1509-1527
KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE
"Long live King Henry VIII.!" cried Garter King of Arms in French as the
great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into
the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of
a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of
hope that the niggardliness and suspicion which for years had stood
between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young
king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan god
in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His
prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment
and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded
himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour
with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance
without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the
learning which had during his lifetime become the fashion made grave
scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the
youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master
of his father's hoarded treasures.
As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited
sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as
a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was
no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the
big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the
real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he
was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a
strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in
gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-assertion and violence that impressed
most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed
direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in
appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of
his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world
to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity,
were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another
used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and
his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who
discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry's personal
character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the
tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our
annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of
subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took
advantage of the King's vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own
political or religious views. That the emancipation of England from Rome
was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry's personal
credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy
he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation
was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry's led the King step by step
by his ruling passions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what
extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall
see in the course of this book.
That Henry's marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was
politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the
King's Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely
ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to
the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a
dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case
of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine
strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation
was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to
Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King
Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope
given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and
Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the
failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few
doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage,
was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph
for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509
the pair were married privately by Warham at Henry's palace of Greenwich.
Rarely in its long history has London seen so brave a pageant as the bride
and bridegroom's triumphal passage through the city on Saturday the 21st
June from the Tower to Westminster for their coronation. Rich tapestries,
and hangings of cloth of gold, decked the streets through which they
passed. The city companies lined the way from Gracechurch Street to Bread
Street, where the Lord Mayor and the senior guild stood in bright array,
whilst the goldsmiths' shops in Chepe had each to adorn it a figure of the
Holy Virgin in white with many wax tapers around it. The Queen rode in a
litter of white and gold tissue drawn by two snowy palfreys, she herself
being garbed in white satin and gold, with a dazzling coronet of precious
stones upon her head, from which fell almost to her feet her dark russet
hair. She was twenty-four years of age, and in the full flush of
womanhood; her regular classical features and fair skin bore yet the
curves of gracious youth; and there need be no doubt of the sincerity of
the ardent affection for her borne by the pink and white young giant who
rode before her, a dazzling vision of crimson velvet, cloth of gold, and
flashing precious stones. "God save your Grace," was the cry that rattled
like platoon firing along the crowded ways, as the splendid cavalcade
passed on.
The next day, Sunday, 24th June, the pair were crowned in the Abbey with
all the tedious pomp of the times. Then the Gargantuan feast in
Westminster Hall, of which the chronicler spares us no detail, and the
endless jousts and devices, in which roses and pomegranates, castles and
leopards jostled each other in endless magnificence, until a mere
catalogue of the splendour grows meaningless. The death of the King's wise
old grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, interrupted for a time the
round of festivities; but Henry was too new to the unchecked indulgence of
his taste for splendour and pleasure to abandon them easily, and his
English councillors, as well as the watchful Spanish agents, began before
many weeks were over to hint gravely that the young king was neglecting
his business. Katharine appears to have entered fully into the life of
pleasure led by her husband. Writing to her father on the 29th July, she
is enthusiastic in her praise. "We are all so happy," she says; "our time
passes in continual feasting." But in her case, at least, we see that
mixed with the frivolous pleasure there was the personal triumph of the
politician who had succeeded. "One of the principal reasons why I love my
husband the King, is because he is so true a son to your Majesty. I have
obeyed your orders and have acted as your ambassador. My husband places
himself entirely in your hands. This country of England is truly your own
now, and is tranquil and deeply loyal to the King and to me." What more
could wife or stateswoman ask? Katharine had her reward. Henry was hers
and England was at the bidding of Ferdinand, and her sufferings had not
been in vain. Henry, for his part, was, if we are to believe his letters
to his father-in-law, as much enamoured of his wife as she was satisfied
with him.[19]
And so, amidst magnificent shows, and what seems to our taste puerile
trifling, the pair began their married life highly contented with each
other and the world. The inevitable black shadows were to come later. In
reality they were an entirely ill-matched couple, even apart from the six
years' disparity in their ages. Henry, a bluff bully, a coward morally,
and also perhaps physically,[20] a liar, who deceived himself as well as
others, in order to keep up appearances in his favour, he was just the man
that a clever, tactful woman could have managed perfectly, beginning early
in his life as Katharine did. Katharine, for all her goodness of heart and
exalted piety, was, as we have seen, none too scrupulous herself; and if
her ability and dexterity had been equal to her opportunities she might
have kept Henry in bondage for life. But, even before her growing age and
fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of
prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for
the guidance that she might still have exercised.
The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage.
Friar Diego, who was now Katharine's chancellor, wrote an extraordinary
letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that
Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so
secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician,
and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as
ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: "Her Highness
is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the
greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and
her Highness him." But with this letter to the King went another to his
secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish ambassador, Carroz, who complains
bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his
access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine's first
matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were
at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said
to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir
William Compton. This lady's family, and especially her brother the Duke,
who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen's
friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the
country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen's favourite away, and
quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and
diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her
badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.
Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling
friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming
minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the
crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was
desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the
looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing
again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had
ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks
for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with
cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists
disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off
their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to
tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers
sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites
standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of
himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was
dancing the "scenery" was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of
lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the
golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this,
people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central space, and in the
twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found
themselves stripped of their finery to their very shirts, the golden
letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being
plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account.
Henry in his bluff fashion made the best of it, and called the booty
largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his
vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his
birth.
