At length the suspense was at an end, and the long-waited-for decision of the Emperor arrived. He had considered, he said, the communications of Lord Darcy and Lord Sandys; he admitted that the disorders of England required a remedy; but an armed interference was at the present time impossible.[309] It was a poor consolation to the English Peers and clergy; and there was worse behind. Not only the Emperor did not mean to declare war against Henry, but, spite of Catherine, spite of excommunication, spite of heresy, he intended, if possible, to renew the old alliance between England and the House of Burgundy. Politics are the religion of princes, and if they are wise the peace of the world weighs more with them than orthodoxy and family contentions. Honour, pride, Catholic obligations recommended a desperate stroke. Prudence and a higher duty commanded Charles to abstain. Sir John Wallop, the English representative at Paris, was a sincere friend of Queen Catherine, but was unwilling, for her sake, to see her plunge into an insurrectionary whirlpool. Viscount Hannart, a Flemish nobleman with English connections, was Charles’s Minister at the same Court. Together they discussed the situation of their respective countries. Both agreed that a war between Henry and the Emperor would be a calamity to mankind; while in alliance they might hold in check the impatient ambition of France. Wallop suggested that they might agree by mutual consent to suspend their differences on the divorce; might let the divorce pass in silence for future settlement, and be again friends.
The proposal was submitted to the Spanish Council of State. The objections to it were the wrongs done, and still being done, to the Queen and Princess in the face of the Pope’s sentence, and the obligations of the Emperor to see that sentence enforced. An arrangement between the Emperor and the King of England on the terms suggested would be ill received in Christendom, would dispirit the two ladies, and their friends in England who had hitherto supported the claims of the Princess Mary to the succession; while it might, further, encourage other princes to divorce their wives on similar grounds. In favour of a treaty, on the other hand, were the notorious designs of the French King. France was relying on the support of England. If nothing was done to compose the existing differences the King of England might be driven to desperate courses. The Faith of the Church would suffer. The General Council, so anxiously looked for, would be unable to meet. The French King would be encouraged to go to war. Both he and the King of England would support the German schism, and the lives of the Princess and her mother would probably be sacrificed. A provisional agreement might modify the King of England’s action, the Church might be saved, the ladies’ lives be secured, and doubt and distrust be introduced between England and France. The Emperor could then deal with the Turks, and other difficulties could be tided over till a Council could meet and settle everything.[310]
Chapuys had written so confidently on the strength of the insurrectionary party that it was doubted whether choice between the alternative courses might not better be left for him to decide. Charles, who could better estimate the value of the promises of disaffected subjects, determined otherwise. The Ambassador, therefore, was informed that war would be inconvenient. Lord Darcy’s sword must remain in the scabbard, and an attempt be made for reconciliation on the lines suggested by Sir John Wallop. Meanwhile, directions were given to the Inquisitors at Seville to be less precipitate in their dealings with English seamen.
From the first it had been Cromwell’s hope and conviction that an open quarrel would be escaped. The French party in the English Council—Anne Boleyn, her family, and friends—had been urging the alliance with France, and a general attack on Charles’s scattered dominions. Cromwell, though a Protestant in religion, distrusted an associate who, when England was once committed, might make his own terms and leave Henry to his fate. In politics Cromwell had been consistently Imperialist. He had already persuaded the King to allow the Princess to move nearer to Kimbolton, where her mother’s physician could have charge of her. He sent thanks to Charles in the King’s name for his interference with the Holy Office. He left nothing undone to soften the friction and prepare for a reconciliation. Catherine and Mary he perceived to be the only obstacle to a return to active friendship. If the broken health of one, and the acute illness of the other, should have a fatal termination, as a politician he could not but feel that it would be an obstacle happily removed.
