Norfolk, who wished well to the Queen, regretted that she had taken a course so little likely to profit her. “The Emperor’s action,” he said, “in causing the King to be cited to Rome was outrageous and unprecedented. The cause ought to be tried in England, and the Queen had been unwise in rejecting the advice of the Peers.”[156]
The Emperor on reflection reconsidered his own first refusal to allow the cause to be transferred; to insist on the trial being conducted before himself was really intolerable, and he drew a more moderate reply; but he still persisted that the Pope alone should hear the case, and decide it in the Queen’s favour. “The affair,” he said, “was of such a nature as to admit of no solution save the declaring that a marriage contracted with the authority and license of the Holy See was valid and indissoluble. As the patron and defender of the Apostolic See he was more in duty bound than any other Prince to remove and defend all small offences and disputes.” In fact he still advanced a claim of sovereign jurisdiction which it was impossible for England to allow.[157]
Catherine was well aware that the Pope had been a party to the request for the removal of her cause, and bitterly she railed at him. Charles sent her a copy of his own answer. It reassured her, if she had doubted; she saw that, let Clement struggle how he would, she could be confident that her nephew would compel him to decide for her. The Pope, she announced, was responsible for all that had happened by refusing to do her justice. This last move showed that he was as little disposed to apply the remedy[158] as he had been. If the cause was removed from Rome, the judges, whoever they might be, would declare that black was white.[159]
Up to this time Catherine had continued at the Court with her own apartments, and with the Princess Mary as her companion. She had refused the only available means of a peaceful arrangement, and was standing out, avowedly resting on the Emperor’s protection. She was not reticent. She spoke out freely of her wrongs and her expectations. To separate mother and daughter would have been a needless aggravation had the suit been between private individuals. But Mary was a public person with her own rights on the succession. It was found necessary to remove Catherine from London and to place the Princess out of reach of her influence. Moor Park, which had been a country-house of Wolsey’s, was assigned for the Queen’s residence, while Mary was sent to the palace at Richmond. Catherine was too proud to resist when resistance would be useless, but she said she would prefer the Tower.[160] The Nuncio remonstrated. He advised the King “to recall her to the Court and shut a hundred thousand tongues.” The King replied, “nearly in tears,” that he had sent her away because she used such high words and was always threatening him with the Emperor.[161] Of Mary, Henry was personally fond. He met her one day in Richmond Park, spoke affectionately to her, and regretted that he saw her so seldom. She cannot be where the Lady is, said Chapuys, “because the Lady has declared that she will not have it, nor hear of her.” She would not even allow the King to speak to Mary without being watched on the occasion just mentioned. She sent two of her people to report what passed between them.[162]
CHAPTER XI.
Proposals for the reunion of Christendom—Warning addressed to the Pope—Address of the English nobles to Queen Catherine—Advances of Clement to Henry—Embarrassments of the Pope and the Emperor—Unwillingness of the Pope to decide against the King—Business in Parliament—Reform of the English Church—Death of Archbishop Warham—Bishop Fisher and Chapuys—Question of annates—Papal Briefs—The Pope urged to excommunicate Henry—The Pope refuses—Anger of Queen Catherine’s Agent.
The unity of Christendom was not to be broken in pieces without an effort to preserve it. Charles V. was attempting impossibilities in his own dominions, labouring for terms on which the Lutheran States might return to the Church. He had brought the Pope to consent to the “communion in both kinds,” and to the “marriage of priests”—a vast concession, which had been extorted by Micer Mai in the intervals of the discussions on the divorce. Efforts which fail are forgotten, but they represent endeavours at least honourable. Catherine was absorbed in her own grievances. Charles gave them as much attention as he could spare, but had other things to think of. As long as he could prevent Clement from taking any fatal step, he supposed that he had done enough. He had at least done all that he could, and he had evidently allowed Chapuys to persuade him that Henry’s course would be arrested at the last extremity by his own subjects. He left Mai to watch the Pope, and Ortiz to urge for sentence; but when the pressure of his own hand relaxed his agents could effect but little. The English Parliament was to open again in January. The King’s Commissioners at Rome informed the Consistory that if it was decided finally to try the cause at Rome they were to take their leave, and the King would thenceforward regard the Pope as his public enemy.[163] The threat “produced a great impression.” The Pope had no wish to be Henry’s enemy in order to please the Emperor. Mai and Ortiz told him that the English menaces were but words; he had but to speak and England would submit. The Pope did not believe it, and became again “lax and procrastinating.”[164]
The English nobles made a last effort to move Catherine. Lord Sussex, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Lee, Archbishop of York, who had been her warm supporter, waited on her at Moor Park to urge her, if she would not allow the case to be tried at Cambray, to permit it to be settled by a commission of bishops and lawyers. The Pope confessedly was not free to give his own opinion, and English causes could not be ruled by the Emperor. If Catherine had consented, it is by no means certain that Anne Boleyn would have been any more heard of. A love which had waited for five years could not have been unconquerable; and it was possible and even probable in the existing state of opinion that some other arrangement might have been made for the succession. The difficulty rose from Catherine’s determination to force the King before a tribunal where the national pride would not permit him to plead. The independence of England was threatened, and those who might have been her friends were disarmed of their power to help her. Unfortunately for herself, perhaps fortunately for the English race which was yet to be born, she remained still inflexible. “The King’s plea of conscience,” she said, “was not honest. He was acting on passion, pure and simple; and English judges would say black was white.” Sussex and Fitzwilliam knelt to entreat her to reconsider her answer. She too knelt and prayed them for God’s honour and glory to persuade the King to return to her, as she was his lawful wife. All present were in tears, but there was no remedy. Chapuys said that the coldness and indifference with which the affair was treated at Rome was paralysing her defenders. The question could not stand in debate for ever, and, unless the Pope acted promptly and resolutely, he feared that some strong act was not far distant.[165]