CHAPTER V
1530-1534
HENRY’S DEFIANCE—THE VICTORY OF ANNE
The deadlock with regard to the validity of the marriage could not continue indefinitely, for the legitimacy of the Princess Mary having been called into question, the matter now vitally touched the succession to the English crown. Katharine was immovable. She would neither retire to a convent nor accept a decision from an English tribunal, and, through her proctor in Rome, she passionately pressed for a decision there in her favour. Norfolk, at the end of his not very extensive mental resources, could only wish that both Katharine and Anne were dead and the King married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry’s marriage should be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England he dreaded before all things. But Charles’s troops were in Rome and his agents for ever bullying the wretched Pope, and the latter was obliged to reply finally to the English peers with a rebuke. There were those both in England and abroad who urged Henry to marry Anne at once, and depend upon the recognition of the fait accompli by means of negotiation afterwards, but this did not satisfy either the King or the favourite. Every interview between the King and the Nuncio grew more bitter than the previous one. No English cause, swore Henry, should be tried outside his realm where he was master; and if the Pope insisted in giving judgment for the Queen, as he had promised the Emperor to do, the English Parliament should deal with the matter in spite of Rome.
The first ecclesiastical thunderclap came in October 1530, when Henry published a proclamation reminding the lieges of the old law of England that forbade the Pope from exercising direct jurisdiction in the realm by Bull or Brief. No one could understand at the time what was meant, but when the Nuncio in perturbation went and asked Norfolk and Suffolk the reason of so strange a proclamation at such a time, they replied roughly, that they “cared nothing for Popes in England ... the King was Emperor and Pope too in his own realm.” Later, Henry told the Nuncio that the Pope had outraged convention by summoning him before a foreign tribunal, and should now be taught that no usurpation of power would be allowed in England. The Parliament was called, said Henry, to restrain the encroachment of the clergy generally, and unless the Pope met his wishes promptly a blow would be struck at all clerical pretensions. The reply of the Pope was another brief forbidding Henry’s second marriage, and threatening Parliaments and Bishops in England if they dared to meddle in the matter. The question was thus rapidly drifting into an international one on religious lines, which involved either the submission of Henry or schism from the Church. The position of the English clergy was an especially difficult one. They naturally resented any curtailment of the privileges of their order, though they dared not speak too loudly, for they owed the enjoyment of their temporalities to the King. But they were all sons of the Church, looking to Rome for spiritual authority, and were in mortal dread of the advance of the new spirit of religious freedom aroused in Germany. The method of bridling them adopted by Henry was as clever as it was unscrupulous. The Bull giving to Wolsey independent power to judge the matrimonial cause in England as Legate, had been, as will be recollected, demanded by the King and recognised by him, as it had been, of course, by the clergy; but in January 1531, when Parliament and Convocation met, the English clergy found themselves laid under Premunire by the King for having recognised the Legatine Bull; and were told that as subjects of the crown, and not of the Pope, they had thus rendered themselves liable to the punishment for treason. The unfortunate clergy were panic-stricken at this new move, and looked in vain to Rome for support against their own King; but Rome, as usual, was trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and could only wail at the obstinacy both of Henry and Katharine.
In the previous sitting of Parliament in 1529, severe laws had been passed against the laxity and extortion of the English ecclesiastics, notwithstanding the violent indignation of Fisher of Rochester; but what was now demanded of them as a condition of their pardon for recognising the Bull was practically to repudiate the authority of the Pope over them, and to recognise the King of England as supreme head of the Church, in addition to paying the tremendous fine of a hundred thousand pounds. They were in utter consternation, and they struggled hard; but the alternative to submission was ruin, and the majority gave way. The die was cast: Henry was Pope and King in one, and could settle his own cause in his own way. When the English clergy had thus been brought to heel, Henry’s opponents saw that they had driven him too far, and were aghast at his unexpected exhibition of strength, a strength, be it noted, not his own, as will be explained later; and somewhat moderated their tone. But the King of England snapped his fingers now at threats of excommunication, and cared nothing, he said, for any decision from Rome. The Emperor dared not go to war with England about Katharine, for the French were busily drawing towards the Pope, whose niece, Katharine de Medici, was to be betrothed to the son of Francis; and the imperial agents in Rome ceased to insist so pertinaciously upon a decision of the matrimonial suit.
