The already corpulent monarch was stupidly and spoonily love-sick about this "artful puss," as Catherine might have called her, and he used to leave scraps of paper about the palace scribbled over with charades, conundrums, ana anagrams to the object of his admiration. * Wolsey was a good deal annoyed by this avowal, but, finding his opposition would do no good, he changed his tack and fell in with the sovereign's fancy. Henry ordered him to consult Sir Thomas More, who, not at all liking the job, referred him politely to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, saying it was more in their way than his own, and he felt any interference on his part would be irregular and unprofessional. Wolsey next tried the bishops, who shook their heads and said, "You had better ask the pope," to whom the king at last determined upon a reference.
* One of these has been preserved; it is to the following
effect:—"My first is the article indefinite (An); my second
is a very useful animal (Bull); my third is the abode of
hospitality (Inn); and my whole is the 'gal of my art '—
An(n) Buli-Inn (Anne Boleyn)."
The pope, whom we left locked up in the castle of St. Angelo, had been obliged to "come out of that" for want of provisions, and had escaped in the disguise of a gardener, in which a shovel hat may have been of some use to him. He played his cards so well as the one of spades, that, with the assistance of one or two true hearts who turned out trumps, he reached in safety the town of Orvieto, where he expected reinforcement from a French army. Long before the promised aid arrived, he received a card inscribed "Dr. Knight," and he had scarcely time to say, "Doctor Knight? Who is Doctor Knight? I don't know any Doctor Knight," when the king of England's secretary, who bore that name, rushed into the presence of the pontiff. The doctor, having briefly explained his object in coming, which was to get the pope's consent to Henry's divorce, succeeded in extracting the requisite authority from his holiness, who was very unwilling, but he could not keep back his bull without finding himself on the horns of a worse dilemma. He at all events wished the matter to be kept secret for a short time; but a friend of Wolsey stepped forward to stipulate that an Italian cardinal should be sent to England with Dr. Knight, to prove that the document he took with him was genuine. Poor Clement, being afraid to refuse compliance, pointed to half-a-dozen cardinals standing in one corner, and hurriedly observed, "There, there, Dr. Knight, take any one of those, for the whole six are quite at your service." In conformity with this permission, Cardinal Campeggio was selected to visit England, and he carried with him in his pocket a decree, rendering final any judgment that he and Wolsey might agree upon.
On the arrival of Campeggio a public entry into London was proposed: but he excused himself on the score of gout, which had laid him by the heels, or rather seized him by the great toe, and prevented him from coming into the metropolis on the footing that he might have desired. After spending a few days with his leg in a sling, he was introduced to the king, whom he greatly irritated by advising that the business of the divorce should not be proceeded with. Henry began declaring that he had been deceived, and that the pope was an old humbug, which caused the gouty leg of the legate to tremble in its shoe; and, taking the bull from his pocket, he showed that the pontiff meant business, and had given full authority for transacting it.
Henry's desire for a divorce got soon rumoured about the city, and caused so much dissatisfaction that he called a meeting of the judges, lord mayor, common council, and others, at which it was announced that his majesty would attend to give explanations, and enter into a justification of his conduct. He made an elaborate speech of the most artful and hypocritical kind, in which he asserted that his religious scruples alone made him agitate the question of a divorce, and that if his marriage was valid, nothing would give him greater pleasure than to finish his life in the society of the old lady who had been for many years the partner of his existence. It is notorious that he had made up his mind to desert Catherine for Anne Boleyn; and his speech is therefore a disgusting specimen of low cunning, rendered doubly odious by the religious cant with which it was accompanied.
The unhappy queen, when visited by Wolsey and Campeggio, exclaimed at once, "I know what you have come about." She said she thought it hard to have her marriage doubted after nearly twenty years; and spoke pathetically of those early days when she was in the habit of going out a-Maying with her royal husband.
