The Court which was to try the cause met in the Parliament chamber in the Blackfriars, and summoned the king and queen to appear before it on the 18th of June. Henry appeared by proxy; Catherine obeyed the summons in person, but only to protest against the judges as the subjects of Henry, her accuser, and to appeal to the Pope. This appeal was overruled, and the Court adjourned to the 21st of June. On this day both Henry and Catherine appeared, the king sitting in state on the right hand of the cardinal and legate, and Catherine sat on their left, attended by four friendly bishops. On their names being called, Henry answered "Here!" but Catherine was unable to reply. On being again cited, however, she rose and repeated her protest on three grounds,—first, as being a stranger; secondly, because the judges were subjects, and held benefices, the gift of her adversary; and last, because from such a Court she could not expect impartiality. This protest being held inadmissible, she rose again, crossed herself, and, leaning on her maids, approached the king, threw herself at his feet, and addressed him in a pathetic speech.
On the 25th of June Catherine was summoned before the Court again, but she refused to appear, sending in, however, and causing to be read, her appeal to the Pope. On this she was declared contumacious; and the king's counsellors asserted that the following points had been clearly proved:—That her marriage with Prince Arthur had been consummated, and, therefore, her marriage with Henry was unlawful; that the dispensation of Julius II. had been obtained under false pretences and a concealment of facts; and that the Papal brief which had been sent from Spain was a forgery. They therefore called on the judges to pronounce for the divorce. But even had all this been proved, which it had not, Campeggio was not intending to do anything of the kind. The peace which had been rumoured between the Pope and the Emperor had been signed on the 29th of June, and Clement was now much at his ease. On the 23rd of July, no progress being made, Henry summoned the Court, and demanded judgment in imperious terms. But Campeggio replied with unmoved dignity:—"I have not come so far to please any man for fear, meed, or favour, be he king or any other potentate. I am an old man, sick, decayed, looking daily for death; what should it then avail me to put my soul in the danger of God's displeasure, to my utter damnation, for the favour of any prince or high estate in this world? Forasmuch, then, that I perceive that the truth in this case is very difficult to be known; that the defendant will make no answer thereunto, but hath appealed from our judgment; therefore, to avoid all injustice and obscure doubts, I intend to proceed no further in this matter until I have the opinion of the Pope and such others of his council as have more experience and learning. I, for this purpose, adjourn this Court till the commencement of the next term, in the beginning of October."
It would be difficult to conceive the state of agitation into which the Court of Henry was now thrown. Instead of receiving a decision, it was put off till October; and this was not the worst, for in a few days news arrived that the commission of the cardinals had been revoked by the Pope on the 15th of July, or eight days previous to the adjournment, and that the Papal Court had entertained the appeal of Queen Catherine, and recalled Campeggio. Thus, not even in October was there any chance of a decision, and had such been arrived at now it would have been null, the commission having previously expired. Still worse, while Henry was in the highest state of irritation, there came an instrument from Rome, forbidding him to pursue his cause by the legates, but citing him to appear by attorney in the Papal Court, under a penalty of 10,000 ducats. Campeggio departed from England at the commencement of Michaelmas term. At the interview in which he took his leave of the king, Henry behaved with much politeness to the Italian legate, but treated Wolsey with marked coldness. Showing a disposition to relent later on in the same day, Henry was at once so worked upon by the Boleyn faction that he undertook never more to see the cardinal, whose fall was now certain.
Indeed, on account of his failure to obtain the divorce, Wolsey was doomed to destruction. On the 9th of October, the same month as he opened the Court of Chancery, he perceived a deadly coldness as of winter frost around him. No one did him honour—the sun of Royal favour had set to him for ever. On the same day Hales, the attorney-general, filed two bills against him in the King's Bench, charging him with having incurred the penalty of Præmunire by acting in the kingdom as the Pope's legate. This was a most barefaced accusation, for he had accepted the legatine authority by Henry's express permission; had exercised it for many years with his full knowledge and approbation, and, in the affairs of the divorce, at the earnest request of the king. But Henry VIII. had no law but his own will, and never wanted reasons for punishing those who had offended him.
Of Wolsey, as he appeared at this moment, scathed and stunned by the thunderbolt of the royal wrath, we have a striking picture. The Bishop of Bayonne, the French ambassador, says in a letter:—"I have been to visit the cardinal in his distress, and I have witnessed the most striking change of fortune. He explained to me his hard case in the worst rhetoric that was ever heard. Both his tongue and his heart failed him. He recommended himself to the pity of the king and madame [Francis I. and his mother] with sighs and tears; and at last left me, without having said anything near so moving as his appearance. His face is dwindled to one-half its natural size. In truth, his misery is such that his enemies, Englishmen as they are, cannot help pitying him. Still, they will carry things to extremities. As for his legation, the seals, his authority, etc., he thinks no more of them. He is willing to give up everything, even the shirt from his back, and live in a hermitage, if the king would but desist from his displeasure."
On the 17th of October Henry sent the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk to demand the Great Seal; and they are said to have done that duty with some ungenerous triumph. But Wolsey delivered up his authority without complaint, and only sent in an offer surrendering all his personal estate to his gracious master, on condition that he might retire to his diocese on his church property. But the property of Wolsey had long been riveting the greedy eye of Henry, and, next to Anne Boleyn, that was, probably, the "weight which pulled him down." A message was soon brought him by the same noblemen that the king expected an entire and unconditional submission, whereupon he granted to the king the yearly profits of his benefices, and threw himself on his mercy. It was then intimated that His Majesty meant to reside at York Place (Whitehall) during the Parliament, and that Wolsey might retire to Esher Place, in Surrey, a house belonging to his bishopric of Winchester.
On the 3rd of November, after the long intermission of seven years, a Parliament was called together. The main object of this unusual occurrence was to complete the ruin of Wolsey, and place it beyond the power of the king to restore him to favour—a circumstance of which the courtiers were in constant dread. The committee of the House of Lords presented to the king a string of no less than forty-four articles against the fallen minister, enumerating and exaggerating all his offences, and calling upon the monarch to take such order with him "that he should never have any power, jurisdiction, or authority hereafter, to trouble, vex, and impoverish the commonwealth of this your realm, as he hath done heretofore, to the great hurt and damage of almost every man, high or low." This address was carried to the Commons for their concurrence; but there Thomas Cromwell, who by the favour of Wolsey had risen from the very lowest condition to be his friend and steward, and was now advanced to the king's service by the particular recommendation of the cardinal, attacked the articles manfully, and caused the Commons to reject them, as the members were persuaded that Cromwell was acting by suggestion of the king; which is very probable, for so far from Henry showing Cromwell any dislike for this proceeding, he continued to promote him, till he became his prime minister, and was created Earl of Essex.
THE DISMISSAL OF WOLSEY. (See p. [152.])
Henry, having now seized upon all the cardinal's property, the incomes of his bishoprics, abbeys, and other benefices, his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford, with all their furniture and revenues, his pensions, clothes, and even his very tomb, seemed contented to leave him his life. He, therefore, on the 12th of February, 1530, granted him a full pardon for all his real and pretended crimes. He allowed him, moreover, to retain the revenues of York. He gave him also a pension of 1,000 marks a year out of the bishopric of Winchester, and soon after sent him a present of £3,000 in money; and in plate, furniture, &c., the value of £3,374 3s. 7d., and gave him leave to reside at Richmond.