A day or two afterwards Wolsey and Campeggio saw the Queen again formally. She was on this occasion attended by her advisers, and once more heard, coldly and irresponsively, the appeals to her prudence, her worldly wisdom, her love for her daughter, and every other feeling that could lead her to cut the gordian knot that baffled them all. “She would do nothing to her soul’s damnation or against God’s law,” she said, as she dismissed them. Whether it was at this interview, or, as it seems to me more likely, the previous one that she broke out in violent invective against Wolsey for his enmity towards the Emperor, we know not, but the storm of bitter words she poured upon him for his pride, his falsity, his ambition, and his greed; her taunts at his intrigues to get the Papacy, and her burning scorn that her marriage, unquestioned for twenty years, should be doubted now,[65] must have finally convinced both Wolsey and Campeggio that if Henry was firm Katharine was firmer still. Campeggio was in a pitiable state of mind, imploring the Pope by every post to tell him what to do. He and Wolsey at one time conceived the horrible idea of marrying the Princess Mary to her half brother, the Duke of Richmond, as a solution of the succession difficulty, and the Pope appears to have been inclined to allow it;[66] but it was soon admitted that the course proposed would not forward, but rather retard, the King’s second marriage, and that was the main object sought.
At length Wolsey ruefully understood that conciliation was impossible; and, pressed as he was by the King, was forced to insist with Campeggio that the cause must be judicially decided without further delay. Illness, prayerful attempts to bring one side or the other to reason, and many other excuses for procrastination were tried, but at length Campeggio had to confess to his colleague that the Pope’s decretal, laying down the law in the case in Henry’s favour, was only a show document not to be used, or to leave his possession for a moment; and, moreover, that no final judgment could be given by him that was not submitted to the Pope’s confirmation. Wolsey was aghast, and wrote in rage and indignation to the English agent with the Pope denouncing this bad faith.[67] “I see ruin, infamy, and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the Apostolic See if this course be persisted in. You see in what dangerous times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt those remedies that are so injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King’s mind. Without the Pope’s compliance I cannot bear up against the storm; and when I reflect upon the conduct of his Holiness I cannot but fear lest the common enemy of souls, seeing the King’s determination, inspires the Pope with his present fears and reluctance, which will alienate all the faith and devotion from the Apostolic See.... It is useless for Campeggio to think of reviving the marriage. If he did it would lead to worse consequences. Let him therefore proceed to sentence. Prostrate at the feet of his Holiness I most urgently beg of him to set aside all delays.”
This cry, wrung evidently from Wolsey’s heart at the knowledge of his own danger, is the first articulate expression of the tremendous religious issue that might depend upon the conduct of the various parties in the divorce proceedings. The fire lit by Luther a few years previously had spread apace in Germany, and had reached England. All Christendom would soon have to range itself in two divisions, cutting athwart old national affinities and alliances. Charles had defied Luther at the outset; and the traditions of his Spanish house made him, the most powerful monarch in Europe, the champion of orthodoxy. But his relations with the Papacy, as we have seen, had not been uniformly cordial. To him the Pope was a little Italian prince whilst he was a great one, and he was jealous of the slightest interference of Rome with the Spanish Church. His position in Germany, moreover, as suzerain of the princes of the Empire, some of whom already leant to Lutheranism, complicated the situation: so that it was not yet absolutely certain that Charles would finally stake everything upon the unification of the Christian Church by force, on the lines of strict Papal authority.
On the other hand, both Francis and Henry had for political reasons strongly supported the Pope in his greatest distress, and their religion was certainly no less faithful than that of the Emperor. It was inevitable that, whichever side Charles took in the coming religious struggle, would not for political reasons commend itself to Francis, and vice versa; and everything depended upon the weight which Henry might cast into one scale or the other. His national traditions and personal inclination would lead him to side with Charles, but at the crucial moment, when the first grain had to be dropped into the balance, he found himself bound by Wolsey’s policy to Francis, and at issue with the Emperor, owing to the relationship of the latter to Katharine. Wolsey felt, in the letter quoted above, that the Pope’s shilly-shally, in order not to offend the Emperor, would drive the impatient King of England to flout, and perhaps break with, the Papacy, and events proved that the Cardinal was right in his fears. We shall see later how the rift widened, but here the first fine crevice is visible.
