope of another sort, or the English might regain the
influence they once had, and indeed had still, in the Papal court. They
were great favourites, bribing right and left and spending money
freely.[73] What was a miserable pope to do? Casalis, and Dr. Benet who
had joined him from England, pointed out the inevitable consequences if he
allowed himself to be governed by the Emperor. The Pope replied with
lamentations that none saw that better than he, but he was so placed
between the hammer and the anvil, that, though he wished to please the
King, the whole storm would fall on him. The Emperor would not endure an
insult to his family, and had said that he regarded the cause more than
all his kingdoms. Those were only ornaments of fortune, while this touched
his honour. He would postpone the advocation for a few days, but it could
not be refused. He was in the Emperor's power, and the Emperor could do as
he pleased with him.
The few days' respite meant a hope that news of some decisive act might
arrive meanwhile from England. The King must determine, Casalis and Benet
thought, whether it would be better to suspend the process at his own
request, or to proceed to sentence before the advocation.[74] The Pope,
the Commissioners added, was well disposed to the King, and would not
refuse to shed his blood for him; but in this cause and at this time he
said it was impossible.
While matters were going thus at Rome, the suit in England went forward.
The Cardinals availed themselves of every excuse for delay; but in the
presence of Catherine's determined refusal to recognise the court, delay
became daily more difficult. The King pressed for judgment; formal
obstacles were exhausted, and the Roman Legate must either produce his
last instructions, which he had been ordered not to reveal, or there was
nothing left for him to urge as a reason for further hesitation. It was
not supposed that in the face of a distinct promise the Pope would revoke
the commission. Campeggio and Wolsey were sitting with full powers to hear
and determine. Determine, it seemed, they must; when, at the fifth
session, uncalled on and unlooked for, the Bishop of Rochester rose and
addressed the court. The King, he said, had declared that his only
intention was to have justice done, and to relieve himself of a scruple of
conscience, and had invited the judges and everyone else to throw light
upon a cause which distressed and perplexed him. He [the Bishop], having
given two years' diligent study to the question, felt himself bound in
consequence to declare his opinion, and not risk the damnation of his soul
by withholding it. He undertook, therefore, to declare and demonstrate
that the marriage of the King and Queen could be dissolved by no power,
human or divine, and for that conclusion he was ready to lay down his
life. The Baptist had held it glorious to die in a cause of marriage, when
marriage was not so holy as it had been made by the shedding of Christ's
blood. He was prepared to encounter any peril for the truth, and he ended
by presenting his arguments in a written form.[75]
The Bishop's allusion to the Baptist was neither respectful nor
felicitous. It implied that Henry, who as yet at least had punished no one
for speaking freely, was no better than a Herod. Henry's case was that to
marry a brother's wife was not lawful, and the Baptist was of the same
opinion. The Legates answered quietly that the cause had not been
committed to Fisher, and that it was not for him to pronounce judicially
upon it. Wolsey complained that the Bishop had given him no notice of his
intended interference. They continued to examine witnesses as if nothing
had happened. But Fisher's action was not without effect. He was much
respected. The public was divided on the merits of the general question.
Many still thought the meaning of it to be merely that the King was tired
of an old wife and wanted a young one. Courage is infectious, and comment
grew loud and unfavourable. The popular voice might have been disregarded.
But Campeggio, who had perhaps really wavered, not knowing what Clement
wished him to do, gathered heart from Fisher's demonstration. "We are
hurried on," he wrote to Salviati on the 13th of July, "always faster than
a trot, so that some expect a sentence in ten days.... I will not fail in
my duty or office, nor rashly or willingly give offence to any one. When
giving sentence I will have only God before my eyes and the honour of the
Holy See."[76] A week later Du Bellay said that things were almost as the
King wished, and the end was expected immediately, when Campeggio acted on
the Pope's last verbal instructions at their parting at Rome. He was told
to go on to the last, but must pause at the final extremity. He obeyed.
