[73] This is not surprising, as only a month before she had been reproved and threatened for not being sad enough.
[74] There seems to be no doubt, from a letter written in January 1529 by the Pope to Campeggio, that the copy sent to Katharine from Spain was a forgery, or contained clauses which operated in her favour, but which were not in the original document. It was said that there was no entry of such a brief in the Papal archives, and Katharine herself asserted that the wording of it—alleging the consummation of Arthur’s marriage—was unknown to her. The Spaniards explained the absence of any record of the document in the Papal Registry by saying that at the urgent prayer of Isabel the Catholic on her deathbed, the original brief had been sent to her as soon as it was granted. (Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 3, p. 2278.)
[75] Ibid.
[76] Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 3.
[77] Ibid. The suspicion against Wolsey at this time arose doubtless from his renewed attempts to obtain the Papacy on Clement’s death. These led him to oppose a decision of the divorce except by the ecclesiastical authority.
[78] It was on this occasion that Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Henry’s old friend and brother-in-law, lost patience. “Banging the table before him violently, he shouted: ‘By the Mass! now I see that the old saw is true, that there never was Legate or Cardinal that did good in England;’ and with that all the temporal lords departed to the King, leaving the Legates sitting looking at each other, sore astonished.”—Hall’s Chronicle, and Cavendish’s “Wolsey.”
[79] Du Bellay to Montmorency, 22nd October 1529. Henry VIII. Calendar, vol. 4, part 3.
[80] This peremptory order seems to have been precipitated by a peculiarly acrimonious correspondence between Henry and his wife at the end of July. She had been in the habit of sending him private messages under token; and when he and Anne had left Windsor on their hunting tour, Katharine sent to him, as usual, to inquire after his health and to say that, though she had been forbidden to accompany him, she had hoped, at least, that she might have been allowed to bid him good-bye. The King burst into a violent rage. “Tell the Queen,” he said to the messenger, “that he did not want any of her good-byes, and had no wish to afford her consolation. He did not care whether she asked after his health or not. She had caused him no end of trouble, and had obstinately refused the reasonable request of his Privy Council. She depended, he knew, upon the Emperor; but she would find that God Almighty was more powerful still. In any case, he wanted no more of her messages.” To this angry outburst the Queen must needs write a long, cold, dignified, and utterly tactless letter, which irritated the King still more, and his reply was that of a vulgar bully without a spark of good feeling. “It would be a great deal better,” he wrote, “if she spent her time in seeking witnesses to prove her pretended virginity at the time of her marriage with him, than in talking about it to whoever would listen to her, as she was doing. As for sending messages to him, let her stop it, and mind her own business. (Chapuys to the Emperor, 21st July 1531. Spanish Calendar Henry VIII.)
[81] Spanish Calendar Henry VIII., 1531.
[82] Katharine to the Emperor, Spanish Calendar Henry VIII., 28th July 1531.