Another matter gives another indication of Wolsey's desire to remove the grievances felt against the Church. If the monasteries were survivals of a time when the Church discharged the humanitarian duties of society, the ecclesiastical courts were in a like manner survivals of a time when the civil courts were not yet able to deal with many points which concerned the relations between man and man, or which regulated individual conduct. Thus marriage was a religious ceremony, and all questions which arose from the marriage contract were decided in the ecclesiastical courts. Similarly wills were recognised by the Church, as resting on the moral basis of mutual confidence, long before the State was prepared to acknowledge their validity. Besides these cases which arose from contract, the Church exercised a disciplinary supervision over its members for the good of their souls, and to avoid scandals in a Christian community. On all these points the principles of the Church had leavened the conceptions of the State, and the civil jurisdiction had in many matters overtaken the ecclesiastical. But the clerical courts stood stubbornly upon their claim to greater antiquity, and the activity of ecclesiastical lawyers found plenty of work to do. Disciplinary jurisdiction was unduly extended by a class of trained officials, and was resented by the growing independence of the rising middle class. No doubt the ecclesiastical courts needed reform, but the difficulties in the way of reforming legal procedure are always great. Wolsey faced the problem in a way which is most characteristic of his statesmanship. He strove to bring the question to maturity for solution by getting the control of the ecclesiastical courts into his own hands. For this purpose he used his exceptional position as Papal Legate, and instituted a legatine court which should supersede the ordinary jurisdiction. Naturally enough this brought him into collision with Archbishop Warham, and his fall prevented him from developing his policy. His attempt only left the ecclesiastical courts in worse confusion, and added to the strength of the opposition, which soon robbed them of most of their powers. It added also to Wolsey's unpopularity, and gave a shadow of justice to the unworthy means which were used for his destruction.
In fact, wherever we look, we see that in domestic affairs Wolsey had a clear conception of the objects to be immediately pursued by a conservative reformer. But a conservative reformer raises as much hostility as does a revolutionist, for the mass of men are not sufficiently foreseeing or sufficiently disinterested willingly to abandon profitable abuses. They feel less animosity against the open enemy who aims avowedly at their destruction, than against the seeming friends who would deprive them of what they consider to be their rights. The clergy submitted more readily to the abolition of their privileges by the king than they would have submitted to a reform at the hands of Wolsey. They could understand the one; they could not understand the other. This was natural, for Wolsey had no lofty principles to set before them; he had only the wisdom of a keen-sighted statesman, who read the signs of the times. Indeed he did not waste his time in trying to persuade others to see with his eyes. He could not have ventured to speak out and say that the Church must choose between the tender mercies of the royal power and submission to the discretion of one who, standing between the king and the Pope, was prepared to throw a semblance of ecclesiastical recognition over reforms which were inevitable. It is clear that Wolsey was working for the one possible compromise, and he hoped to effect it by his own dexterity. Secure of the royal favour, secure through his political importance of the papal acquiescence in the use which he made of his legatine power, standing forward as the chief ecclesiastic in England, he aimed at accomplishing such reforms as would have brought into harmony the relations between Church and State. He did not hope to do this by persuasion, but by power, and had taken steps to lay his hand cautiously on different parts of the ecclesiastical organisation. With this idea before him we may safely acquit Wolsey of any undue ambition for the papal office; he doubted whether his influence would be increased or not by its possession.
In everything that Wolsey did he played for the highest stakes, and risked all upon the hope of ultimate success. He trusted to justify himself in the long-run, and was heedless of the opposition which he called forth. Resting solely upon the royal favour, he did not try to conciliate, nor did he pause to explain. Men could not understand his ends, but they profoundly disliked his means. The suppression of small monasteries, which might be useless but served to provide for younger sons or dependants of country families, was very unpopular, as coming from a cardinal who enjoyed the revenues of many ecclesiastical offices whose duties he did not discharge. The setting up of a legatine court was hateful to the national sentiment of Englishmen, who saw in it only another engine of ecclesiastical oppression. The pomp and magnificence wherewith Wolsey asserted a greatness which he mainly valued as a means of doing his country service, was resented as the vulgar arrogance of an upstart. Wolsey's ideas were too great to pay any heed to the prejudices of Englishmen which, after all, have determined the success of all English ministers, and which no English statesman has ever been powerful enough to disregard.
