The King did not answer; but, turning to someone present, he said: “You have heard the Ambassador hint at excommunication. It is not I that am excommunicated, but the Emperor, who has kept me so long in mortal sin. That is an excommunication which the Pope cannot take off.”[219]
To the lords who carried the message to Catherine she replied as she had always done—that Queen she was, and she would never call herself by any other name. As to her establishment, she wanted nothing but a confessor, a doctor, and a couple of maids. If that was too much, she would go about the world and beg alms for the love of God.
“The King,” Chapuys said, “was naturally kind and generous,” but the “Lady Anne had so perverted him that he did not seem the same man.” Unless the Emperor acted in earnest, she would make an end of Catherine, as she had done of Wolsey, whom she did not hate with half as much intensity. “All seems like a dream,” he said. “Her own party do not know whether to laugh or cry at it. Every day people ask me when I am going away. As long as I remain here it will be always thought your Majesty has consented to the marriage.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The King’s claim—The obstinacy of Catherine—The Court at Dunstable—Judgment given by Cranmer—Debate in the Spanish Council of State—Objections to armed interference—The English opposition—Warning given to Chapuys—Chapuys and the Privy Council—Conversation with Cromwell—Coronation of Anne Boleyn—Discussions at Rome—Bull supra Attentatis—Confusion of the Catholic Powers—Libels against Henry—Personal history of Cromwell—Birth of Elizabeth—The King’s disappointment—Bishop Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England—Growth of Lutheranism.
If circumstances can be imagined to justify the use of the dispensing power claimed and exercised by the Papacy, Henry VIII. had been entitled to demand assistance from Clement VII. in the situation in which he had found himself with Catherine of Aragon. He had been committed when little more than a boy, for political reasons, to a marriage of dubious legality. In the prime of his life he found himself fastened to a woman eight years older than himself; the children whom she had borne to him all dead, except one daughter; his wife past the age when she could hope to be again a mother; the kingdom with the certainty of civil war before it should the King die without a male heir. In hereditary monarchies, where the sovereign is the centre of the State, the interests of the nation have to be considered in the arrangements of his family. Henry had been married irregularly to Catherine to strengthen the alliance between England and Spain. When, as a result, a disputed succession and a renewal of the civil wars was seen to be inevitable, the King had a distinct right to ask to be relieved of the connection by the same irregular methods. The causa urgentissima, for which the dispensing power was allowed, was present in the highest degree, and that power ought to have been made use of. That it was not made use of was due to a control exerted upon the Pope by the Emperor, whose pride had been offended; and that such an influence could be employed for such a purpose vitiated the tribunal which had been trusted with a peculiar and exceptional authority. The Pope had not concealed his conviction that the demand was legitimate in itself, or that, in refusing, he was yielding to intimidation, and the inevitable consequences had followed. Royal persons who receive from birth and station remarkable favours of fortune occasionally have to submit to inconveniences attaching to their rank; and, when the occasion rises, they generally meet with little ceremony. At the outset the utmost efforts had been made to spare Catherine’s feelings. Both the King and the Pope desired to avoid a judgment on the validity of her marriage. An heir to the crown was needed, and from her there was no hope of further issue. If at the beginning she had been found incapable of bearing a child, the marriage would have been dissolved of itself. Essentially the condition was the same. Technical difficulties could be disposed of by a Papal dispensation. She would have remained queen, her honour unaffected, the legitimacy of Mary unimpugned, the relations between the Holy See and the Crown and Church of England undisturbed. The obstinacy of Catherine herself, the Emperor’s determination to support her, and the Pope’s cowardice, prevented a reasonable arrangement; and thus the right of the Pope himself to the spiritual sovereignty of Europe came necessarily under question, when it implied the subjugation of independent princes to another power by which the Court of Rome was dominated.
Such a question once raised could have but one answer from the English nation. Every resource had been tried to the extreme limit of forbearance, and all had failed before the indomitable will of a single woman. A request admitted to be just had been met by excommunication and threats of force. With entire fitness, the King and Parliament had replied by withdrawing their recognition of a corrupt tribunal, and determining thenceforward to try and to judge their own suits in their own courts.
Thus, on the 10th of May, Cranmer, with three Bishops as assessors, sate at Dunstable under the Royal licence to hear the cause which had so long been the talk of Europe, and Catherine, who was at Ampthill, was cited to appear. She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to make. Chapuys advised her not to notice the summons. “Nothing done by such a Court could prejudice her,” he said, “unless she renounced her appeal to Rome.” As she made no plea, judgment was promptly given.[220] The divorce was complete so far as English law could decide it, and it was doubtful to the last whether the Pope was not at heart a consenting party. The sentence had been, of course, anticipated. On the 27th of April Chapuys informed the Emperor how matters then stood.