A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

Nor was a national separation from Rome so formidable an affair as Dr. Gairdner would have us believe. The Papacy had secularised itself, and European monarchs were accustomed to treat the Popes as secular princes. The possibility of England breaking away from papal authority and erecting itself into a separate patriarchate under the Archbishop of Canterbury had been thought probable before the divorce was talked about.[387]

It was Henry himself who clung strenuously to the conception of papal supremacy, and who advocated it in a manner only done hitherto by canonists of the Roman Curia. Whatever be the secret reason which he gave to Sir Thomas More, and which silenced the latter’s remonstrances, it is evident that the validity of Henry’s marriage and the legitimacy of his children by Catharine of Aragon depended on the Pope being in possession of the very fullest powers of dispensation. Henry had been married to Catharine under very peculiar circumstances, which might well suggest doubts about the validity of the marriage ceremony.

The England of Henry VII. was almost as much a satellite of Spain as Scotland was of France, and to make the alliance still stronger a marriage was arranged between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catharine the youngest of the three daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Spanish Princess landed at Plymouth (October 2nd, 1501), and the wedding took place in St. Paul’s on November 14th. But Prince Arthur died a few months afterwards (April 2nd, 1502), and Catharine became a widow. The circumstances of the two nations appeared to require more than ever the cementing of the alliance by intermarriage, and it was proposed from the side of Spain that the young widow should marry Henry, her brother-in-law, now Prince of Wales.[388] Ferdinand brought pressure to bear on England by insisting that if this were not done Catharine should be sent back to Spain and the first instalment of her dowry (all that had been paid) returned. The two Kings then besieged the Pope, Julius II., to grant a dispensation for the marriage. At first His Holiness was very unwilling to consent. Such a marriage had been branded as sin by canonical law, and the Pope himself had great doubts whether it was competent for him to grant a dispensation in such a case.[389] In the end he was persuaded to give it. The two young people had their own scruples of conscience. Ferdinand felt called upon to reason with his proposed son-in-law.[390] The confessor of his daughter was changed.[391] The Archbishop of Canterbury, who doubted whether the Pope could grant dispensation for what was a mortal sin in his eyes, was silenced.[392] The wedding took place (June 11th, 1509).

The marriage was in one sense singularly unfortunate. The first four children were either stillborn or died soon after birth; and it was rumoured in Rome as early as 1514 that Henry might ask to be divorced in order to save England from a disputed succession. Mary was born in 1516 and survived, but all the children who came afterwards were either stillborn or died in early infancy. It became evident by 1525 that if Henry did not divorce his wife he would have no male heir.

There is no doubt that the lack of a male heir troubled Henry greatly. The English people had not been accustomed to a female sovereign; it was currently, if erroneously, reported in England that the laws of the land did not permit a woman to be sovereign, and such well-informed diplomatists as the Venetian Ambassadors believed the statement;[393]and the Tudor dynasty was not so firmly settled on the throne that it could afford to look forward to a disputed succession. The King’s first idea was to ask the Pope to legitimise his illegitimate son the Duke of Richmond;[394]and Cardinal Campeggio actually suggested that the Princess Mary should be married to her half-brother.[395] These projects came to an end with the death of the young Prince.

There seems to be no reason for questioning the sincerity of Henry’s doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage with Catharine, or that he actually looked upon the repeated destruction of his hopes of a male heir as a divine punishment for the sin of that contract.[396]Questions of national policy and impulses of passion quicken marvellously conscientious convictions, but they do not show that the convictions are not real. In the perplexities of his position the shortest way out seemed to be to ask the Pope to declare that he had never been legally married to Catharine. If he had scruples of conscience about his marriage with his brother’s widow, this would end them; if the fears of a disputed succession haunted him, he could marry again, and might hope for a son and a lawful heir whose succession none would dispute. Cardinal Wolsey adopted his master’s plans, and the Pope was to be asked for a declaration that the marriage with Catharine had been no marriage at all.

There entered, however, into all this, at what time it is not easy to determine, an element of sordidness which goes ill with asserted scruples of conscience and imperious necessities of State. Wolsey was astonished when he learned that Henry had made up his mind to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady whose station in life and personal reputation unfitted her for the position of Queen of England. It was Henry’s inordinate, if not very long-lived, passion for this lady that put him in the wrong, and enabled the Pope to pose as the guardian of the public morality of Europe.

It is plain that Henry VIII. fully expected that the Pope would declare his first marriage invalid; there was many a precedent for such action—two in Henry’s own family;[397] and the delay had nothing to do with the interests of public morality. The Pope was at the time practically in the power of Charles V., to whom his aunt, the injured Catharine, had appealed, and who had promised her his protection. One has only to study the phases of the protracted proceedings in the “Divorce” and compare them with the contemporary situation in Italy to see that all that the Curia cared for was the success of the papal diplomacy in the Italian peninsula. The interests of morality were so little in his mind that Clement proposed to Henry more than once that the King might take a second wife without going through the formality of having his first marriage declared null and void.[398] This had been the papal solution of the matter in an earlier instance, and Clement VII. saw no reasons why what had been allowed to a King of Spain should be denied to the King of England.[399] He was prepared to tolerate bigamy, but not to thwart Charles, so long as the Emperor was master within Italy.[400]

It is needless to follow the intricacies of the Divorce. The protracted proceedings were an object lesson for English statesmen. They saw a grave moral question—whether a man could lawfully marry his deceased brother’s widow; a matter vitally affecting the welfare of the English people—the possibility of a disputed succession; the personal wishes of a powerful, strong-willed, and choleric sovereign (for all considerations were present, not only the last)—all subjected to the shifting needs of a petty Italian prince. So far as England was concerned, the grave interest in the case ended when Campeggio adjourned the inquiry (July 23rd, 1529). Henry knew that he could not expect the Pope to give him what he wanted; and although his agents fought the case at Rome, he at once began preparing for the separation from papal jurisdiction.