Henry VIII.

by A. F. Pollard

It is otherwise with her rival, Queen Catherine, the third of the principal characters involved in the divorce. If Henry's motives were not so entirely bad as they have often been represented, neither they nor Anne Boleyn's can stand a moment's comparison with the unsullied purity of Catherine's life or the lofty courage with which she defended the cause she believed to be right. There is no more pathetic figure in English history, nor one condemned to a crueller fate. No breath of scandal touched her fair name, or impugned her devotion to Henry. If she had the misfortune to be identified with a particular policy, the alliance with the House of Burgundy, the fault was not hers; she had been married to Henry in consideration of the advantages which that alliance was supposed to confer; and, if she used her influence to further Spanish interest, it was a natural feeling as near akin to virtue as to vice, and Carroz at least complained, in 1514, that she had completely identified herself with her husband and her husband's subjects.[548] If her miscarriages and the death of her children were a grief to Henry, the pain and the sorrow were hers in far greater measure; if they had made her old and deformed, as Francis brutally described her in 1519,[549] the fact must have been far more bitter to her than it was unpleasant to Henry. There may have been some hardship to Henry in the circumstance that, for political motives, he had been induced by his council to marry a wife who was six years his senior; but to Catherine herself a divorce was the height of injustice. The question was in fact one of justice against a real or supposed political necessity, and in such cases justice commonly goes to the wall. In politics, men seek to colour with justice actions based upon considerations of expediency. They first convince themselves, and then they endeavour with less success to persuade mankind.

So Henry VIII. convinced himself that the dispensation granted by Julius II. was null and void, that he had never been married to Catherine, and that to continue to live with his brother's wife was sin. "The King," he instructed his ambassador to tell Charles V. in 1533, "taketh himself to be in the right, not because so many say it, but because he, being learned, knoweth the matter to be right.... The justice of our cause is so rooted in our breast that nothing can remove it, and even the canons say that a man should rather endure all the censures of the Church than offend his conscience."[550] No man was less tolerant of heresy than Henry, but no man set greater store on his own private judgment. To that extent he was a Protestant; "though," he instructed Paget in 1534 to tell the Lutheran princes, "the law of every man's conscience be but a private court, yet it is the highest and supreme court for judgment or justice". God and his conscience, he told Chapuys in 1533, were on very good terms.[551] On another occasion he wrote to Charles Ubi Spiritus Domini, ibi libertas,[552] with the obvious implication that he possessed the spirit of the Lord, and therefore he might do as he liked. To him, as to St. Paul, all things were lawful; and Henry's appeals to the Pope, to learned divines, to universities at home and abroad, were not for his own satisfaction, but were merely concessions to the profane herd, unskilled in royal learning and unblessed with a kingly conscience. Against that conviction, so firmly rooted in the royal breast, appeals to pity were vain, and attempts to shake it were perilous. It was his conscience that made Henry so dangerous. Men are tolerant of differences about things indifferent, but conscience makes bigots of us all; theological hatreds are proverbially bitter, and religious wars are cruel. Conscience made Sir Thomas More persecute, and glory in the persecution of heretics,[553] and conscience earned Mary her epithet "Bloody". They were moved by conscientious belief in the Catholic faith, Henry by conscientious belief in himself; and conscientious scruples are none the less exigent for being reached by crooked paths.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POPE'S DILEMMA.

In February, 1527, in pursuance of the alliance with France, which Wolsey, recognising too late the fatal effects of the union with Charles, was seeking to make the basis of English policy, a French embassy arrived in England to conclude a marriage between Francis I. and the Princess Mary. At its head was Gabriel de Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes; and in the course of his negotiations he is alleged to have first suggested those doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage, which ended in the divorce. The allegation was made by Wolsey three months later, and from that time down to our own day it has done duty with Henry's apologists as a sufficient vindication of his conduct. It is now denounced as an impudent fiction, mainly on the ground that no hint of these doubts occurs in the extant records of the negotiations. But unfortunately we have only one or two letters relating to this diplomatic mission.[554] There exists, indeed, a detailed narrative, drawn up some time afterwards by Claude Dodieu, the French secretary; but the silence, on so confidential a matter, of a third party who was not present when the doubts were presumably suggested, proves little or nothing. Du Bellay, in 1528, reported to the French Government Henry's public assertion that Tarbes had mentioned these doubts;[555] the statement was not repudiated; Tarbes himself believed in the validity of Henry's case and was frequently employed in efforts to win from the Pope an assent to Henry's divorce. It is rather a strong assumption to suppose in the entire absence of positive evidence that Henry and Wolsey were deliberately lying. There is nothing impossible in the supposition that some such doubts were expressed; indeed, Francis I. had every reason to encourage doubts of Henry's marriage as a means of creating a breach between him and Charles V. In return for Mary's hand, Henry was endeavouring to obtain various advantages from Francis in the way of pensions, tribute and territory. Tarbes represented that the French King was so good a match for the English princess, that there was little need for further concession; to which Henry replied that Francis was no doubt an excellent match for his daughter, but was he free to marry? His precontract with Charles V.'s sister, Eleanor, was a complication which seriously diminished the value of Francis's offer; and the papal dispensation, which he hoped to obtain, might not be forthcoming or valid.[556] As a counter to this stroke, Tarbes may well have hinted that the Princess Mary was not such a prize as Henry made out. Was the dispensation for Henry's own marriage beyond cavil? Was Mary's legitimacy beyond question? Was her succession to the English throne, a prospect Henry dangled before the Frenchman's eyes, so secure? These questions were not very new, even at the time of Tarbes's mission. The divorce had been talked about in 1514, and now, in 1527, the position of importance given to the Duke of Richmond was a matter of public comment, and inevitably suggested doubts of Mary's succession. There is no documentary evidence that this argument was ever employed, beyond the fact that, within three months of Tarbes's mission, both Henry and Wolsey asserted that the Bishop had suggested doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage.[557] Henry, however, does not say that Tarbes first suggested the doubts, nor does Wolsey. The Cardinal declares that the Bishop objected to the marriage with the Princess Mary on the ground of these doubts; and some time later, when Henry explained his position to the Lord-Mayor and aldermen of London, he said, according to Du Bellay, that the scruple of conscience, which he had long entertained, had terribly increased upon him since Tarbes had spoken of it.[558]