When nothing was left but to pronounce judgment, he refused to speak it,
and said that he must refer back to the Holy See. Wolsey declined to act
without him, and Campeggio, when pressed, if we can believe his own
account of what he said, answered: "Very well, I vote in favour of the
marriage and the Queen. If my colleague agrees, well and good. If not,
there can be no sentence, for we must both agree."[77]
Wolsey's feelings must be conjectured, for he never revealed them. To the
Commissioners at Rome he wrote: "Such discrepancies and contrariety of
opinion has ensued here that the cause will be long delayed. In a week the
process will have to cease, and two months of vacation ensue. Other
counsels, therefore, are necessary, and it is important to act as if the
advocation was granted. Campeggio unites with me to urge the Pope, if it
must be granted, to qualify the language; for if the King be cited to
appear in person or by proxy, and his prerogative be interfered with, none
of his subjects will tolerate it; or if he appears in Italy it will be at
the head of a formidable army.[78] A citation of the King to Rome on
threat of excommunication is no more tolerable than the whole loss of the
King's dignity. If, therefore, the Pope has granted any such advocation,
it must be revoked. If it arrives here before such a revocation, no
mention of it shall be made, not even to the King."[79]
This was Wolsey's last effort. Before his despatch could reach Rome the
resolution was taken. Had it arrived in time, it would have made no
difference while Micer Mai was able to threaten to behead Cardinals in
their own apartments. The cause was advoked, as it was called--reserved to
be heard in the Rota. The Legates' commission was cancelled. The court at
Blackfriars was dissolved, as Campeggio said, in anger, shame, and
disappointment. He had fulfilled his orders not without some alarm for
himself as he thought of his bishopric of Salisbury.
Catherine, springing from despondency into triumph, imagined that all was
over. The suit, she thought, would be instantly recommenced at Rome, and
the Pope would give judgment in her favour without further form. She was
to learn a harsher lesson, and would have consulted better for her
happiness if she had yielded to the Pope's advice and retired into
seclusion. While the Legates were sitting in London, another conference
was being held at Cambray, to arrange conditions of European peace. France
and the Empire adjusted their quarrels for another interval. The Pope and
the Italian Princes were included--England was included also--and the
divorce, the point of central discord between Henry and the Emperor, was
passed over in silence as too dangerous to be touched.
CHAPTER VII.
Call of Parliament--Wolsey to be called to account--Anxiety of the Emperor
to prevent a quarrel--Mission of Eustace Chapuys--Long interview with the
King--Alarm of Catherine--Growth of Lutheranism--The English clergy--Lord
Darcy's Articles against Wolsey--Wolsey's fall--Departure of Campeggio--
Letter of Henry to the Pope--Action of Parliament--Intended reform of the
Church--Alienation of English feeling from the Papacy.
On the collapse of the commission it was at once announced that the King
would summon a Parliament. For many years Wolsey had governed England as
he pleased. The King was now to take the reins in his own hands. The
long-suffering laity were to make their voices heard, and the great
Cardinal understood too well that he was to be called to account for his
stewardship. The Queen, who could think of nothing but her own wrongs,
conceived that the object must be some fresh violence to herself. She had
requested the Pope to issue a minatory brief forbidding Parliament to
meddle with her. She had mistaken the purpose of its meeting, and she had
mistaken the King's character. Important as the divorce question might be,
a great nation had other things to think of which had waited too long. It
had originated in an ambitious scheme of Wolsey to alter the balance of
power in Europe, and to form a new combination which the English generally
disliked. Had his policy been successful he would have been continued in
office, with various consequences which might or might not have been of
advantage to the country. But he had failed miserably. He had drawn the
King into a quarrel with his hereditary ally. He had entangled him, by
ungrounded assurances, in a network of embarrassments, which had been made
worse by the premature and indecent advancement of the Queen's intended
successor. For this the Cardinal was not responsible. It was the King's
own doing, and he had bitterly to pay for it. But Wolsey had misled his
master into believing that there would be no difficulty. In the last
critical moment he had not stood by him as the King had a right to expect;
and, in the result, Henry found himself summoned to appear as a party
before the Pope, the Pope himself being openly and confessedly a creature
in the hands of the Emperor. No English sovereign had ever before been
placed in a situation so degrading.