Henry, prompted by Anne and his vanity, intended to have his way at whatever cost. Katharine could give him no son: he would marry a woman who could do so, and one that he loved far better than he ever loved his wife. In ordinary circumstances there need have been no great difficulty about the divorce, nor would there have been in this case, but for the peculiar political and religious situation of Europe at the time, and but for Katharine’s unbending rigidity of character. She might have made her own terms if she had consented to the conciliatory suggestions of the churchmen. The legality of her marriage would have been declared, her daughter recognised as heiress presumptive, her own great revenues would have been left to her, and her title of Queen respected.[68] She was not even to be asked to immure herself in a convent, or to take any conventual vow but that of chastity, if she would only consent to a divorce on the ground of her desire to devote herself to religion.[69] As Campeggio repeated a dozen times, the only thing she would be asked to surrender was conjugal relations with the King, that had ceased for years, and in no case would be renewed. Much as we may admire her firmness, it is impossible to avoid seeing that the course recommended to her was that which would have best served, not only her own interest and happiness, but also those of her daughter, of her religion, and of the good relations between Henry and the Emperor that she had so much at heart.
Henry, on his side, was determined to allow nothing to stand in his way, whilst keeping up his appearance of impeccability. Legal and ecclesiastical authorities in England and France were besought to give their sanction to his view that no Pope had the power of dispensation for a marriage with a deceased brother’s widow; and the English clergy were assured that the King only sought an impartial authoritative decision for the relief of his own conscience. The attitude of the English people gave him some uneasiness; for, like all his house, he loved popularity. “The common people, being ignorant,” we are told, “and others that favoured the Queen, talked largely, and said that for his own pleasure the King would have another wife, and had sent for this Legate to be divorced from the Queen, with many foolish words; inasmuch as, whosoever spake against the marriage was of the common people abhorred and reproved.”[70] The feeling indeed in favour of Katharine was so outspoken and general that the King took the unusual course of assembling the nobles, judges, and so many of the people as could enter, in the great hall of Bridewell, on Sunday afternoon, the 8th November, to endeavour personally to justify himself in the eyes of his subjects.
As usual with him, his great aim was by sanctimonious protestations to make himself appear a pure-souled altruist, and to throw upon others the responsibility for his actions. He painted in dismal colours the dangers to his subjects of a disputed succession on his death. “And, although it hath pleased Almighty God to send us a fair daughter by a noble woman and me begotten, to our great joy and comfort, yet it hath been told us by divers great clerks that neither she is our lawful daughter, nor her mother our lawful wife, and that we live together abominably and detestably in open adultery.” He swore, almost blasphemously, that for the relief of his conscience he only sought authoritatively to know the truth as to the validity of his marriage, and that Campeggio had come as an impartial judge to decide it. If Katharine was adjudged to be his wife nothing would be more pleasant or acceptable to him, and he praised her to the skies, as a noble lady against whom no words could be spoken.[71] The measure of his sincerity is seen when we compare this hypocritical harangue with the letters now before us to and from his envoys in Rome, by which it is evident that the last thing he desired was an impartial judgment, or indeed any judgment, but one that would set him free to marry again. One of the most extraordinary means employed to influence Katharine soon after this appears to have been another visit to her of Wolsey and Campeggio. They were to say that the King had intelligence of a conspiracy against him and Wolsey by her friends and the Emperor’s English partisans; and they warned her that if anything of the sort occurred she would be to blame. They were then to complain of her bearing towards the King, “who was now persuaded by her behaviour that she did not love him.” “She encouraged ladies and gentlemen to dance and make merry,” for instance, whereas “she had better tell them to pray for a good end of the matter at issue.” “She shows no pensiveness of countenance, nor in her apparel nor behaviour. She shows herself too much to the people, rejoicing greatly in their exclamations and ill obloquy; and, by beckoning with her head and smiling, which she has not been accustomed to do in times past, rather encouraged them in doing so.” For all this and many other things the King does not consider it fitting to be in her company, or to let the Princess be with her. The acme of hypocrisy was reached in the assurance the Legates were then to give the Queen, that if she would behave well and go into a convent, the King neither could, nor would, marry another wife in her lifetime; and she could come out to the world again if the sentence were in her favour. Let her go, they said, and submit to the King on her knees, and he would be good to her, but otherwise he would be more angry than ever.[72] Scornful silence was the Queen’s reply.
