Henry VIII.

by A. F. Pollard

So, on the 31st of May, 1529, in the great hall of the Black Friars, in London, the famous Court was formally opened, and the King and Queen were cited to appear before it on the 18th of June.[622] Henry was then represented by two proxies, but Catherine came in person to protest against the competence of the tribunal.[623] Three days later both the King and the Queen attended in person to hear the Court's decision on this point. Catherine threw herself on her knees before Henry; she begged him to consider her honour, her daughter's and his. Twice Henry raised her up; he protested that he desired nothing so much as that their marriage should be found valid, in spite of the "perpetual scruple" he had felt about it, and declared that only his love for her had kept him silent so long; her request for the removal of the cause to Rome was unreasonable, considering the Emperor's power there. Again protesting against the jurisdiction of the Court and appealing to Rome, Catherine withdrew. Touched by her appeal, Henry burst out in her praise. "She is, my Lords," he said, "as true, as obedient, and as conformable a wife, as I could, in my phantasy, wish or desire. She hath all the virtuous qualities that ought to be in a woman of her dignity, or in any other of baser estate."[624] But these qualities had nothing to do with the pitiless forms of law. The legate, overruled her protest, refused her appeal, and summoned her back. She took no notice, and was declared contumacious.

The proceedings then went on without her; Fisher Bishop of Rochester, made a courageous defence of the validity of the marriage, to which Henry drew up a bitter reply in the form of a speech addressed to the legates.[625] The speed with which the procedure was hurried on was little to Campeggio's taste. He had not prejudged the case; he was still in doubt as to which way the sentence would go; and he entered a dignified protest against the orders he received from Rome to give sentence, if it came to that point, against Henry.[626] He would pronounce what judgment seemed to him just, but he shrank from the ordeal, and he did his best to follow out Clement's injunctions to procrastinate.[627] In this he succeeded completely. It seemed that judgment could no longer be deferred; it was to be delivered on the 23rd of July.[628] On that day the King himself, and the chief men of his Court, were present; his proctor demanded sentence. Campeggio stood up, and instead of giving sentence, adjourned the Court till October.[629] "By the mass!" burst out Suffolk, giving the table a great blow with his hand, "now I see that the old-said saw is true, that there was never a legate nor cardinal that did good in England." The Court never met again; and except during the transient reaction, under Mary, it was the last legatine Court ever held in England. They might assure the Pope, Wolsey had written to the English envoys at Rome a month before, that if he granted the revocation he would lose the devotion of the King and of England to the See Apostolic, and utterly destroy Wolsey for ever.[630]

Long before the vacation was ended, news reached Henry that the case had been called to Rome; the revocation was, indeed, decreed a week before Campeggio adjourned his court. Charles's star, once more in the ascendant, had cast its baleful influence over Henry's fortunes. The close alliance between England and France had led to a joint declaration of war on the Emperor in January, 1528, into which the English ambassadors in Spain had been inveigled by their French colleagues, against Henry's wishes.[631] It was received with a storm of opposition in England, and Wolsey had some difficulty in justifying himself to the King. "You may be sure," wrote Du Bellay, "that he is playing a terrible game, for I believe he is the only Englishman who wishes a war with Flanders."[632] If that was his wish, he was doomed to disappointment. Popular hatred of the war was too strong; a project was mooted by the clothiers in Kent for seizing the Cardinal and turning him adrift in a boat, with holes bored in it.[633] The clothiers in Wiltshire were reported to be rising; in Norfolk employers dismissed their workmen.[634] War with Flanders meant ruin to the most prosperous industry in both countries, and the attempt to divert the Flanders trade to Calais had failed.[635] So Henry and Charles were soon discussing peace; no hostilities took place; an agreement, that trade should go on as usual with Flanders,[636] was followed by a truce in June,[637] and the truce by the Peace of Cambrai in the following year. That peace affords the measure of England's decline since 1521. Wolsey was carefully excluded from all share in the negotiations. England was, indeed, admitted as a participator, but only after Louise and Margaret of Savoy had practically settled the terms, and after Du Bellay had told Francis that, if England were not admitted, it would mean Wolsey's immediate ruin.[638]

