Henry was learning by bitter experience. Not only was he left to face single-handed the might of Louis; but Ferdinand and Maximilian had secretly bound themselves to make war on him, if he carried out the treaty to which they had all three publicly agreed. The man whom he said he loved as a natural father, and the titular sovereign of Christendom, had combined to cheat the boy-king who had come to the throne with youthful enthusiasms and natural, generous instincts. "Nor do I see," said Henry to Giustinian, "any faith in the world save in me, and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs."[160] This absorbing belief in himself and his righteousness led to strange aberrations in later years, but in 1514 it had some justification. "Je vous assure," wrote Margaret of Savoy to her father, the Emperor, "qu'en lui n'a nulle faintise." "At any rate," said Pasqualigo, "King Henry has done himself great honour, and kept faith single-handed."[161] A more striking testimony was forthcoming a year or two later. When Charles succeeded Ferdinand, the Bishop of Badajos drew up for Cardinal Ximenes a report on the state of the Prince's affairs. In it he says: "The King of England has been truer to his engagements towards the House of Austria than any other prince. The marriage of the Prince with the Princess Mary, it must be confessed, did not take place, but it may be questioned whether it was the fault of the King of England or of the Prince and his advisers. However that may be, with the exception of the marriage, the King of England has generally fulfilled his obligations towards the Prince, and has behaved as a trusty friend. An alliance with the English can be trusted most of all."[162]
But the meekest and saintliest monarch could scarce pass unscathed through the baptism of fraud practised on Henry; and Henry was at no time saintly or meek. Ferdinand, he complained, induced him to enter upon the war, and urged the Pope to use his influence with him for that purpose; he had been at great expense, had assisted Maximilian, taken Tournay, and reduced France to extremities; and now, when his enemy was at his feet, Ferdinand talked of truce: he would never trust any one again.[163] "Had the King of Spain," wrote a Venetian attaché, "kept his promise to the King of England, the latter would never have made peace with France; and the promises of the Emperor were equally false, for he had received many thousands of pounds from King Henry, on condition that he was to be in person at Calais in the month of May, with a considerable force in the King's pay; but the Emperor pocketed the money and never came. His failure was the cause of all that took place, for, as King Henry was deceived in every direction, he thought fit to take this other course."[164] He discovered that he, too, could play at the game of making peace behind the backs of his nominal friends; and when once he had made up his mind, he played the game with vastly more effect than Maximilian or Ferdinand. It was he who had been really formidable to Louis, and Louis was therefore prepared to pay him a higher price than to either of the others. In February Henry had got wind of his allies' practices with France. In the same month a nuncio started from Rome to mediate peace between Henry and Louis;[165] but, before his arrival, informal advances had probably been made through the Duc de Longueville, a prisoner in England since the Battle of Spurs.[166] In January Louis' wife, Anne of Brittany, had died. Louis was fifty-two years old, worn out and decrepit; but at least half a dozen brides were proposed for his hand. In March it was rumoured in Rome that he would choose Henry's sister Mary, the rejected of Charles.[167] But Henry waited till May had passed, and Maximilian had proclaimed to the world his breach of promise. Negotiations for the alliance and marriage with Louis then proceeded apace. Treaties for both were signed in August. Tournay remained in Henry's hands, Louis increased the pensions paid by France to England since the Treaty of Étaples, and both kings bound themselves to render mutual aid against their common foes.[168]
Maximilian and Ferdinand were left out in the cold. Louis not only broke off his negotiations with them, but prepared to regain Milan and discussed with Henry the revival of his father's schemes for the conquest of Castile. Henry was to claim part of that kingdom in right of his wife, the late Queen's daughter; later on a still more shadowy title by descent was suggested. As early as 5th October, the Venetian Government wrote to its ambassador in France, "commending extremely the most sage proceeding of Louis in exhorting the King of England to attack Castile".[169] Towards the end of the year it declared that Louis had wished to attack Spain, and sought to arrange details in an interview with Henry; but the English King would not consent, delayed the interview, and refused the six thousand infantry required for the purpose.[170] But Henry had certainly urged Louis to reconquer Navarre,[171] and from the tenor of Louis' reply to Henry, late in November, it would be inferred that the proposed conquest of Castile also emanated from the English King or his ministers. Louis professed not to know the laws of succession in Spain, but he was willing to join the attack, apart from the merits of the case on which it was based. Whether the suggestion originated in France or in England, whether Henry eventually refused it or not, its serious discussion shows how far Henry had travelled in his resentment at the double dealing of Ferdinand. Carroz complained that he was treated by the English "like a bull at whom every one throws darts,"[172] and that Henry himself behaved in a most offensive manner whenever Ferdinand's name was mentioned. "If," he added, "Ferdinand did not put a bridle on this young colt," it would afterwards become impossible to control him. The young colt was, indeed, already meditating a project, to attain which he, in later years, took the bit in his teeth and broke loose from control. He was not only betrayed into casting in Catherine's teeth her father's ill faith, but threatening her with divorce.[173]