Parliament was to meet for other objects--objects which could not be
attained while Wolsey was in power and were themselves of incalculable
consequence. But Anne Boleyn was an embarrassment, and Henry did for the
moment hesitate whether it might not be better to abandon her. He had no
desire to break the unity of Christendom or to disturb the peace of his
own kingdom for the sake of a pretty woman. The Duke of Norfolk, though he
was Anne's uncle, if he did not oppose her intended elevation, did nothing
to encourage it. Her father, Lord Wiltshire, had been against it from the
first. The Peers and the people would be the sufferers from a disputed
succession, but they seemed willing to encounter the risk, or at least
they showed no eagerness for the King's marriage with this particular
person. If Reginald Pole is to be believed, the King did once inform the
Council that he would go no further with it. The Emperor, to make retreat
easy to him, had allowed nothing to be said on the subject at Cambray, and
had instructed the Pope to hold his hand and make no further movement. He
sent a new Ambassador to England, on a mission of _doulceur et amytie_.
Eustace Chapuys, the Minister whom he selected, was not perhaps the best
selection which he could have made, and Lord Paget, who knew him well, has
left an account of him not very favourable. "For Chapuys," he said, "I
never took him for a wise man, but for one that used to speak _cum summa
licentia_ whatsoever came _in buccam_, without respect of honesty or
truth, so it might serve his turn, and of that fashion it is small mastery
to be a wise man. He is a great practicer, with which honest term we cover
tale-telling, lying, dissimuling, and flattering."[80] Chapuys being the
authority for many of the scandals about Henry, this description of him by
a competent observer may be borne in remembrance; but there can be no
question that Charles sent him to England on an embassy of peace, and one
diplomatist is not always perhaps the fairest judge of another of the same
trade. The King's hesitation, if he ever did hesitate, was not of long
duration. He had been treated like a child, tricked, played with, trifled
with, and he was a dangerous person to deal with in so light a fashion.
Chapuys reached London in the beginning of September. On landing he found
the citation to Rome had not been officially notified to the King, as a
morsel too big for him to swallow.[81] The King received him politely,
invited him to dine in the palace, and allowed him afterwards to be
introduced to Catherine, who was still residing at the court. Three days
after he had a long interview with Henry. His commission, he said, was to
smooth all differences between the King and his master. The King responded
with equal graciousness, but turned the conversation upon those
differences themselves. The Emperor, he said, had not used him well. The
advocation to Rome was absurd. He had written himself to the Pope with his
own hand, telling him it was not only expedient but absolutely necessary
that the cause should be tried in England. The Roman territories were
still in the occupation of the Imperial troops. The Pope had committed it
to two of his Cardinals, had solemnly promised that it should not be
revoked, and that he would confirm any sentence which the Legates should
pronounce. These engagements the Emperor had obliged the Pope to break. He
himself had not proceeded upon light grounds. He was a conscientious
prince, he said, who preferred his own salvation to all worldly
advantages, as appeared sufficiently from his conduct in the affair. Had
he been differently situated and not attentive to his conscience, he might
have adopted other measures, which he had not taken and never would
take.[82] Chapuys attempted to defend Clement. "Enough of that pope,"
Henry sharply interrupted. "This is not the first time that he has changed
his mind. I have long known his versatile and fickle nature."[83] The
Pope, he went on, "would never dare pronounce sentence, unless it favoured
the Emperor."
Catherine was eagerly communicative. Chapuys learned from her that the
King had offered that the case should be heard at Cambray--which she had,
of course, refused. She was much alarmed about the Parliament, "the King
having played his cards so well that he would have a majority of votes in
his favour." It was quite certain that he meant to persevere. She
professed outwardly that she was personally attached to the King; yet she
desired Chapuys expressly to caution the Emperor against believing that
his conduct had anything to do with conscience. The idea of separation,
she said, had originated entirely in his own iniquity and malice, and when
the treaty of Cambray was completed, he had announced it to her with the
words: "My peace with the Emperor is made: it will last as long as you
choose."[84]
Chapuys had been charged to ascertain the feeling of the English people.
He found them generally well affected to the Queen. But the Lutheran
heresy was creeping in. The Duke of Suffolk had spoken bitterly of Papal
legates, and Chapuys believed if they had nothing to fear but the Pope's
malediction, there were great numbers who would follow the Duke's advice
and make Popes of the King and Bishops, all to have the divorce case tried
in England.[85] The Queen was afraid of pressing her appeal, fearing that
if the Commons in Parliament heard that the King had been summ
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