In it the Regent Louise accepted the conditions laid down by the cardinal: she did not neglect to secure him by a considerable pension. From the beginning she had on her side also tried to excite his world-wide ambition; for Francis I and Henry VIII, if once they became friends, would do noble deeds to their own-undying renown and to the glory of God, and the direction of their enterprises would fall to the cardinal.[88]
Even after Henry VIII abandoned him, the Emperor still kept the upper hand. He extorted the Peace of Madrid; the League of the Italian princes with France, by which its execution was to have been hindered, and to which England lent her moral support without actually joining it, led Charles V to new victories, to the conquest of Rome, and hence to a position in the world which now did really threaten the freedom of all other nations. The necessary result was that France and England drew still more closely together. Cardinal Wolsey appeared in France; a close alliance was concluded and (not without considerable English help) an army sent into the field, which in fact gained the upper hand in Italy and restored to the Pope, who had escaped to Orvieto, some feeling of independence. Soon the largest projects were formed on this side also, in which the two Kings expected to have the Pope entirely with them. The French declared their wish to conquer Naples and never restore it to the Emperor, not even under the most favourable conditions. Wolsey thought that the Pope might pronounce the deposition of the Emperor in Naples and even in the Empire, for which certain German electors could be won over; he boasted that he would bring about such a revolution as had not been seen for a century.
It was at this crisis in the general situation, and when an attempt was being made to direct politics towards the annihilation of the Emperor, that the thought occurred of dissolving Henry VIII's marriage with the Emperor's aunt, the Infanta Catharine.
It is very possible, as a contemporary tradition informs us, that Wolsey was instigated to this by personal feelings. His arrogant and wanton proceedings, offensive by their excesses, and withal showing all the priestly love of power, were hateful to the inmost soul of the pure and earnest Queen. She is said to have once reproached him with them, and to have even repelled his unbecoming behaviour with a threatening word, and he on his part to have sworn to overthrow her.[89] But this personal motive first became permanently important when joined with a more general one. The Queen was by no means so entirely shut out from the events of the day as has been asserted; in moments of difficulty we find her summoning the members of the Privy Council before her to discuss the pending questions with them. When Wolsey began a life and death struggle with the Emperor, the influence of the Queen, whose most lively sympathies were with her nephew, stood not a little in his way; it was his chief interest to remove her.
It was indeed the feeling of the time, that family unions and political alliances must go hand in hand. At the very first proposal for a reconciliation between England and France, Giberti had advised the marriage of the English princess Mary, who had been rejected by the Emperor, with a French prince, and there had been much negociation about it. But owing to the extreme youth of the princess it was soon felt that this would not lead to the desired end. If a definitive rupture was to take place between England and the Burgundo-Spanish power, Henry VIII's marriage with Catharine must be dissolved and room thus made for a French princess. This marriage however was itself the result of that former state of politics which had led to the first war with France. Wolsey formed the plan of marrying his King, in Catharine's stead, with the sister or even with the daughter of Francis I who was now growing up:[90] then only would the alliance between the two powers become indissoluble. When he was in France in 1527, he said to the Regent, the King's mother, that within a year she would live to see two things, the most complete separation of his sovereign from Spain, and his indissoluble union with France.[91]
But to these motives of foreign policy was now added an extremely important reason of home policy: this lay in the precarious state of the Succession.
When the King several years before was congratulated on the birth of his daughter, with an intimation that the birth of a son might have been still more acceptable, he replied quickly, they were both still young, he and his wife, why should they not still have a son? But gradually this hope had ceased, and as hitherto no Queen had ever reigned in her own right in England, the opinion gained ground that at the King's death the throne would fall vacant. It had a little before created a party among the people for the Duke of Buckingham, when he maintained that he was the nearest heir to the crown, and would not let it be taken from him. He had been executed for this: Mary's right to the succession met with no further opposition; but even so it was still always a doubtful future that lay before the country. People wished to marry Mary at one time to the Emperor, at another to the King or a prince of France: so that her claim to the inheritance of the crown should pass to the house of Burgundy or to that of Valois. But how dangerous this was for the independence of the country! Henry would surely not have lost himself in Wolsey's intrigues, had he had a son and heir, to represent the independent interests of England.
In other times relations of this kind would have probably been reckoned as in themselves sufficient reason for a divorce: but not so in that age. The very essence of marriage lies in this, that it raises the union, on which the family and the order of the world rests, above the momentary variations of the will and the inclination; by the sanction of the Church it becomes one of that series of religious institutions which set limits on every side to individual caprice. No one yet dared so far to deny the religious character of marriage, as to have avowed mere political views in wishing for a separation, either before the world, or even to himself. But now there was no want of spiritual reasons which might be brought forward for it. The King's own confessor revived the doubts in him which had once been raised before his marriage with his brother's widow. And when the King was then reminded that such a marriage had been expressly forbidden in the books of Moses, and threatened with the punishment of childlessness, how could it fail to make an impression on him, when this threat seemed to be strictly fulfilled in his case? Two boys had been born to him from this marriage, but both had died soon after their birth. Even within the Catholic Church it had been always a moot point whether the Pope could dispense with a law of Scripture. The divine punishment inflicted on the King, as he thought, seemed to prove that the Pope's dispensation (encroaching as it did on the region of the divine power), on the strength of which the marriage had been concluded, had not the validity ascribed to it. Scruples of this sort cannot be said to be a mere pretence; they have something of the half belief, half superstition, so peculiarly characteristic of the spirit of the age and of that of the King. And none could yet foresee what results they implicitly involved.
It still appeared possible that the Pope would revoke the dispensation given by one of his predecessors, especially as some grounds of invalidity could be found in the bull itself. Wolsey's idea was that the Pope, in the pressing necessity he was under of ranging England and France against the preponderance of the Emperor, could be brought to consent to recall the dispensation, and this would make the marriage null and void from the beginning. Always full of arrogant assumption of an influence to which nothing could be impossible, Wolsey assured the King that he would carry the matter through.[92]
When tidings of this proposal first reached Rome, those immediately around the Pope took special notice of the political advantages that might accrue from it. For hitherto there was a doubt whether Henry VIII was really so decidedly in favour of France as was said: a project like this, which would make him and the Emperor enemies for ever, left no room for doubt about it. When the Pope saw himself secure of this support in reserve, his word, in a matter which concerned the highest personal and civil interests, acquired new weight even with the Emperor.[93]