Henry had struck back with a vengeance. His blow shivered to fragments the airy castles which Maximilian and Ferdinand were busy constructing. Their plans for reviving the empire of Charlemagne, creating a new kingdom in Italy, inducing Louis to cede Milan and Genoa and assist in the conquest of Venice, disappeared like empty dreams. The younger Ferdinand found no provision in Italy; he was compelled to retain his Austrian inheritance, and thus to impair the power of the future Charles V.; while the children's grandparents were left sadly reflecting on means of defence against the Kings of England and France. The blot on the triumph was Henry's desertion of Sforza,[174] who, having gratefully acknowledged that to Henry he owed his restoration of Milan,[175] was now left to the uncovenanted mercies of Louis. But neither the credit nor discredit is due mainly to Henry. He had learnt much, but his powers were not yet developed enough to make him a match for the craft and guile of his rivals. The consciousness of the fact made him rely more and more upon Wolsey, who could easily beat both Maximilian and Ferdinand at their own game. He was not more deceitful than they, but in grasp of detail, in boldness and assiduity, he was vastly superior. While Ferdinand hawked, and Maximilian hunted the chamois, Wolsey worked often for twelve hours together at the cares of the State. Possibly, too, his clerical profession and the cardinalate which he was soon to hold gave him an advantage which they did not possess; for, whenever he wanted to obtain credence for a more than usually monstrous perversion of truth, he swore "as became a cardinal and on the honour of the cardinalate".[176] His services were richly rewarded; besides livings, prebends, deaneries and the Chancellorship of Cambridge University, he received the Bishoprics of Lincoln and of Tournay, the Archbishopric of York, and finally, in 1515, Cardinalate. This dignity he had already, in May of the previous year, sent Polydore Vergil to claim from the Pope; Vergil's mission was unknown to Henry, to whom the grant of the Cardinal's hat was to be represented as Leo's own idea.[177]
CHAPTER IV.
THE THREE RIVALS.
The edifice which Wolsey had so laboriously built up was, however, based on no surer foundation than the feeble life of a sickly monarch already tottering to his grave. In the midst of his preparations for the conquest of Milan and his negotiations for an attack upon Spain, Louis XII. died on 1st January, 1515; and the stone which Wolsey had barely rolled up the hill came down with a rush. The bourgeois Louis was succeeded by the brilliant, ambitious and warlike Francis I., a monarch who concealed under the mask of chivalry and the culture of arts and letters a libertinism beside which the peccadilloes of Henry or Charles seem virtue itself; whose person was tall and whose features were described as handsome; but of whom an observer wrote with unwonted candour that he "looked like the Devil".[178] The first result of the change was an episode of genuine romance. The old King's widow, "la reine blanche," was one of the most fascinating women of the Tudor epoch. "I think," said a Fleming, "never man saw a more beautiful creature, nor one having so much grace and sweetness."[179] "He had never seen so beautiful a lady," repeated Maximilian's ambassador, "her deportment is exquisite, both in conversation and in dancing, and she is very lovely."[180] "She is very beautiful," echoed the staid old Venetian, Pasqualigo, "and has not her match in England; she is tall, fair, of a light complexion with a colour, and most affable and graceful"; he was warranted, he said, in describing her as "a nymph from heaven".[181] A more critical observer of feminine beauty thought her eyes and eyebrows too light,[182] but, as an Italian, he may have been biassed in favour of brunettes, and even he wound up by calling Mary "a Paradise". She was eighteen at the time; her marriage with a dotard like Louis had shocked public opinion;[183] and if, as was hinted, the gaieties in which his youthful bride involved him, hastened the French King's end, there was some poetic justice in the retribution. She had, as she reminded Henry herself, only consented to marry the "very aged and sickly" monarch on condition that, if she survived him, she should be allowed to choose her second husband herself. And she went on to declare, that "remembering the great virtue" in him, she had, as Henry himself was aware, "always been of good mind to my Lord of Suffolk".[184]
