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

by James Anthony Froude

Thus it is that while we regret, we are unable to blame; and we cannot wish undone an act, to have shrunk from which might have spared a single heart, but might have wrecked the English nation. We increase our pity for Catherine because she was a princess. We measure the magnitude of the evils which human beings endure by their position in the scale of society; and misfortunes which private persons would be expected to bear without excessive complaining, furnish matter for the lamentation of ages when they touch the sacred head which has been circled

with a diadem. Let it be so. Let us compensate the queen's sorrows with unstinted sympathy; but let us not trifle with history, by confusing a political necessity with a moral crime.

The English parliament, then, had taken up the gauntlet which the pope had flung to it with trembling fingers: and there remained nothing but for the Archbishop of Canterbury to make use of the power of which by law he was now possessed. And the time was pressing, for the new queen was enciente, and further concealment was not to be thought of. The delay of the interview between the pope and Francis, and the change in the demeanour of the latter, which had become palpably evident, discharged Henry of all promises by which he might have bound himself; and to hesitate before the menaces of the pope's brief would have been fatal.

The act of appeals being passed, convocation was the authority to which the power of determining unsettled points of spiritual law seemed to have lapsed. In the month of April, therefore, Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury,[⁴²⁰] submitted to it the two questions, on the resolution of which the sentence which he was to pass was dependent.

The first had been already answered separately by the bench of bishops and by the universities, and had been agitated from end to end of Europe—was it lawful to marry the widow of a brother dying without issue, but having consummated his marriage; and was the Levitical prohibition of such a marriage grounded on a divine law, with which the pope could not dispense, or on a canon law of which a dispensation was permissible?[⁴²¹]

The pope had declared himself unable to answer; but he had allowed that the general opinion was against the power of dispensing,[⁴²²] and there could be little doubt, therefore, of the reply of the English convocation, or at least of the upper house.

Fisher attempted an opposition; but wholly without effect. The, question was one in which the interests of the higher clergy were not concerned, and they were therefore left to the dominion of their ordinary understandings. Out of two hundred and sixty-three votes, nineteen only were in the pope's favour.[⁴²³]

The lower house was less unanimous, as might have been expected, and as had been experienced before; the opposition spirit of the English clergy being usually then, as much as now, in the ratio of their poverty. But there too the nature of the case compelled an overwhelming majority.[⁴²⁴] It was decided by both houses that Pope Julius, in granting a licence for the marriage of Henry and Catherine, had exceeded his authority, and that this marriage was therefore, ab initio, void.

The other question to be decided was one of fact; whether the marriage of Catherine with Prince Arthur had or had not been consummated, a matter which the Catholic divines conceived to be of paramount importance, but which to few persons at the present day will seem of any importance whosoever. We cannot even read the evidence which was produced without a sensation of disgust, although in those broader and less conscious ages the indelicacy was less obviously perceptible. And we may console ourselves with the hope that the discussion was not so wounding as might have been expected to the feelings of Queen Catherine, since at all official interviews, with all classes of persons, at all times and in all places, she appeared herself to court the subject.[⁴²⁵] There is no occasion in this place to follow her example. It is enough that Ferdinand, at the time of her first marriage, satisfied himself, after curious inquiry, that he might hope for a grandchild; and that the fact of the consummation was asserted in the treaty between England and Spain, which preceded the marriage with Henry, and in this supposed brief of Pope Julius which permitted it.[⁴²⁶] We cannot in consequence be surprised that the convocation accepted the conclusion which was sanctioned by so high authority, and we rather wonder at the persistency of Catherine's denials. With respect to this vote, therefore, we

need notice nothing except that Dr. Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells[⁴²⁷] was one of an exceedingly small minority, who were inclined to believe that the denial might be true, and this bishop was one of the four who were associated with Cranmer when he sate at Dunstable for the trial of the cause.