Chapuys’s intrigue with the confederate Peers had been continued to the latest moment. All arrangements had been made for their security when the rising should break out. Darcy himself was daily looking for the signal, and begged only for timely notice of the issue of the Emperor’s manifesto to escape to his castle in the north.[311] The Ambassador had now to trim his sails on the other tack. The Emperor was ready to allow the execution of Clement’s sentence to stand over till the General Council, without prejudice to the rights of parties, provided an engagement was made for the respectful treatment of the Queen and Princess, and a promise given that their friends should be unmolested. To Catherine the disappointment was hard to bear. The talk of a treaty was the death-knell of the hopes on which she had been feeding. A close and confidential intercourse was established between Chapuys and Cromwell to discuss the preliminary conditions, Chapuys, ill liking his work, desiring to fail, and on the watch for any point on which to raise a suspicion.
The Princess was the first difficulty. Cromwell had promised that she should be moved to her mother’s neighbourhood. She had been sent no nearer than Ampthill. Cromwell said that he would do what he could, but the subject was disagreeable to the King, and he could say no more. He entered at once, however, on the King’s desire to be again on good terms with the Emperor. The King had instructed him to discuss the whole situation with Chapuys, and it would be unfortunate, he said, if the interests of two women were allowed to interfere with weighty matters of State. The Queen had been more than once seriously ill, and her life was not likely to be prolonged. The Princess was not likely to live either; and it did not appear that either in Spain or France there was much anxiety for material alteration in their present position. Meanwhile, the French were passionately importuning the King to join in a war against the Emperor. Cromwell said that he had been himself opposed to it, and the present moment, when the Emperor was engaged with the Turks, was the last which the King would choose for such a purpose. The object to be arrived at was the pacification of Christendom and the general union of all the leading Powers. The King desired it as much as he, and had, so far, prevented war from being declared by France.
It was true that the peace of the world was of more importance than the complaints of Catherine and Mary. Catherine had rejected a compromise when the Emperor himself recommended it, and Mary had defied her father and had defied Parliament at her mother’s bidding. There were limits to the sacrifices which they were entitled to demand. Chapuys protested against Cromwell’s impression that the European Powers were indifferent. The strongest interest was felt in their fate, he said, and many inconveniences would follow should harm befall them. The world would certainly believe that they had met with foul play. The Emperor would be charged with having caused it by neglecting to execute the Pope’s sentence, and it would be said also that, but for the expectations which the Emperor had held out to them of defending their cause, they would themselves have conformed to the King’s wishes; they would then have been treated with due regard and have escaped their present miseries. Cromwell undertook that the utmost care and vigilance should be observed that hurt should not befall them. The Princess, he said, he loved as much as Chapuys himself could love her, and nothing that he could do for them should be neglected; but the Ambassador and the Emperor’s other agents were like hawks who soared high to stoop more swiftly on their prey. Their object was to have the Princess declared next in succession to the crown, and that was impossible owing to the late statutes.
Chapuys reported what had passed to his master, but scarcely concealed his contempt for the business in which he was engaged. “I cannot tell,” he wrote, “what sort of a treaty could be made with this King as long as he refuses to restore the Queen and Princess, or repair the hurts of the Church and the Faith, which grow worse every day. No later than Sunday last a preacher raised a question whether the body of Christ was contained, or not, in the consecrated wafer. Your Majesty may consider whither such propositions are tending.”[312]
A still more important conversation followed a few days later. It can hardly be doubted, in the face of Chapuys’s repeated declaration that both Catherine and her daughter were in personal danger, that Anne Boleyn felt her position always precarious as long as they were alive, and refused to acknowledge her marriage. She perhaps felt that it would go hard with herself in the event of a successful insurrection. She had urged, as far as she dared, that they should be tried under the statute; but Henry would not allow such a proposal to be so much as named to him. Other means, however, might be found to make away with them, and Sir Arthur Darcy, Lord Darcy’s son, thought they would be safer in the King’s hands in the Tower than in their present residence. “The devil of a Concubine would never rest till she had gained her object.”
The air was thick with these rumours when Chapuys and Cromwell again met. The overtures had been commenced by the Emperor. Cromwell said the King had given him a statement in writing that he was willing to renew his old friendship with the Emperor and make a new treaty with him, if proper safeguards could be provided for his honour and reputation; but it was to be understood distinctly that he would not permit the divorce question to be reopened; he would rather forfeit his crown and his life than consent to it, or place himself in subjection to any foreign authority; this was his firm resolution, which he desired Chapuys to make known to the Emperor.