She was probably fascinated less by Suffolk's virtue than by his bold and handsome bearing. A bluff Englishman after the King's own heart, he shared, as none else did, in Henry's love of the joust and tourney, in his skill with the lance and the sword; he was the Hector of combat, on foot and on horse, to Henry's Achilles. His father, plain William Brandon, was Henry of Richmond's standard-bearer on Bosworth field; and as such he had been singled out and killed in personal encounter by Richard III. His death gave his son a claim on the gratitude of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; and similarity of tastes secured him rapid promotion at the young King's Court. Created Viscount Lisle, he served in 1513 as marshal of Henry's army throughout his campaign in France. With the King there were said to be "two obstinate men who governed everything";[185] one was Wolsey, the other was Brandon. In July he was offering his hand to Margaret of Savoy, who was informed that Brandon was "a second king," and that it would be well to write him "a kind letter, for it is he who does and undoes".[186] At Lille, in October, he continued his assault on Margaret as a relief from the siege of Tournay; Henry favoured his suit, and when Margaret called Brandon a larron for stealing a ring from her finger, the King was called in to help Brandon out with his French. Possibly it was to smooth the course of his wooing that Brandon, early in 1514, received an extraordinary advancement in rank. There was as yet only one duke in England, but now Brandon was made Duke of Suffolk, at the same time that the dukedom of Norfolk was restored to Surrey for his victory at Flodden. Even a dukedom could barely make the son of a simple esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three wives.[187] This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his master in later years.
In January, 1515, the Duke was sent to Paris to condole with Francis on Louis' death, to congratulate him on his own accession, and renew the league with England. Before he set out, Henry made him promise that he would not marry Mary until their return. But Suffolk was not the man to resist the tears of a beautiful woman in trouble, and he found Mary in sore distress. No sooner was Louis dead than his lascivious successor became, as Mary said, "importunate with her in divers matters not to her honour," in suits "the which," wrote Suffolk, "I and the Queen had rather be out of the world than abide".[188] Every evening Francis forced his attentions upon the beautiful widow.[189] Nor was this the only trouble which threatened the lovers. There were reports that the French would not let Mary go, but marry her somewhere to serve their own political purposes.[190] Henry, too, might want to betroth her again to Charles; Maximilian was urging this course, and telling Margaret that Mary must be recovered for Charles, even at the point of the sword.[191] Early in January, Wolsey had written to her, warning her not to make any fresh promise of marriage. Two friars from England, sent apparently by Suffolk's secret enemies, told Mary the same tale, that if she returned to England she would never be suffered to marry the Duke, but made to take Charles for her husband, "than which," she declared, "I would rather be torn in pieces".[192] Suffolk tried in vain to soothe her fears. She refused to listen, and brought him to his knees with the announcement that unless he would wed her there and then, she would continue to believe that he had come only to entice her back to England and force her into marriage with Charles. What was the poor Duke to do, between his promise to Henry and the pleading of Mary? He did what every other man with a heart in his breast and warm blood in his veins would have done, he cast prudence to the winds and secretly married the woman he loved.
The news could not be long concealed, but unfortunately we have only Wolsey's account of how it was received by Henry. He took it, wrote the cardinal to Suffolk, "grievously and displeasantly," not only on account of the Duke's presumption, but of the breach of his promise to Henry.[193] "You are," he added, "in the greatest danger man was ever in;" the council were calling for his ruin. To appease Henry and enable the King to satisfy his council, Suffolk must induce Francis to intervene in his favour, to pay Henry two hundred thousand crowns as Mary's dowry, and to restore the plate and jewels she had received; the Duke himself was to return the fortune with which Henry had endowed his sister and pay twenty-four thousand pounds in yearly instalments for the expenses of her marriage. Francis proved unexpectedly willing; perhaps his better nature was touched by the lovers' distress. He also saw that Mary's marriage with Suffolk prevented her being used as a link to bind Charles to Henry; and he may have thought that a service to Suffolk would secure him a powerful friend at the English Court, a calculation that was partly justified by the suspicion under which Suffolk henceforth laboured, of being too partial to Francis. Yet it was with heavy hearts that the couple left Paris in April and wended their way towards Calais. Henry had given no sign; from Calais, Mary wrote to him saying she would go to a nunnery rather than marry against her desire.[194] Suffolk threw himself on the King's mercy; all the council, he said, except Wolsey, were determined to put him to death.[195] Secretly, against his promise, and without Henry's consent, he had married the King's sister, an act the temerity of which no one has since ventured to rival. He saw the executioner's axe gleam before his eyes, and he trembled.