The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)

by James Anthony Froude

Henry only, among the great powers, laid his conduct open to the world, declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. He was determined to proceed with the divorce, and he was determined also to continue the Reformation of the English Church. If consistently with these two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was sincerely anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to risk great sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he considered of vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of Rome. If his efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to secure himself by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having induced Francis to urge compliance upon the pope by a threat of separation if he refused, to prevail on him, in the event of the pope's continued obstinacy, to put his threat in execution, and unite with England in a common schism. All this is plain and straightforward—Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact, had nothing to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties, we feel entire certainty that he was speaking his real thoughts.

The emperor's position, also, though not equally simple, is intelligible, and commands our respect. Although if he had consented to sacrifice his aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment; although both by the pope and by the

consistory such a resolution would probably have been welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing Europe. At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty. The Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his relations with Francis—fortunately for the prospects of the Reformation—were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines should be represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert themselves into open support.

With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor, combined with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first object, to which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a rupture with the pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by French statesmen. It was a contingency which the pope feared:—which the hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was—and Francis, like his rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the chair of St. Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his wishes. With respect to Henry's divorce, his conduct to the University of Paris, and his assurances repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that he was sincerely desirous to forward it. He did not care for Henry, or for England, or for the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach between Henry and Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that "his two great rivals" should become friends together; and by inducing the pope to consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome conclusively from the imperial interests.

The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing one against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion of the church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the threat of passing over to her enemies. By a dexterous use of the cards which were in his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two alternatives. Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and the pope, against the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to it, which he would extort from Clement, should be the cement;

or, if this failed him, he would avail himself of the vantage ground which was given to him by the English alliance to obtain such concessions for himself at the emperor's expense as the pope could be induced to make, and the emperor to tolerate.

Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic correspondence, appear to have been the open positions and the secret purposes of the great European powers.

There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself, labouring with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the interests of the church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of the princes, by playing upon their respective selfishnesses. On the central question, that of the divorce, his position was briefly this. Both the emperor and Henry pressed for a decision. If he decided for Henry, he lost Germany; if he decided for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and England threatened both to fall from him. It was therefore necessary for him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he trusted that Henry would yield in despair. This most subtle and difficult policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing years. It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success. That it failed at all, in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of France to the Roman see, succeeded also—and this is no small thing to have accomplished—in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.

With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.

Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and clamouring for a general council.