Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

MARTIN LUTHER.

(After the Portrait by Lucas Cranach, at Florence.)

But the time was now approaching which was to interrupt the friendship of Henry with the head of the Church of Rome. The Reformation in Germany had made an immense progress, and produced the most astonishing events. The whole mind and intellect of that country had been convulsed by the preaching of the doctrines of Luther. State had been set against state, prince against prince; and the bold monk of Wittenberg had only escaped the vengeance of the Church of Rome by the undaunted championship of the Elector of Saxony. Henry, fond of school divinity from his youth, and a great reader and admirer of Thomas Aquinas, had looked across to Germany with a grim and truculent glance, which seemed to rest on the blunt and unconventional Reformer with an expression of one who longed to strike down the daring heretic, and rid the world of him. As this was out of his power, he determined to annihilate him by his pen; and for this purpose he had written a book against him, with the title of "A Treatise on the Seven Sacraments, against Martin Luther, the Heresiarch, by the Illustrious Prince Henry VIII." This he had caused to be presented to the Pope by the English ambassador, beautifully written and magnificently bound, and Leo X. received it with the most extravagant laudations, and conferred on Henry in 1521 the title of "Defender of the Faith," in a bull signed by himself and twenty-seven cardinals. Henry really believed that he had crushed Luther and all his sect; but the free-mouthed Reformer, who paid no flatteries to king or Pope, soon convinced the literary monarch that he was as much alive as ever. He wrote a reply to Henry, in which, giving him commendation for writing in elegant language, he abused him and his work as broadly as he would have done that of the obscurest mortal. Henry, in his estimation, was "fool," "liar," "ass," "blasphemer." The correspondence which ensued was acrimonious.

The great defender of the faith, at the time at which we are now arrived, was growing dissatisfied with his wife, and was about to seek a divorce from her, which must necessarily involve the Pope in difficulties with the queen's nephew, the Emperor. Henry was married to Catherine when she was in her twenty-fifth year. So long as the disparity of their ages did not appear, for he was six years younger, and so long as she was pleasing in her person, he seemed not only satisfied with, but really attached to her. But she was now forty-two years of age, had undergone much anxiety in her earlier years in England, had borne the king five children, three sons and two daughters, all of whom died in their infancy, except the Princess Mary, who lived to mount the throne. Catherine, of late years, had suffered much in her health, and we may judge from the best-known portrait of her that she had now lost her good looks, and had a bowed-down and sorrow-stricken air.

Anne Boleyn had been living in France, at first as attendant on Mary, King Henry's sister, the queen of Louis XII., and afterwards in the family of the Duke of Alençon. She returned to England on the breaking out of the war with Francis I., in 1522; and seems, by her beauty, wit, and accomplishments, to have created a great sensation in the English Court, where she was soon attached to the service of Queen Catherine. Henry is said to have first met her by accident, in her father's garden, at Hever Castle, in Kent; and was so charmed with her that he told Wolsey that he had been "discoursing with a young lady who had the wit of an angel, and was worthy of a crown." She is supposed at that time to have been about one-and-twenty, a brunette of tall and most graceful figure, and extremely accomplished.

The understanding between Henry and Anne Boleyn soon became obvious to the whole Court. The queen saw it as clearly as any one else, and upbraided Henry with it, but does not seem to have used any harshness to Anne on that account, though she occasionally gave her some sharp rubs. For instance, once when the queen was playing at cards with Anne Boleyn she thus addressed her, "My Lady Anne, you have the good hap ever to stop at a king; but you are like others, you will have all or none." Cavendish, Wolsey's secretary, says the queen at this trying crisis "behaved like a very patient Grissel."

Henry now having resolved to marry Anne Boleyn, as he found he could obtain her on no other terms, felt himself suddenly afflicted with lamentable scruples of conscience for being married to his brother's widow, and entertaining equally afflicting doubts of the power of the Pope to grant a dispensation for such a marriage. For eighteen years these scruples had rested in his bosom without disturbing a moment of his repose. It is true that these doubts had been started before the marriage by Archbishop Warham, but they had no weight with Henry or his father. Henry had gone into the marriage at the age of eighteen with his eyes open, having some time before, by his father's order, made a protest against it for State purposes, and had been ever since, till he saw Anne Boleyn, not only contented but jovial. Now, however, he soon ceased to be merely scrupulous—he became positive that his marriage was unlawful, and set to work to write a book to prove it. The king communicated to Wolsey fully his views regarding the divorce, and Wolsey, who had now his decided quarrel with Charles for deceiving him in the matter of the Papacy, and who was equally the enemy of Catherine, she having openly expressed her resentment of his procuring the destruction of the Duke of Buckingham, readily fell into the scheme. Wolsey was undoubtedly as well aware as any one of the love affair going on between Henry and Anne Boleyn; nothing that was moving at Court could escape him; but he supposed this affair was only of the same kind as the rest of Henry's gallantries, and his notion was that some foreign princess would be selected for Henry's second queen.

But during the discussions on the marriage between the English princess and the French prince, a circumstance had taken place which showed that Henry was resolved to let slip no opportunity of carrying his divorce at all costs. The Bishop of Tarbes suddenly asked the question whether the legitimacy of the Princess Mary was beyond every legal and canonical doubt, considering the nature of the king's marriage with her mother, the queen. Henry and Wolsey affected to be much astonished and agitated at the question; and the King afterwards made it an argument that the idea of the illegality of his marriage, though it had originated with himself, had been greatly strengthened by the question of the bishop, as it showed how apparent the fact was to strangers and even foreigners. Yet the suggestion had undoubtedly been made to the bishop by Wolsey on Henry's behalf. The meaning of the question was quite obvious—it was to serve the cause of the divorce, which was an object highly pleasing to Francis I., in his resentment of the treatment of himself by the Emperor; but it was not believed for a moment to indicate real doubt even on the part of the French king, or he would not have proceeded to confirm the choice of an illegitimate maiden for the Queen of France, or the wife of his son.

At the close of this treaty, Wolsey was sent over to France, rather to show to Europe, and particularly to the King of Spain, the intimate footing between France and England, than for any real use. It was believed that Anne Boleyn and her friends were at the bottom of Wolsey's being sent abroad for a time, that the affairs regarding "the king's secret" might proceed without his cognisance; and, indeed, before his return, it had ceased to be a secret to any one. Anne had become openly acknowledged as the king's favourite, and had assumed an air and style of magnificence and consequence on account of it. Meantime, Wolsey, misled by his idea that the king meant to marry a foreign princess, had committed himself deeply, and supplied fresh and serious materials for his own destruction. He had given hints of the divorce of Henry, and of his probable marriage with a princess of the Court of France. He told Louise, the French king's mother, that "if she lived another year, she should see as great union on one side, and disunion on the other, as she would ask or wish for. These," he added, "were not idle words. Let her treasure them up in her memory; time would explain them."

The cardinal had, in fact, been looking round him at the French Court for a wife for Henry, and had selected the Princess Renée, sister of the late Queen Claude, while Henry himself had settled his choice nearer home. On the return of Wolsey, all being now prepared, Henry communicated to the astonished man the secret of his intended marriage with Anne. Confounded at the disclosure, the proud cardinal dropped on his knees, and, it is said, remained there for some hours pleading with the king against this infatuation, as he deemed it, and which he saw compromised himself with the Court of France, and menaced him darkly in the future, from the deep enmity of her who would thus become his queen. His pleadings and arguments were vain. His fair enemy had made her ground wholly secure in his absence, and Wolsey withdrew with gloomy forebodings.