The language of these instructions shows that the King and Wolsey understood the Proteus that they were dealing with, and the necessity of binding his hands if he was not to slip from them. It was not now the fountain of justice, the august head of Christendom, that they were addressing, but a shifty old man, clad by circumstances with the robe of authority, but whose will was the will of the power which happened to be strongest in Italy. It was not tolerable that the Emperor should dictate on a question which touched the vital interests of an independent kingdom.
Spanish diplomatists had afterwards to excuse and explain away Clement’s concessions on the ground that they were signed when he was angry at his imprisonment, had been extorted by threats, and were therefore of no validity. He struggled hard to avoid committing himself. The unwelcome documents were recast into various forms. The dispensation was not signed after all, but in the place of it other briefs were signed of even graver importance. The Pope yielded to the demand to send a second Legate to try the cause with Wolsey in England, where it was assumed as a matter of course that judgment would be given for the King. The Legate chosen was Campeggio, who was himself, as was said, an English bishop. The Pope also did express in writing his own opinion on the cause as favourable to the King’s plea. What passed at Orvieto was thus afterwards compendiously related by Henry in a published statement of his case.
“On his first scruple the King sent to the Bishop of Rome, as Christ’s Vicar, who had the keys of knowledge, to dissolve his doubts. The said Bishop refused to take any knowledge of it and desired the King to apply for a commission to be sent into the realm, authorised to determine the cause, thus pretending that it might no wise be entreated at Rome, but only within the King’s own realm. He delegated his whole powers to Campeggio and Wolsey, giving them also a special commission in form of a decretal, wherein he declared the King’s marriage null and empowered him to marry again. In the open commission also he gave them full authority to give sentence for the King. Secretly he gave them instructions to burn the commission decretal and not proceed upon it; (but) at the time of sending the commission he also sent the King a brief, written in his own hand, admitting the justice of his cause and promising sanctissime sub verbo Pontificis that he would never advocate it to Rome.”[34]
Engagements which he intended to keep or break according to the turns of the war between Francis and Charles did not press very heavily perhaps on Clement’s conscience, but they were not extorted from him without many agonies. “He has granted the commission,” Casalis wrote. “He is not unwilling to please the King and Wolsey, but fears the Spaniards more than ever he did. The Friar-General has forbidden him in the Emperor’s name to grant the King’s request. He fears for his life from the Imperialists if the Emperor knows of it. Before he would grant the brief he said, weeping, that it would be his utter ruin. The Venetians and Florentines desired his destruction. His sole hope of life was from the Emperor. He asked me to swear whether the King would desert him or not. Satisfied on this point, he granted the brief, saying that he placed himself in the King’s arms, as he would be drawn into perpetual war with the Emperor. Wolsey might dispose of him and the Papacy as if he were Pope himself.”[35]
The Emperor had insisted, at Catherine’s desire, that the cause should not be heard in England. The Pope had agreed that it should be heard in England. Consent had been wrung from him, but his consent had been given, and Campeggio was to go and make the best of it. His open commission was as ample as words could make it. He and Wolsey were to hear the cause and decide it. The secret “decretal” which he had wept over while he signed it declared, before the cause was heard, the sentence which was to be given, and he had pledged his solemn word not to revoke the hearing to Rome. All that Clement could do was to instruct the Legate before he started to waste time on his way, and, on his arrival in England, to use his skill to “accommodate matters,” and to persuade the Queen—if he found her persuadeable—to save him from his embarrassments by taking the veil. This was a course which Charles himself in his private mind would have recommended, but was too honourable to advise it. The fatal decretal was to be seen only by a very few persons, and then, as Henry said, Campeggio was to burn it. He was instructed also to pass no sentence without first referring back to Rome, and, if driven to extremity, was to find an excuse for postponing a decision; very natural conduct on the part of a weak, frightened mortal—conduct not unlike that of his predecessor, Alexander III., in the quarrel between Becket and Henry II.—but in both cases purely human, not such as might have been looked for in a divinely guided Vicar of Christ.
CHAPTER IV.
Anne Boleyn—Letters to her from the King—The Convent at Wilton—The Divorce—The Pope’s promises—Arrival of Campeggio in England—Reception at the Bridewell Palace—Proposal to Catherine to take the veil—Her refusal—Uncertainty of the succession—A singular expedient—Alarms of Wolsey—The true issue—Speech of the King in the City—Threats of the Emperor—Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius—Alleged discovery of a brief supplying them—Distress of Clement.
The marriage with Anne Boleyn was now a fixed idea in Henry’s mind. He had become passionately attached to her, though not perhaps she to him. The evidence of his feeling remains in a series of letters to her—how preserved for public inspection no one knows. Some of them were said to have been stolen by Campeggio. Perhaps they were sold to him; at any rate, they survive. A critic in the “Edinburgh Review” described them as such as “might have been written by a pot-boy to his girl.” The pot-boy must have been a singular specimen of his kind. One, at any rate, remains to show that, though Henry was in love, he did not allow his love to blind him to his duty as a prince. The lady, though obliged to wait for the full gratification of her ambition, had been using her influence to advance her friends, while Wolsey brought upon himself the rebuke of his master by insufficient care in the distribution of Church patronage. The correspondence throws an unexpected light upon the King’s character.