By the Treaty of Cambrai Francis abandoned Italy to Charles. His affairs beyond the Alps had been going from bad to worse since the death of Lautrec; and the suggested guard of French and English soldiers which was to relieve the Pope from fear of Charles was never formed.[639] That failure was not the only circumstance which made Clement imperialist. Venice, the ally of England and France, seized Ravenna and Cervia, two papal towns.[640] "The conduct of the Venetians," wrote John Casale from Rome, "moves the Pope more than anything else, and he would use the assistance of any one, except the Devil, to avenge their injury."[641] "The King and the Cardinal," repeated Sanga to Campeggio, "must not expect him to execute his intentions, until they have used their utmost efforts to compel the Venetians to restore the Pope's territories."[642] Henry did his best, but he was not sincerely helped by Francis; his efforts proved vain, and Clement thought he could get more effective assistance from Charles. "Every one is persuaded," said one of the Emperor's agents in Italy on 10th January, 1529, "that the Pope is now sincerely attached to his Imperial Majesty."[643] "I suspect," wrote Du Bellay from London, in the same month, "that the Pope has commanded Campeggio to meddle no further, seeing things are taking quite a different turn from what he had been assured, and that the Emperor's affairs in Naples are in such a state that Clement dare not displease him."[644] The Pope had already informed Charles that his aunt's petition for the revocation of the suit would be granted.[645] The Italian League was practically dissolved. "I have quite made up my mind," said Clement to the Archbishop of Capua on 7th June, "to become an Imperialist, and to live and die as such... I am only waiting for the return of my nuncio."[646]

That nuncio had gone to Barcelona to negotiate an alliance between the Pope and the Emperor; and the success of his mission completed Clement's conversion. The revocation was only delayed, thought Charles's representative at Rome, to secure better terms for the Pope.[647] On 21st June, the French commander, St. Pol, was utterly defeated at Landriano; "not a vestige of the army is left," reported Casale.[648] A few days later the Treaty of Barcelona between Clement and Charles was signed.[649] Clement's nephew was to marry the Emperor's natural daughter; the Medici tyranny was to be re-established in Florence; Ravenna, Cervia and other towns were to be restored to the Pope; His Holiness was to crown Charles with the imperial crown, and to absolve from ecclesiastical censures all those who were present at, or consented to, the sack of Rome. It was, in effect, a family compact; and part of it was the quashing of the legates' proceedings against the Emperor's aunt, with whom the Pope was now to be allied by family ties. "We found out secretly," write the English envoys at Rome, on the 16th of July, "that the Pope signed the revocation yesterday morning, as it would have been dishonourable to have signed it after the publication of the new treaty with the Emperor, which will be published here on Sunday."[650] Clement knew that his motives would not bear scrutiny, and he tried to avoid public odium by a characteristic subterfuge. Catherine could hope for no justice in England, Henry could expect no justice at Rome. Political expediency would dictate a verdict in Henry's favour in England; political expediency would dictate a verdict for Catherine at Rome. Henry's ambassadors were instructed to appeal from Clement to the "true Vicar of Christ," but where was the true Vicar of Christ to be found on earth?[651] There was no higher tribunal. It was intolerable that English suits should be decided by the chances and changes of French or Habsburg influence in Italy, by the hopes and the fears of an Italian prince for the safety of his temporal power. The natural and inevitable result was the separation of England from Rome.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CARDINAL'S FALL.[652]

The loss of their spiritual jurisdiction in England was part of the price paid by the Popes for their temporal possessions in Italy. The papal domains were either too great or too small. If the Pope was to rely on his temporal power, it should have been extensive enough to protect him from the dictation and resentment of secular princes; and from this point of view there was no little justification for the aims of Julius II. Had he succeeded in driving the barbarians across the Alps or into the sea, he and his successors might in safety have judged the world, and the breach with Henry might never have taken place. If the Pope was to rely on his spiritual weapons, there was no need of temporal states at all. In their existing extent and position, they were simply the heel of Achilles, the vulnerable spot, through which secular foes might wound the Vicar of Christ. France threatened him from the north and Spain from the south; he was ever between the upper and the nether mill-stone. Italy was the cockpit of Europe in the sixteenth century, and the eyes of the Popes were perpetually bent on the worldly fray, seeking to save or extend their dominions. Through the Pope's temporal power, France and Spain exerted their pressure. He could only defend himself by playing off one against the other, and in this game his spiritual powers were his only effective pieces. More and more the spiritual authority, with which he was entrusted, was made to serve political ends. Temporal princes were branded as "sons of iniquity and children of perdition," not because their beliefs or their morals were worse than other men's, but because they stood in the way of the family ambitions of various popes. Their frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires. James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John, and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the petty Italian prince. Corruptio optimi pessima. The lower dragged the higher nature down. If the Papal Court was distinguished from the courts of other Italian sovereigns, it was not by exceptional purity. "In this Court as in others," wrote Silvester de Giglis from Rome, "nothing can be effected without gifts."[654] The election of Leo X. was said to be free from bribery; a cardinal himself was amazed, and described the event as Phœnix et rara avis.[655] If poison was not a frequent weapon at Rome, popes and cardinals at least believed it to be. Alexander VI. was said to have been poisoned; one cardinal was accused of poisoning his fellow-cardinal, Bainbridge; and others were charged with an attempt on the life of Leo X.[656] In 1517, Pace described the state of affairs at Rome as plane monstra, omni dedecore et infamia plena; omnis fides, omnis honestas, una cum religione, a mundo abvolasse videntur.[657] Ten years later, the Emperor himself declared that the sack of Rome was the just judgment of God, and one of his ambassadors said that the Pope ought to be deprived of his temporal states, as they had been at the bottom of all the dissensions.[658] Clement himself claimed to have been the originator of that war which brought upon him so terrible and so just a punishment.