However that may be, before the Bishop's negotiations were completed the first steps had been taken towards the divorce, or, as Wolsey and Henry pretended, towards satisfying the King's scruples as to the validity of his marriage. Early in April, 1527, Dr. Richard Wolman was sent down to Winchester to examine old Bishop Fox on the subject.[559] The greatest secrecy was observed and none of the Bishop's councillors were allowed to be present. Other evidence was doubtless collected from various sources, and, on 17th May, a week after Tarbes's departure, Wolsey summoned Henry to appear before him to explain his conduct in living with his brother's widow.[560] Wolman was appointed promoter of the suit; Henry put in a justification, and, on 31st May, Wolman replied. With that the proceedings terminated. In instituting them Henry was following a precedent set by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk.[561] In very early days that nobleman had contracted to marry Sir Anthony Browne's daughter, but for some reason the match was broken off, and he sought the hand of one Margaret Mortimer, to whom he was related in the second and third degrees of consanguinity; he obtained a dispensation, completed the marriage, and cohabited with Margaret Mortimer. But, like Henry VIII., his conscience or other considerations moved him to regard his marriage as sin, and the dispensation as invalid. He caused a declaration to that effect to be made by "the official of the Archdeacon of London, to whom the cognisance of such causes of old belongs," married Ann Browne, and, after her death, Henry's sister Mary. A marriage, the validity of which depended, like Henry's, upon a papal dispensation, and which, like Henry's, had been consummated, was declared null and void on exactly the same grounds as those upon which Henry himself sought a divorce, namely, the invalidity of the previous dispensation. On 12th May, 1528, Clement VII. issued a bull confirming Suffolk's divorce and pronouncing ecclesiastical censures on all who called in question the Duke's subsequent marriages. That is precisely the course Henry wished to be followed. Wolsey was to declare the marriage invalid on the ground of the insufficiency of the papal dispensation; Henry might then marry whom he pleased; the Pope was to confirm the sentence, and censure all who should dispute the second marriage or the legitimacy of its possible issue.

Another precedent was also forced on Henry's mind. On 11th March, 1527, two months before Wolsey opened his court, a divorce was granted at Rome to Henry's sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland.[562] Her pretexts were infinitely more flimsy than Henry's own. She alleged a precontract on the part of her husband, Angus, which was never proved. She professed to believe that James IV. had survived Flodden three years, and was alive when she married Angus. Angus had been unfaithful, but that was no ground for divorce by canon law; and she herself was living in shameless adultery with Henry Stewart, who had also procured a divorce to be free to marry his Queen. No objection was found at Rome to either of these divorces; but neither Angus nor Margaret Mortimer had an Emperor for a nephew; no imperial armies would march on Rome to vindicate the validity of their marriages, and Clement could issue his bulls without any fear that their justice would be challenged by the arms of powerful princes. Not so with Henry; while the secret proceedings before Wolsey were in progress, the world was shocked by the sack of Rome, and Clement was a prisoner in the hands of the Emperor's troops. There was no hope that a Pope in such a plight would confirm a sentence to the detriment of his master's aunt. "If the Pope," wrote Wolsey to Henry on receipt of the news, "be slain or taken, it will hinder the King's affairs not a little, which have hitherto been going on so well."[563] A little later he declared that, if Catherine repudiated his authority, it would be necessary to have the assent of the Pope or of the cardinals to the divorce. To obtain the former the Pope must be liberated; to secure the latter the cardinals must be assembled in France.[564]

