These words, taken by themselves, prove that Wolsey was now in the confidence of Catherine’s friends, but would not justify further inference. Another letter which follows leaves no room for doubt.
On the 15th of June Chapuys writes again.[117] “I have a letter from the Cardinal’s physician, in which he tells me that his master, not knowing exactly the state of the Queen’s affairs, cannot give any special advice upon them; but with fuller information would counsel and direct as if he was to gain Paradise by it, as on her depended his happiness, honour, and peace of mind. As things stood he thought that the Pope should proceed to the weightier censures, and should call in the secular arm; there was want of nerve in the way in which things were handled.”[118] The calling in the secular arm meant invasion and open war. To advise it was treasonable in any English subject. There may be circumstances under which treason of such a kind might be morally defended. No defence, moral or political, can be made for Wolsey; and it was the more discreditable because at this time he was professing the utmost devotion to his King, and endeavouring to secure his confidence. Three different petitions Norfolk discovered him to have sent in, “desiring as much authority as ever he had.” Norfolk no doubt watched him, and may have learnt enough to suspect what he was doing. The whispers and the messages through the intriguing physician had not gone unobserved. The King persisted in his generous confidence, and could not be persuaded that his old friend could be really treacherous,[119] but he consented to send him down to his diocese. Wolsey went, still affecting his old magnificence, with a train of six hundred knights and gentlemen; but he never reached his cathedral city. Chapuys heard, to his alarm, that the physician was arrested and was in the Tower. He congratulated himself that, were all revealed which had passed between him and Wolsey, nothing could be discovered which would compromise his own safety. But it was true that Wolsey’s physician had betrayed his master, revealing secrets which he had bound himself never to tell. He had confessed, so Chapuys learnt, that the Cardinal had advised the Pope to excommunicate the King, if he did not send away the “Lady” from the court, hoping thus “to raise the country and obtain the management.”[120] Too evidently the Cardinal had been intriguing, and not honourably, merely for his own purposes. He might have persuaded himself that the divorce would be injurious to the country; but after the part which he had played it was not for him to advise the Pope to strike at his master, whom he had himself tempted to go so deep with it. The King was convinced at last. Orders were sent down to arrest him and bring him back to London. He knew that all was now over with him, and that he would not be again forgiven. He refused to take food, and died on his way at Leicester Abbey on St. Andrew’s Day. He was buried, it was observed, in the same church where the body lay of Richard III. One report said that he had starved himself; another that he had taken poison. Chapuys says “that he died like a good Christian, protesting that he had done nothing against the King.” His designs had failed, whatever they might have been, and he ended his great career struggling ineffectually to conjure back into the vase the spirit which he had himself let loose.
CHAPTER IX.
Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power—The Royal family of Spain—Address of the English Peers to the Pope—Compromise proposed by the Duke of Norfolk—The English Agents at Rome—Arrival of a new Nuncio in England—His interview with the King—Chapuys advises the King’s excommunication—Position of the English clergy—Statute of Provisors—The clergy in a Præmunire—Remonstrances of the Nuncio—Despair of Catherine—Her letter to the Pope—Henry prepares for war—The introduction of briefs from Rome forbidden—Warnings given to the Spanish Ambassador and the Nuncio.
The question whether the Pope had power to license marriages within the forbidden degrees affected interests immeasurably wider than the domestic difficulties of Henry VIII. Innumerable connections had been contracted, in reliance upon Papal dispensations, the issue of which would be illegitimate if the authority was declared to be insufficient. The Emperor himself was immediately and personally concerned. Emmanuel of Portugal had been three times married. His first wife was Isabel, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine’s sister and Charles’s aunt. His second wife was her sister Maria; his third, Charles’s sister Eleanor. Charles’s own Empress was the child of the second of these marriages, and they had all been contracted under dispensations from Rome. A sudden change of the law or the recognition in a single instance that the Pope’s authority in such matters might be challenged would create universal disturbance; and it was not for Catherine’s sake alone that the Emperor had so peremptorily resisted Henry’s demand. The difficulty would have been evaded had Catherine agreed to take the vows; and Henry himself, when Catherine refused, had been so far conscious of the objection that he had hitherto based his demand on the irregularity of the original Bull of Pope Julius. Clement had said often that a way could be found if Charles would consent; but Charles had not consented. In England, the marriage having been once challenged, a decision of some kind was necessary to avoid a disputed succession, and larger issues had now to be raised. The Emperor having dismissed the English Embassy at Bologna with scant courtesy, the Pope, as we have seen, had fallen back secretly on his old wish that Henry would take the matter into his own hands, disregard the inhibition, and marry as he pleased, without throwing the responsibility on himself. Henry, however, after the assurances which the Pope had given him, was determined that he should not escape in this way. He had gained or extorted a favourable opinion from his own learned corporations. Francis had assisted him to a similar opinion from the University of Paris. Confident in these authorities, a great body of English peers, spiritual and temporal, now presented a formal demand to Clement that the King’s petition should be conceded, and intimated that if it was again refused they must seek a remedy for themselves. Wolsey himself signed, for the petition was drawn in the summer before his death. Archbishop Warham signed, followed by bishops, abbots, dukes, earls, and barons. Some, doubtless, had to strain their consciences, but the act as a whole must be taken as their own. The King, unless he was supported by the people, had no means of forcing them or of punishing them if they refused. Norfolk still laboured desperately to work upon Chapuys. He told him, before the address was despatched, that, as there seemed no other way of bringing the business to an end, he would sacrifice the greater part of what he owned in the world if God would be pleased to take to himself the Queen and his niece also,[121] for the King would never enjoy peace of mind till he had made another marriage, for the relief of his conscience and the tranquillity of the realm, which could only be secured by male posterity to succeed to the crown.
The King, Norfolk said, could not plead at Rome, which was garrisoned by a Spanish army, and the Pope would do the Emperor’s bidding if it was to dance in the streets in a clown’s coat; the Queen objected to a trial in England; but could not a neutral place be found with impartial judges? Might not the Cardinal of Liège be trusted, and the Bishop of Tarbes?
The blunt and honest Norfolk was an indifferent successor to the dexterous Cardinal. To wish that Catherine and Anne Boleyn were both dead was a natural, but not a valuable, aspiration. A neutral place of trial was, no doubt, desirable, and the Cardinal of Liège might be admissible, but de Tarbes would not do at all. “He had been one of the first,” Chapuys remarked, “to put the fancy in the King’s head.”[122]
At Rome the diplomatic fencing continued, the Pope secretly longing to “commit some folly” and to come to terms with Henry, while the Imperial agents kept their claws fixed upon him. In October Mai reported that Henry’s representatives were insisting that Clement should dissolve the marriage without legal process, on the ground that the kingdom must have an heir, and because the King protested that he was living in mortal sin. If this could not be done, the Pope should at least promise that if the King married he should not be proceeded against. The Pope seemed too much inclined to listen;[123] but with Mai at his shoulder, he could not afford to be valiant. He was made to answer that he had done his best; but he could not reject the Queen’s appeal; the King had not named a proctor to appear for him, and therefore delay had been unavoidable; the threat of the Peers in their address that unless the divorce was granted they would seek a remedy elsewhere, was unworthy of them, and could not have been sanctioned by the King; he had always wished to comply with the King’s requests when it could be done with justice.[124]