But if this aspect of Islip’s public life is little calculated to attract the sympathies of more tolerant times still less perhaps is the part which he played in the matter of the King’s divorce. It was but a minor part, but there can be little doubt as to Islip’s views in the case. No sadder fate fell to any woman in English history than came to Katharine of Arragon. Yet sympathy is apt to outrun judgment, and the easily formed verdict of all but the student dwells on the pathos of her story, makes much of the King’s sensual inclinations, and is entirely uninterested in and impatient of the problems and niceties of ecclesiastical law.
To attempt some defence of Islip’s action is not necessarily to attempt the same for Henry, though the efforts of the one were enlisted in the service of the other. To a Churchman such as Islip, though not to the Statesman such as Wolsey, there was but one point at issue in the matter and that was the legality of the original dispensation for the marriage which Pope Julius II. had granted. This can hardly be too strongly emphasised if strict justice is to be done to men such as he was. In this connection it is to be noted that eight of the foreign universities to whom the question was submitted and as to the general impartiality of whose judgment there can be little question decided that the Pope’s dispensation was null and void. The verdicts of the English universities in Henry’s favour and those of the Spanish against him may be neglected as not uninfluenced by questions of expediency, but it is impossible to ignore the importance of the decision of the others.
Islip was present on two famous occasions in the year 1529: on May 31st, when the papal commission was presented to Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio by the Bishop of Lincoln and a citation issued for the King and Queen to appear before their Court, and on June 18th, when the King appeared by proxies and Katharine attended in person to protest against the Cardinal’s jurisdiction. In the furtherance of the King’s suit Islip was employed with others to search for documents among the royal papers and to report on others in the possession of Garter King of Arms.
On July 13th, 1530, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal sent a petition to Clement VII. praying him to grant the divorce “if it can be granted with justice.� This petition was signed by both Archbishops, by four Bishops and by twenty-two Abbots of whom Islip was one. The Pope’s difficulties in the matter are well known and the story of Islip’s connection with it may be concluded with the mention of the letter which the King wrote on July 10th, 1531, telling Benet to suggest to the Pope that if he were afraid of the Emperor Charles, as he undoubtedly was, the Archbishop of Canterbury might be appointed to judge of the matter. With the Archbishop might be associated the Abbot of Winchcombe or the Abbot of Westminster, “a good old father.� This suggestion of course came to nothing and Islip did not live to see the matter finally determined.
Some time, however, before Henry’s letter Wolsey had died. Before his fall it had seemed for a moment that others would be involved with him among whom was Islip. In one of the indictments of Wolsey under the Statute of Præmunire, an undated copy of which is in the archives of the Abbey, Islip was also charged. After setting forth the accusations against Wolsey the document may be translated somewhat thus:—
“Nevertheless John, Abbot of the monastery of St. Peter, Westminster, little weighing the said statute, verily indeed setting it at naught, scheming and seeking after the said Cardinal in all his evil deeds, joined himself to him in a fuller and more extravagant use of his said powers and pretended legatine authority, and took him as his guide and almost as his tutor and gradually undermined the laws of this realm and at last almost extinguished the same, with the result that the aforesaid Cardinal bore himself the more loftily and insolently in his legatine state and dignity. Upon a day at Westminster the said Abbot submitted himself to the Cardinal and accepted and approved the several legatine faculties and professed obedience to the same Cardinal and promised it by a binding oath. And also he promised him the annates of his exempt monastery right up to the Feast of the Annunciation, 20 Henr. VIII., and caused him to be paid in full at Westminster. And so the said Abbot abetted the said Cardinal in his contempt of the King....�
Præmunire was a convenient weapon in the King’s hands and he was graciously pleased to pardon Islip with various others against whom similar indictments had been laid. The pardon in Islip’s case may have facilitated the acquisition by the King of lands on which he had cast a covetous eye, the story of which has already been told.
Such is the record of the part played in public affairs by a Westminster abbot in the later history of the monastery. Scanty as it is and disconnected, it will yet be seen how that public life from which he could hardly escape must have severed him from the spiritual duties which the Rule of his Order enjoined upon him. In justice to him it must be said that he was the victim of a system which had developed too far for him to be able to check it.
CHAPTER VII.
ISLIP AS A BUILDER.
When Islip died in 1532 the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, was already (with the exception of Hawkesmoor’s addition of the incongruous western towers in the eighteenth century) substantially the church that exists to-day, but in order to understand Islip’s contribution to the buildings as well as the structure erected to some extent independently of his personal initiative, it is necessary to go back to the time when Henry of Reims produced his plan for the new church which Henry III. had designed to erect on the site where for nearly two centuries the old Norman buildings of the Confessor had stood.