To effect the Pope's liberation, or rather to call an assembly of cardinals in France during Clement's captivity, was the real object of the mission to France, on which Wolsey started in July. Such a body, acting under Wolsey's presidency and in the territories of the French King, was as likely to favour an attack upon the Emperor's aunt as the Pope in the hands of Charles's armies was certain to oppose it. Wolsey went in unparalleled splendour, not as Henry's ambassador but as his lieutenant; and projects for his own advancement were, as usual, part of the programme. Louise of Savoy, the queen-mother of France, suggested to him that all Christian princes should repudiate the Pope's authority so long as he remained in captivity, and the Cardinal replied that, had the overture not been made by her, it would have been started by himself and by Henry.[565] It was rumoured in Spain that Wolsey "had gone into France to separate the Church of England and of France from the Roman, not merely during the captivity of the Pope and to effect his liberation, but for a perpetual division,"[566] and that Francis was offering Wolsey the patriarchate of the two schismatic churches. To win over the Cardinal to the interest of Spain, it was even suggested that Charles should depose Clement and offer the Papacy to Wolsey.[567] The project of a schism was not found feasible; the cardinals at Rome were too numerous, and Wolsey only succeeded in gaining four, three French and one Italian, to join him in signing a protest repudiating Clement's authority so long as he remained in the Emperor's power. It was necessary to fall back after all on the Pope for assent to Henry's divorce, and the news that Charles had already got wind of the proceedings against Catherine made it advisable that no time should be lost. The Emperor, indeed, had long been aware of Henry's intentions; every care had been taken to prevent communication between Catherine and her nephew, and a plot had been laid to kidnap a messenger she was sending in August to convey her appeal for protection. All was in vain, for the very day after Wolsey's court had opened in May, Mendoza wrote to Charles that Wolsey "as the finishing stroke to all his iniquities, had been scheming to bring about the Queen's divorce"; and on the 29th of July, some days before Wolsey had any suspicion that a hint was abroad, Charles informed Mendoza that he had despatched Cardinal Quignon to Rome, to act on the Queen's behalf and to persuade Clement to revoke Wolsey's legatine powers.[568]

In ignorance of all this, Wolsey urged Henry to send Ghinucci, the Bishop of Worcester, and others to Rome with certain demands, among which was a request for Clement's assent to the abortive proposal for a council in France.[569] But now a divergence became apparent between the policy of Wolsey and that of his king. Both were working for a divorce, but Wolsey wanted Henry to marry as his second wife Renée, the daughter of Louis XII., and thus bind more closely the two kings, upon whose union the Cardinal's personal and political schemes were now exclusively based. Henry, however, had determined that his second wife was to be Anne Boleyn, and of this determination Wolsey was as yet uninformed. The Cardinal had good reason to dread that lady's ascendancy over Henry's mind; for she was the hope and the tool of the anti-clerical party, which had hitherto been kept in check by Wolsey's supremacy. The Duke of Norfolk was her uncle, and he was hostile to Wolsey for both private and public reasons; her father, Viscount Rochford, her cousins, Sir William Fitzwilliam and Sir Francis Brian, and many more distant connections, were anxious at the first opportunity to lead an attack on the Church and Cardinal. Before the divorce case began Wolsey's position had grown precarious; taxes at home and failure abroad had turned the loyalty of the people to sullen discontent, and Wolsey was mainly responsible. "Disaffection to the King," wrote Mendoza in March, 1527, "and hatred of the Legate are visible everywhere.... The King would soon be obliged to change his councillors, were only a leader to present himself and head the malcontents;" and in May he reported a general rumour to the effect that Henry intended to relieve the Legate of his share in the administration.[570] The Cardinal had incurred the dislike of nearly every section of the community; the King was his sole support and the King was beginning to waver. In May there were high words between Wolsey and Norfolk in Henry's presence;[571] in July King and Cardinal were quarrelling over ecclesiastical patronage at Calais,[572] and, long before the failure of the divorce suit, there were other indications that Henry and his minister had ceased to work together in harmony.

It is, indeed, quite a mistake to represent Wolsey's failure to obtain a sentence in Henry's favour as the sole or main cause of his fall. Had he succeeded, he might have deferred for a time his otherwise unavoidable ruin, but it was his last and only chance. He was driven to playing a desperate game, in which the dice were loaded against him. If his plan failed, he told Clement over and over again, it would mean for him irretrievable ruin, and in his fall he would drag down the Church. If it succeeded, he would be hardly more secure, for success meant the predominance of Anne Boleyn and of her anti-ecclesiastical kin. Under the circumstances, it is possible to attach too much weight to the opinion of the French and Spanish ambassadors, and of Charles V. himself, that Wolsey suggested the divorce as the means of breaking for ever the alliance between England and the House of Burgundy, and substituting for it a union with France.[573] The divorce fitted in so well with Wolsey's French policy, that the suspicion was natural; but the same observers also recorded the impression that Wolsey was secretly opposing the divorce from fear of the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn.[574] That suspicion had been brought to Henry's mind as early as June, 1527. It was probably due to the facts that Wolsey was not blinded by passion, as Henry was, to the difficulties in the way, and that it was he who persuaded Henry to have recourse to the Pope in the first instance,[575] when the King desired to follow Suffolk's precedent, obtain a sentence in England, marry again, and trust to the Pope to confirm his proceedings.