CHAPTER IX
THE KING'S DIVORCE
1527-1529
If Wolsey hoped that the peace with France, which he had so successfully concluded in the beginning of 1527, would enable him to reassert England's influence on the Continent, and would give him an opportunity for the work of domestic reform, he was sorely disappointed. A new matter arose, not entirely unexpected, but which widened into unexpected issues, and consumed Wolsey's energies till it led to his fall. The project of the king's divorce was suddenly mooted; and this personal matter, before it was ripe for settlement, gradually drew into its sphere all the questions concerning England's foreign and domestic policy which Wolsey's statesmanship had been trying to solve by wise and well-considered means. Wolsey had been gathering into his hands the threads of a complicated policy, each one of which required dexterous handling, in accordance with a great design. He found himself suddenly called upon to act precipitately for the accomplishment of a small matter, which brought all the difficulties of his position prominently forward, and gave him no time for that skilful diplomacy in which he excelled. Moreover, when the project was started neither Henry nor Wolsey could have foreseen the complications which would arise; still less could Wolsey have known the obstinacy which the faintest opposition to the royal will would develop in the king, or the extent to which he could persuade himself that the satisfaction of the royal pleasure was the sole purpose of the existence of the power of the State. At first Henry had sympathised with Wolsey's far-reaching schemes. Latterly he had at all events been willing to allow Wolsey to have his own way on the whole. The time came when he showed himself a hard taskmaster, and demanded that Wolsey should at all costs satisfy his personal desires in a matter which he persuaded himself was all-important to the nation at large.
Viewed according to the general notions of the time, there was nothing very surprising in the fact that Henry VIII. should wish for a divorce. Royal marriages were made and unmade from motives of expediency; it was only a question of obtaining a decent plea. The sons of Katharine had died in infancy, and Mary was the only heir of the English throne; it was a matter of importance to the future of England that the succession to the throne should be clearly established. If Henry had remained attached to his wife this consideration would not have been put forward; but Henry was never famed for constancy. He was in the prime of life, while Katharine was over forty. He had developed in character, not for the better, while she remained true to the narrow traditions of her early training. She was an excellent housewife, conscientious, decorous, and capable; but she was devoted to the political interests of Spain, and admired her nephew Charles. While the imperial alliance was warmly pursued by Henry she was happy; when Henry's zeal for Charles began to fade she felt offended, and was not judicious in the display of her political bias. Henry was more and more annoyed by his wife's discontent, and the breach between them rapidly widened. When Henry broke with Charles and allied himself with France he seems to have felt that his domestic peace was at an end, and he was not the man to shrink from the effort to re-establish it upon another basis.
Perhaps none of these considerations would have moved Henry to take prompt action if his desires had not been kindled by a new object of his affection. He had not been a faithful husband, and Katharine seems to have been indulgent to his infidelities. In the course of 1526 he was captivated by the charms of Anne Boleyn, as he had formerly been captivated by her sister Mary. But Anne had learned that the king was fickle, and she resolved that she would not be so easily won as to be lightly abandoned. She skilfully managed to make herself agreeable to the king till his passion for her became so violent that he was prepared to accept her terms and make her his lawful wife.
Wolsey was not in favour of this plan; but he was not opposed to getting rid of the political influence of Katharine, and he believed that the king's fancy for Anne Boleyn would rapidly pass away. Whatever his own personal opinion might be, he did not venture to gainsay the king in a matter on which he was resolved, and he lent himself to be an instrument in a matter which involved him in measures which became more and more discreditable. The first idea of the king was to declare his marriage with Katharine unlawful, on the ground that she had previously been his brother's wife; but he was cognisant of that when he married her and had applied for a papal dispensation to remedy that source of invalidity. Doubtless some plea might be discovered to enable the Pope to set aside the dispensation granted by his predecessor. But whatever technical grounds might be used to justify the Pope's decision in the king's favour, the Pope could not be expected to act in such a manner as to offend the Powers of Europe and shock the moral sense of Englishmen. Wolsey did not hide from himself that there were three hindrances in the way of legalising the king's divorce. The opinion of England was not in its favour; Charles V. was likely to resent the affront which it would put upon his aunt, and the Pope could not afford to alienate one who was becoming all-powerful in Italy that he might win the distant friendship of the English king; Francis I. had just made a treaty with Henry VIII., by which the hand of Mary had been promised to his son, and he was not likely to wish to see Mary declared to be illegitimate. These were serious elements of opposition, which it would require considerable skill to overcome.
The first measure which suggested itself to Henry and Wolsey was to put the king's plea into shape, and endorse it with the authority of the English Church. For this purpose a suit was secretly instituted against the king in Wolsey's legatine court. Henry was solemnly informed that a complaint had been made to Wolsey, as censor of public morals, that he had cohabited for eighteen years with his brother's wife. Henry consented that Archbishop Warham should be joined with Wolsey as assessor, and named a proctor who should plead his cause. Three sessions of this court were held with the profoundest secrecy in May; but in spite of all the attempts at secrecy the imperial ambassador discovered what was going on. The object of this procedure seems to have been to produce a sentence from the legate's court in England which should be confirmed by the Pope without right of appeal. If the Pope had been a free agent he might conceivably have adopted this course; but the news soon reached England that Rome had been sacked by Bourbon, and that the Pope was trembling before Charles V. In this turn of affairs it was useless to proceed farther on the supposition that he would unhesitatingly comply with the wishes of Henry and Wolsey. A court sitting in secret would have no influence on English opinion, and Wolsey proposed that its sittings should be suspended, and the opinions of the English bishops be taken as a means of educating public opinion.