Another result of the merging of the Pope in the Italian prince was the practical exclusion of the English and other Northern nations from the supreme council of Christendom. There was no apparent reason why an Englishman should not be the head of the Christian Church just as well as an Italian; but there was some incongruity in the idea of an Englishman ruling over Italian States, and no Englishman had attained the Papacy for nearly four centuries. The double failure of Wolsey made it clear that the door of the Papacy was sealed to Englishmen, whatever their claims might be. The roll of cardinals tells a similar tale; the Roman curia graciously conceded that there should generally be one English cardinal in the sacred college, but one in a body of forty or fifty was thought as much as England could fairly demand. It is not so very surprising that England repudiated the authority of a tribunal in which its influence was measured on such a contemptible scale. The other nations of Europe thought much the same, and it is only necessary to add up the number of cardinals belonging to each nationality to arrive at a fairly accurate indication of the peoples who rejected papal pretensions. The nations most inadequately represented in the college of cardinals broke away from Rome; those which remained faithful were the nations which controlled in the present, or might hope to control in the future, the supreme ecclesiastical power. Spain and France had little temptation to abolish an authority which they themselves wielded in turn; for if the Pope was a Spaniard to-day, he might well be a Frenchman to-morrow. There was no absurdity in Frenchmen or Spaniards ruling over the papal States; for France and Spain already held under their sway more Italian territory than Italian natives themselves. It was the subjection of the Pope to French and Spanish domination that prejudiced his claims in English eyes. His authority was tolerable so long as the old ideal of the unity of Christendom under a single monarch retained its force, or even so long as the Pope was Italian pure and simple. But when Italy was either Spanish or French, and the Pope the chaplain of one or the other monarch, the growing spirit of nationality could bear it no longer; it responded at once to Henry's appeals against the claims of a foreign jurisdiction.

It was a mere accident that the breach with Rome grew out of Spanish control of the Pope. The separation was nearly effected more than a century earlier, as a result of the Pope's Babylonish captivity in France; and the wonder is, not that the breach took place when it did, but that it was deferred for so long. At the beginning of the fifteenth century all the elements were present but one for the ecclesiastical revolution which was reserved for Henry VIII. to effect. The Papacy had been discredited in English eyes by subservience to France, just as it had in 1529 by subservience to Charles. Lollardy was more powerful in England in the reign of Henry IV. than heresy was in the middle of that of Henry VIII. There was as strong a demand for the secularisation of Church property on the part of the lay peers and gentry; and Wycliffe himself had anticipated the cardinal point of the later movement by appealing to the State to reform the Church. But great revolutions depend on a number of causes working together, and often fail for the lack of one. The element lacking in the reign of Henry IV. was the King himself. The Lancastrians were orthodox from conviction and from the necessities of their position; they needed the support of the Church to bolster up a weak title to the crown. The civil wars followed; and Henry VII. was too much absorbed in securing his throne to pursue any quarrels with Rome. But when his son began to rule as well as to reign, it was inevitable that not merely questions of Church property and of the relations with the Papacy should come up for revision, but also those issues between Church and State which had remained in abeyance during the fifteenth century. The divorce was the spark which ignited the flame, but the combustible materials had been long existent. If the divorce had been all, there would have been no Reformation in England. After the death of Anne Boleyn, Henry might have done some trifling penance at his subjects' expense, made the Pope a present, or waged war on one of Clement's orthodox foes, and that would have been the end. Much had happened since the days of Hildebrand, and Popes were no longer able to exact heroic repentance. The divorce, in fact, was the occasion, and not the cause, of the Reformation.