Katharine alone clamoured unceasingly that her “hell upon earth” should be ended by a decision in her favour from the Sovereign Pontiff. Her friends in England were many, for the old party of nobles were rallying again to her side, even Norfolk was secretly in her favour, or at least against the King’s marriage with his niece Anne, and Henry’s new bold step against the Papacy, taken under bureaucratic influence, had aroused much fear and jealousy amongst prelates like Fisher and jurists like More, as well as amongst the aristocratic party in the country. Desperate efforts were made to prevent the need for further action in defiance of the Papacy by the decision of the matrimonial suit by the English Parliament; and early in June 1531 Henry and his Council decided to put fresh pressure upon Katharine to get her to consent to a suspension of the proceedings in Rome, and to the relegation of the case to a tribunal in some neutral territory. Katharine at Greenwich had secret knowledge of the intention, and she can hardly have been so surprised as she pretended to be when, as she was about to retire to rest, at nine o’clock at night, to learn that the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and some thirty other nobles and prelates, sought audience of her. Norfolk spoke first, and in the King’s name complained bitterly of the slight put upon him by the Pope’s citation. He urged the Queen, for the sake of England, for the memory of the political services of Henry to her kin, and his past kindness to her, to meet his wishes and consent to a neutral tribunal judging between them. Katharine was, as usual, cool and contemptuous. No one was more sorry than she for the King’s annoyance, though she had not been the cause of it; but there was only one judge in the world competent to deal with the case. “His Holiness, who keeps the place, and has the power, of God upon earth, and is the image of eternal truth.” As for recognising her husband as supreme head of the Church, that she would never do. When Dr. Lee spoke harshly, telling her that she knew that, her first marriage having been consummated, her second was never legal, she vehemently denied the fact, and told him angrily to go to Rome and argue. He would find there others than a lone woman to answer him. Dr. Sampson then took up the parable and reproached her for her determination to have the case settled so quickly; and she replied to him that if he had passed such bitter days as she had, he would be in a hurry too. Dr. Stokesley was dealt with similarly by the Queen; and she then proudly protested at being thus baited late at night by a crowd of men; she, “a poor woman without friends or counsel.” Norfolk reminded her that the King had appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Durham, and the Bishop of Rochester to advise her. “Pretty councillors they are,” she replied. “If I ask for Canterbury’s advice he tells me he will have nothing to do with it, and for ever repeats ira principis mors est. The Bishop of Durham dares to say nothing because he is the King’s subject, and Rochester only tells me to keep a good heart and hope for the best.”
Katharine knew it not, but many of those before her were really her friends. Gardiner, now first Secretary, looked with fear upon the Lutheran innovations, Guilford the Controller, Lord Talbot, and even Norfolk wished her well, and feared the advent of Anne; and Guilford, less prudent than the rest, spoke so frankly that the favourite heard of his words. She broke out in furious invective against him before his face. “When I am Queen of England,” she cried, “you will soon lose your office.” “You need not wait so long,” he replied, as he went straightway to deliver his seals to the King. Henry told him he ought not to mind an angry woman’s talk, and was loath to accept his resignation; but the Controller insisted, and another rankling enemy was raised up to Anne. The favour she enjoyed had fairly turned her head, and her insolence, even to those who in any case had a right to her respect, had made her thoroughly detested. The Duke of Suffolk, enemy of the Papacy as he was, and the King’s brother-in-law, was as anxious now as Talbot, Guilford, and Fitzwilliam to avert the marriage with Anne, who was setting all the Court by the ears. Katharine’s attitude made matters worse. She still lived under the same roof as the King, though he rarely saw her except on public occasions, and her haughty replies to all his emissaries, and her constant threats of what the Emperor might do, irritated Henry beyond endurance under the taunts of Anne. The latter was bitterly jealous also of the young Princess Mary, of whom Henry was fond; and by many spiteful, petty acts of persecution, the girl’s life was made unhappy. Once when Henry praised his daughter in Anne’s presence, the latter broke out into violent abuse of her, and on another occasion, when Katharine begged to be allowed to visit the Princess, Henry told her roughly that she could go away as soon as she liked, and stop away. But Katharine stood her ground. She would not leave her husband, she said, even for her daughter, until she was forced to do so. Henry’s patience was nearly tired out between Anne’s constant importunities and Katharine’s dignified immobility; and leaving his wife and daughter at Windsor, he went off on a hunting progress with Anne, in the hope that he might soon be relieved of the presence of Katharine altogether. Public feeling was indignantly in favour of the Queen; and it was no uncommon thing for people to waylay the King, whilst he was hunting, with entreaties that he would live with his wife again; and wherever Anne went the women loudly cried shame upon her.