Henry did not love to be thwarted, and Wolsey, busy making ready for his ostentatious voyage to France, had to bear as best he might his master’s ill-humour. The famous ecclesiastical lawyer, Sampson, had told the Cardinal that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated; and consequently that, even apart from the Pope’s dispensation, the present union was unimpeachable. The Queen would fight the matter to the end, he said; and though Wolsey did his best to answer Sampson’s arguments, he was obliged to transmit them to the King, and recommend him to handle his wife gently; “until it was shown what the Pope and Francis would do.” Henry acted on the advice, as we have seen, but Wolsey was scolded by the King as if he himself had advanced Sampson’s arguments instead of answering them. Katharine did not content herself with sitting down and weeping. She despatched her faithful Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, on a pretended voyage to a sick mother in Spain, in order that he might beg the aid of the Emperor to prevent the injustice intended against the Queen; and Wolsey’s spies made every effort to catch the man, and lay him by the heels.[43] She sent to her confessor, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, begging for his counsel, he being one of the bishops who held that her marriage was valid; she “desired,” said Wolsey to the King, “counsel, as well of strangers as of English,” and generally showed a spirit the very opposite of that of the patient Griselda in similar circumstances. How entirely upset were the King and Wolsey by the unexpected force of the opposition is seen in the Cardinal’s letter to his master a day or two after he had left London at the beginning of July to proceed on his French embassy. Writing from Faversham, he relates how he had met Archbishop Warham, and had told him in dismay that the Queen had discovered their plan, and how irritated she was; and how the King, as arranged with Wolsey, had tried to pacify and reassure her. To Wolsey’s delight, Warham persisted that, whether the Queen liked it or not, “truth and law must prevail.” On his way through Rochester, Wolsey tackled Fisher, who was known to favour the Queen. He admitted under Wolsey’s pressure that she had sent to him, though he pretended not to know why, and “greatly blamed the Queen, and thought that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission.” But Wolsey considered this would be dangerous, and bade the bishop stay where he was. And so, with the iniquitous plot temporarily shelved by the unforeseen opposition, personal and political, Wolsey and his great train, more splendid than that of any king, went on his way to Dover, and to Amiens, whilst in his absence that happened in England which in due time brought all his dignity and pride to dust and ashes.
CHAPTER IV
1527-1530
KATHARINE AND ANNE—THE DIVORCE
Enough has been said in the aforegoing pages to show that Henry was no more a model of marital fidelity than other contemporary monarchs. It was not to be expected that he should be. The marriages of such men were usually prompted by political reasons alone; and for the indulgence of affairs of the heart kings were forced to look elsewhere than towards the princesses they had taken in fulfilment of treaties. Mary, the younger daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and wife of William Carey, was the King’s mistress for some years after her marriage in 1521, with the result that her father had received many rich grants from the crown; and in 1525 was created Lord Rochford. As treasurer of the household Lord Rochford was much at Court, and his relationship with the Howards, St. Legers, and other great families through his marriage with Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, naturally allied him with the party of nobles whose traditions ran counter to those of the bureaucrats in Henry’s Council. His elder daughter Anne, who was born early in 1503, probably at Hever Castle in Kent,[44] had been carefully educated in the learning and accomplishments considered necessary for a lady of birth at Court, and she accompanied Mary Tudor to France in 1514 for her fleeting marriage with the valetudinarian Louis XII., related in an earlier chapter.[45] On Queen Mary’s return to England a few months afterwards with her second husband, Charles Brandon, the youthful Anne Boleyn remained to complete her courtly education in France, under the care of the new Queen of France, Claude, first wife of Francis I.
When the alliance of the Emperor and England was negotiated in 1521, and war with France threatened, Anne was recalled home; and in 1522 began her life in the English Court and with her family in their various residences. Her six years in the gay Court of Francis I. during her most impressionable age, had made her in manner more French than English. She can never have been beautiful. Her face was long and thin, her chin pointed, and her mouth hypocritically prim; but her eyes were dark and very fine, her brows arched and high, and her complexion dazzling. Above all, she was supremely vain and fond of admiration. Similar qualities to these might have been, and doubtless were, possessed by a dozen other high-born ladies at Henry’s Court; but circumstances, partly political and partly personal, gave to them in Anne’s case a national importance that produced enduring consequences upon the world. We have already glanced at the mixture of tedious masquerading, hunting, and amorous intrigue which formed the principal occupations of the ladies and gentlemen who surrounded Henry and Katharine in their daily life; and from her arrival in England, Anne appears to have entered to the full into the enjoyment of such pastimes. There was some negotiation for her marriage, even before she arrived in England, with Sir Piers Butler, an Irish cousin of hers, but it fell through on the question of settlements, and in 1526, when she was already about twenty-three, she took matters in her own hands, and captivated an extremely eligible suitor, in the person of a silly, flighty young noble, Henry Percy, eldest son and heir to the Earl of Northumberland.
Percy was one of the Court butterflies who attached themselves to Wolsey’s household, and when angrily taken to task by the Cardinal for flirting with Anne, notwithstanding his previous formal betrothal to another lady, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the young man said that, as he loved Anne best, he would rather marry her. The Cardinal did not mince words with his follower, but Percy stood stoutly to his choice, and the Earl of Northumberland was hastily summoned to London to exercise his authority over his recalcitrant son. Cavendish[46] gives an amusing account of the interview between them, at which he was present. The Earl seems to have screwed up his courage by a generous draught of wine when he left Wolsey’s presence to await his son in the hall of York House. When the youth did come in, the scolding he got was vituperative in its violence, with the result that Percy was reluctantly forced to abandon the sweetheart to whom he had plighted his troth. Wolsey’s interference in their love affair deeply angered both Anne and her sweetheart. Percy was a poor creature, and could do Wolsey little harm; but Anne did not forget, swearing “that if ever it lay in her power she would do the Cardinal some displeasure, which indeed she afterwards did.”[47]