After this Katharine lived lonely and depressed at Greenwich, frequently closeted with Bishop Fisher and others of her councillors, whilst Henry was strengthening his case with the opinions of jurists, and by attempts to influence Campeggio. To Greenwich he went, accompanied by Anne and a brilliant Court, to show the Italian Cardinal how bounteously a Christmas could be spent in England. Campeggio’s son was knighted and regaled with costly presents, and all that bribes (the Bishopric of Durham, &c.) and flattery might do was done to influence the Legate favourably; but throughout the gay doings, jousts and tourneys, banquets and maskings, “the Queen showed to them no manner of countenance, and made no great joy of nothing, her mind was so troubled.”[73] Well might it be, poor soul, for Anne was by the King’s side, pert and insolent, surrounded by a growing party of Wolsey’s enemies, who cared little for Pope or Emperor, and who waited impatiently for the time when Anne should rule the King alone, and they, through her, should rule England. Katharine, in good truth, was in everybody’s way, for even her nephew could not afford to quarrel with England for her sake, and her death or disappearance would have made a reconciliation easy, especially if Wolsey, the friend of France, fell also.
“Anne,” we are told by the French ambassador, “was lodged in a fine apartment close to that of the King, and greater court was now paid to her every day than has been paid to the Queen for a long time. I see that they mean to accustom the people by degrees to endure her, so that when the great blow comes it may not be, thought strange. But the people remain quite hardened (against her), and I think they would do more if they had more power.”
Thus the months passed, the Pope being plied by alternate threats and hopes, both by English and Spanish agents, until he was nearly beside himself, Wolsey almost frantically professing his desire to forward the King’s object, and Campeggio temporising and trying to find a means of conciliation which would leave the King free. Katharine herself remained immovable. She had asked for and obtained from the Emperor a copy of the Papal brief authorising her marriage with Henry, but the King’s advocates questioned its authenticity,[74] and even her own advisers urged her to obey her husband’s request that she should demand of the Emperor the original document. Constrained by her sworn pledge to write nothing to the Emperor without the King’s knowledge, she sent the letter dictated to her, urgently praying her nephew to send the original brief to England. The letter was carried to Spain by her young English confessor, Thomas Abel, whom she did not entirely trust, and sent with him her Spanish usher, Montoya; but they had verbal instructions from their mistress to pray the Emperor to disregard her written request, and refuse to part with the brief, and to exert all his influence to have the case decided in Rome.[75] By this it will be seen that Katharine was fully a match in duplicity for those against whom she was pitted. She never wavered from first to last in her determination to refuse to acknowledge the sentence of any court sitting in England on her case, and to resist all attempts to induce her to withdraw voluntarily from her conjugal position and enter a nunnery. Henry, and especially Anne, in the meanwhile, were growing impatient at all this calculated delay, and began to throw the blame upon Wolsey. “The young lady used very rude words to him,” wrote Du Bellay on the 25th January, and “the Duke of Norfolk and his party already began to talk big.”[76] A few days afterwards Mendoza, in a letter to the Emperor, spoke even more strongly. “The young lady that is the cause of all this disorder, finding her marriage delayed, that she thought herself so sure of, entertains great suspicion that Wolsey puts impediments in her way, from a belief that if she were Queen his power would decline. In this suspicion she is joined by her father and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who have combined to overthrow the Cardinal.” “The King is so hot upon it (the divorce) that there is nothing he does not promise to gain his end.... Campeggio has done nothing for the Queen as yet but to press her to enter religion.”[77]