First of all then, Wolsey, as Papal Legate, took steps for holding a Legatine Court in England before which the issue should be tried. But this plan contained a material flaw. Katharine might appeal to the Pope against the decision of the Legatine Court, and Wolsey, in the event of such appeal, would become a mere party in the suit instead of a judge. The Pope therefore must be induced either to give a favourable pronouncement on his own account, or to appoint a Legatine Court ad hoc—a Court whose judgment would be final. A very difficult matter; for precisely at this time the recent misfortunes of France were bearing their fruit: the emperor became entirely predominant in Italy, and obtained complete control of Clement—and the emperor was Katharine’s most affectionate nephew. So the hapless Pope, who was very anxious to keep friends with Henry but was naturally even more anxious not to offend Charles, desired above everything to evade giving a decision himself. On the other hand, Wolsey felt that there must be no pretext for subsequently questioning the legality of the process by which the dispensation was to be quashed, and therefore it was imperative that in form that process should convey the Papal sanction. Besides this, he had a very powerful personal reason for insisting on it. In England the Boleyn connection, who knew perfectly well what were Wolsey’s views about Anne, were working hard and not without success to destroy the king’s trust in the Cardinal, who saw his influence tottering. Failure to procure the divorce would certainly mean for him destruction; success, followed by the Boleyn marriage, would place more power in the hands of the most hostile faction, and he would be left absolutely alone to bear the whole obloquy of an extremely unpopular measure, unless the ultimate responsibility could be forced on the reluctant Pope.
As far as Wolsey was concerned, Clement won the game after apparently yielding. A Legatine Commission was appointed, but Campeggio was associated with Wolsey as judge: he managed to spend the best part of a year in reaching England; it was in fact fifteen months after the appointment that the Court began its sittings. A few weeks later, the Pope revoked the case to Rome. For all practical purposes, the revocation sealed the Cardinal’s fate.
For two years past Wolsey’s position, for all that it seemed to the world so assured, had been extremely precarious. The king had sent one agent to Rome behind his minister’s back. The agent’s mission failed ignominiously, but the thing was significant. Wolsey had gone to France on a diplomatic errand; on his return, instead of being summoned to a confidential meeting with the king, he found Anne Boleyn in the presence. He had been soundly rated by the king because, in appointing an abbess to Wilton, he had rejected a most unsuitable protégée of the Boleyns. He knew the stake for which he was playing: he can hardly have doubted, from the beginning of what was called “The King’s Affair,” that his fate was bound up with success or failure. The illusion that he ruled the king was one from which it does not appear that he ever suffered himself. All he did was to rule England and English policy precisely so long as he retained the personal favour of the king, and his policy did not clash with any of the royal predilections.
In this matter of the “divorce,” Wolsey has found an earnest apologist in Father Taunton. In his view, it would seem that the Cardinal was justified, because he believed that there really was a technical flaw in the form of the dispensation as granted by Pope Julius: if there was such a flaw, the king was entitled to the benefit of it: and its existence would enable the Pope to quash the dispensation, without so much as raising the question whether the granting of it at all was ultra vires for any Pope. Now the ingenuity of the lawyer who wins his client’s case on a technical quibble may be admired—in a way: the ingenuity of the ecclesiastic, who would have provided the Pope with a golden bridge for evading an awkward question, is also to be admired. But in presenting these grounds for admiration, the last possibility of a moral defence is given away. Persons honestly believing that the relation between Henry and Katharine was by the moral law incestuous, and could not be otherwise, despite any possible Papal dispensation, were entitled to urge the dissolution of their union. But if that relation was not inherently immoral, and was capable of being made legal as well, then the barest sense of justice demanded, that no dubious point of law should be brought in, in order to engineer a dissolution.
The whole case for Wolsey, according to Father Taunton, rests precisely on this very dubious point of law. The dispensation was formally drawn to make the marriage between Henry and Katharine lawful even if affinity had been contracted. But in the ordinary course, as the law stood, a woman being not married but fully betrothed to a man might not—although no actual marriage had taken place—marry that man’s brother, her doing so being against “public honesty.” Since the greater includes the less, and the whole includes the part, it would seem obvious that a dispensation covering the actual marriage ipso facto covered the pre-contract. Yet the apologist would have it that the Cardinal was satisfied to rest the whole case for nullifying the marriage on the position that the dispensation was technically invalid because it did not specifically refer to “public honesty” as well as to affinity. Such was the contemptible quibble by which the “master-mind of his age” was prepared to procure a pronouncement that Katharine was no wife—so that the Papacy might escape an awkward dilemma.
It is at least intelligible to maintain that circumstances may arise under which, for the public safety, flagrant injustice towards an individual may be and ought to be committed. That is undoubtedly the feeling at the bottom of Mr. Froude’s argument. Possibly also it was at the back of Father Taunton’s mind; but he does not put it forward. If the doctrine itself be admitted, a loyal son of the Roman Church is perhaps entitled to hold that it was right to sacrifice Katharine in order to avoid raising a question extremely inconvenient to the Papacy. Perhaps also that view is the excuse least derogatory to Wolsey which can be offered. A review, however, of the entire context of the documents which Father Taunton cites in part points rather to the conclusion that the Cardinal did mean to argue that—dispensation or no dispensation—affinity was an absolute bar; and intended to fall back on the quibble only as a last desperate resort if the contraction of affinity were disproved; that he at least wished to find the moral ground for nullity maintained, but, if that should prove impossible, was prepared to surrender the extreme Papal claim.
The view of the whole business resulting from a consideration of all the facts so far as they can be certainly ascertained is entirely consistent with the rest of the Cardinal’s career. Ambition made him desire power; like other men of great intellect and strong will, he knew himself fitted to hold it; like many other statesmen, and with a good deal more reason than some, he imagined himself the only safe guide for the State; and he knew that if he once fell there would be for him no recovery. About 1526, when for a dozen years he had been the greatest figure in the eyes of the Western world, he found himself presented with a dilemma. He must execute the king’s will in a particular matter—or fall.
The king’s will would at least serve the State well in one respect if it issued in providing a male heir to the throne. Also, if the marriage were really contrary to the moral law and outside the dispensing power, it would be in the interest of public morals that the fact should be declared. So far, no one could possibly be blamed for maintaining the king’s case. That was the line subsequently taken by Cranmer. But for Wolsey the situation was much more difficult than for Cranmer, because for Wolsey it was a sine qua non that the Pope’s official authority should be maintained. He could not, therefore, adopt any course which ignored that authority even so far as by not requiring its open sanction: much less could he, like Cranmer, defy it. Whether, for the sake of preserving that authority the more rigidly, he intended to ignore the one moral defence for the desired measure and content himself with pleading a legal quibble, is a question that can be argued; but it is quite clear that he was prepared to do so in the last resort. In short, if the only way to avoid his own downfall was by sacrificing an innocent victim, the innocence of the victim should not save her. He would have preferred, no doubt, that the sacrifice should not be made, but, under the circumstances, he did not hesitate. His moral plane was too conventionally low for the alternative course. More or Fisher would have acted otherwise. But the successful statesman who is ready to commit political suicide rather than actively participate in an unrighteous deed which he cannot prevent, is not often to be met with. And Wolsey had the further excuse that he hoped to save the Church, as he conceived it, from the disastrous results which he foresaw if the matter fell into other hands.