Charles V., deemed himself henceforth master of the situation, and the style of his letters changed in tone after the battle of Pavia. He was weary of the oscillations and perfidies of the English policy; he no longer wrote to his good uncle with his own hand, and his letters were signed Charles, without any reminder of the ties of kindred. He rejected the idea of invading France. "The game was in the toils," it was said; "of what use was it to chase it any longer?" Francis I. had been transferred to the Alcazar of Madrid, at his request, and was anxious to negotiate personally with the emperor, but no interview was granted him. The negotiators demanded of the captive king the renunciation of all his pretensions upon Italy, the rehabilitation of the Constable Bourbon in his rank and property, and the cession of Burgundy. Francis I. resisted this last point; he struggled for a long while, and even abdicated in favour of the dauphin. At one moment he threatened to starve himself to death, and the emperor saw himself upon the point of losing all the fruits of his victory. At length, on the 14th of January, 1526, after eleven months' captivity, the King of France signed the treaty of Madrid, taking care, however, to protest before a priest, a notary, and some friends, against the constraint placed upon him; then springing upon his Barbary-horse, brought for him to the frontier, he galloped back to his territory, crying, "I am king once more." All the conditions of the treaty were already trodden under foot.
During the captivity of Francis I., Henry VIII. had concluded a close and advantageous alliance with Louise of Savoy, regent of the kingdom; a sum of two millions of crowns had been promised him, as well as a pension of a hundred thousand crowns. The cardinal received thirty thousand crowns for the cession of the bishopric of Tournay, and a hundred thousand crowns as a reward for his services to France. The Dowager Queen of France, Mary, duchess of Suffolk, was to have her dowry liquidated. It was moreover forbidden the Duke of Albany to re-enter Scotland during the minority of James V.
As soon as he had arrived in Paris, Francis I. ratified the engagements made by his mother, assuring the emissaries of Henry VIII. that he cared for nothing when once he was in good and faithful friendship with his Grace, the King of England. The league formerly concluded against the King of France, was reformed against the emperor; the Pope absolved Francis I. of his oaths, and allied himself with the Kings of France and England, with the republics of Florence and Venice, and with the Duke of Milan, with a view to recommence hostilities.
A coldness had arisen since the preceding year (1525) between King Henry and his all-powerful minister; the king had found, it was said, that the cardinal abused the authority which had been confided to him by the Pope, and that he had driven too many monks from their monasteries. The rumour of this disagreement reached Germany, and it was upon this point that Luther wrote to Henry VIII., attributing to Wolsey all the evil which had been wrought in England, and congratulating the king on his having rejected "this monster and abomination to God and man, the ruin of the kingdom, and the blight of all England." The compliments of Luther were premature; the king and the cardinal had become reconciled, and Henry answered the reformer with emphatic encomiums upon Wolsey, and bitter reproaches directed against Luther for his marriage with Catherine of Bora.
The two sovereigns of France and England did not keep their promises to the Pope better than those made to the emperor. All the weight of the war fell upon Clement VII., who was soon compelled to throw himself upon the mercy of Charles V. A treaty was signed between them, but less than a month afterwards the Spaniards entered Rome by surprise, and the Pope was compelled to take refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. Passing from convention to convention, from perfidy to perfidy, with alternations of successes and reverses, Clement VII. found himself at length in the month of May, 1527, besieged in Rome by the Constable Bourbon, who was killed in the assault of the 5th of May, at the moment when his ferocious soldiers were taking possession of the city, which they gave up to fire and sword. Not even from the Gauls and the Goths had the Eternal City suffered so much. Notwithstanding the corruption of the Roman Church and the secret indignation which was felt against her, a cry of horror was raised from one end to the other of Christendom. Wolsey wrote to Henry VIII. to remind him of his title of Defender of the Faith, and to ask him to act in favour of the papal authority; but the king was absorbed in matters which were destined to undermine all his old devotion to Rome. He followed the example of King Francis I., and both monarchs abandoned to his unhappy fate the ally whom they had involved in an unequal struggle.
The King of England had recently, in fact, entered upon a course which was in the end to lead him further and to change his policy more than he had foreseen. An inconsistent and faithless husband, he had caused his wife, Queen Catharine of Aragon, many sorrows, which she had borne with grave dignity and a somewhat rigid meekness. He had, nevertheless, retained a certain respect for her; the queen was generally beloved and esteemed, but Henry VIII. had made the acquaintance of a young maid of honour of her court—beautiful, intellectual, graceful, brought up in France, whither, when yet quite a child, she had accompanied the Princess Mary, when she went there to espouse Louis XII., and Anne Boleyn had awakened a violent passion in the heart of the king. Did she from the first lay claim to the position of her royal mistress. Did she resist the love of the king from virtue or from ambition? None can say. She was of good birth; her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, had been several times employed in diplomatic missions by the king and the cardinal; her mother was the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. She lived constantly at the court, and the queen could not have been ignorant of an intrigue which, since 1527, had formed a subject of conversation among all the courtiers.
In order to marry Anne Boleyn, it was necessary to annul the marriage with Catharine of Aragon. King Henry VIII., after seventeen years of union found himself smitten with scruples as to the legitimacy of his marriage with the widow of his brother; he found proof of the wrath of God in the numerous losses which had been sustained by his family. The queen had given him six children, but had lost all save her eldest daughter, the Princess Mary. He very ostentatiously displayed his affection for Catharine, but the delicacy of his conscience did not permit him to live in peace with her. He began to experience a desire to surround himself with learned doctors able to throw light upon the laws divine and human which he might have involuntarily violated. Various secret motives favoured the passion of the king. Notwithstanding the declarations of Henry VIII. with regard to the impossibility of the Lutheran heresies taking root in the soil of England, the doctrines of the Reformation had silently made great progress; the partisans of the new doctrine knew Queen Catherine to be ardently and sincerely a Catholic; there was no support to be expected from her. On the other hand, Wolsey, the faithful servant of the Church of Rome, was exasperated against the emperor, the nephew of Catharine, who had failed him in the pontifical elections, and he wished to strengthen the alliance which united his master to France, by inducing him to marry Renee, the second daughter of Louis XII. The cardinal did not foresee any serious obstacles to his project from the affair of Anne Boleyn, but the divorce served his policy. Negotiations were then in progress for the marriage of the Princess Mary with the Duke of Orleans, son of the King of France, and the ambassadors of Francis I. were enabled to assure themselves personally of the truth of the rumours which attributed to the King an insane love for Anne Boleyn. He danced with her all night at the masquerade given in their honor. Wolsey soon afterwards proceeded to France, magnificently escorted in his embassy, like Thomas a Becket in former times. When he came back, the alliance between the two crowns was closer than ever, and he had himself assured Louise of Savoy that she would soon see a princess of her blood seated upon [the] throne of England; but the king had spent the time during his absence in seeking in Leviticus and in St. Thomas Aquinas arguments against his marriage with Catharine, and the first news which saluted the cardinal upon his return was the announcement, made by the king, of his fixed determination to make Anne Boleyn Queen of England. Wolsey fell upon his knees; his policy and principles, such as they were, revolted at this marriage. In earlier times the Kings of England had frequently married their female subjects; but that period was gone by, and the regal dignity was too exalted to be brought so low. At the first remonstrance, the minister perceived that discussion was useless; he bowed his head, and resolved to serve his master according to his will and pleasure. He did not, however, infuse any ardour into the business: Anne Boleyn soon perceived this, and conceived thenceforth an enmity against the cardinal which was destined to bring about his ruin.