During the ascendency that the anticipated coming of a son gave to
Katharine, Ferdinand was able to beguile Henry into an offensive league
against France, by using the same bait that had so often served a similar
purpose with Henry VII.; namely, the reconquest for England of Guienne and
Normandy. Spain, the Empire, the Papacy, and England formed a coalition
that boded ill for the French cause in Italy. As usual the showy but
barren part fell to Henry. Ferdinand promised him soldiers to conquer
Normandy, but they never came. All Ferdinand wanted was to keep as many
Frenchmen as possible from his own battle-grounds, and he found plenty of
opportunities for evading all his pledges. Henry was flattered to the top
of his bent. The Pope sent him the blessed golden rose, and saluted him as
head of the Italian league; and the young king, fired with martial ardour,
allowed himself to be dragged into war by his wife's connections, in
opposition to the opinion of the wiser heads in his Council. A war with
France involved hostilities with Scotland, but Henry was, in the autumn of
1512, cajoled into depleting his realm of troops and sending an army to
Spain to attack France over the Pyrenees, whilst another force under
Poynings went to help the allies against the Duke of Gueldres. The former
host under the Marquis of Dorset was kept idle by its commander because it
was found that Ferdinand really required them to reduce the Spanish
kingdom of Navarre, and after months of inactivity and much mortality from
sickness, they returned ingloriously home to England. This was Henry's
first experience of armed alliances, but he learned nothing by experience,
and to the end of his life the results of such coalitions to him were
always the same.
But his ambition was still unappeased, and in June 1513 he in person led
his army across the Channel to conquer France. His conduct in the campaign
was puerile in its vanity and folly, and ended lamely with the capture of
two (to him) unimportant fortresses in the north, Therouenne and Tournai,
and the panic flight of the French at the Battle of the Spurs or Guingate.
Our business with this foolish and fruitless campaign, in which Henry was
every one's tool, is confined to the part that Katharine played at the
time. On the King's ostentatious departure from Dover he left Katharine
regent of the realm, with the Earl of Surrey--afterwards Duke of
Norfolk--to command the army in the north. Katharine, we are told, rode
back from Dover to London full of dolour for her lord's departure; but we
see her in her element during the subsequent months of her regency. Bold
and spirited, and it must be added utterly tactless, she revelled in the
independent domination which she enjoyed. James IV. of Scotland had
threatened that an English invasion of France would be followed by his own
invasion of England. "Let him do it in God's name," shouted Henry; and
Katharine when the threat was made good delivered a splendid oration in
English to the officers who were going north to fight the Scots.
"Remember," she said, "that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in
defence of their own. Remember that the English courage excels that of all
other nations upon earth."[21] Her letters to Wolsey, who accompanied
Henry as almoner, or rather secretary, are full of courage, and as full of
womanly anxiety for her husband. "She was troubled," she wrote, "to learn
that the King was so near the siege of Therouenne," until Wolsey's letter
assured her of the heed he takes to avoid all manner of dangers. "With his
life and health nothing can come amiss with him, without them I see no
manner of good thing that shall fall after it." But her tactlessness even
in this letter shows clearly when she boasts that the King in France is
not so busy with war as she is in England against the Scots. "My heart is
very good of it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners, and
badges."[22] After congratulating Henry effusively upon the capture of
Therouenne and his meeting with the Emperor, Katharine herself set forth
with reinforcements towards Scotland, but before she had travelled a
hundred miles (to Woburn) she met the couriers galloping south to bring
her the great news of Surrey's victory at Flodden Field. Turning aside to
thank Our Lady of Walsingham for the destruction of the Scottish power,
Katharine on the way sent the jubilant news to Henry. James IV. in his
defeat had been left dead upon the field, clad in his check surcoat, and
a fragment of this coat soaked with blood the Queen sent to her husband in
France, with a heartless gibe at his dead brother-in-law. We are told that
in another of her letters first giving the news of Flodden, and referring
to Henry's capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she
vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] "It was no great thing
for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a
woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner
king." For a wife and _locum tenens_ to write thus in such circumstances
to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still
unassuaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he
with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the
real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not
Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King;
and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he
had been "sold" by his wife's relations, who kept the fruit of victory
whilst he was put off with the shell.
From that time Katharine's influence over her husband weakened, though
with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind
than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy
of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox,
Bishop of Winchester, Henry's leading councillor in foreign affairs. The
English nobles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be
trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty
depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official
class, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry
VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a class, dependent
entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the noble
families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided
the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English
constitutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the
strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the nobles desiring to
maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly
exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry
VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great
extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile
adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated
his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never
become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King
most desired distinction.
Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine's kin,
and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of
Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely
young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis
XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine's nephew,
young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry's bosom friend,
Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political
game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any
case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French
connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in
the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her
father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she
was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and
doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to
disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with
child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with
her father's ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with
Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the
Catholic at last was slowly dying, all his dreams and hopes frustrated;
and on the 13th August 1514, in the palace of Greenwich, Katharine's dear
friend and sister-in-law, Mary Tudor, was married by proxy to Louis XII.
Katharine, led by the Duke of Longueville, attended the festivity. She was
dressed in ash-coloured satin, covered with raised gold embroidery, costly
chains and necklaces of gems covered her neck and bust, and a coif trimmed
with precious stones was on her head.[24] The King at the ball in the
evening charmed every one by his graceful dancing, and the scene was so
gay that the grave Venetian ambassador says that had it not been for his
age and office he would have cast off his gown and have footed it with the
rest.
But already sinister whispers were rife, and we may be sure they were not
unknown to Katharine. She had been married five years, and no child of
hers had lived; and, though she was again pregnant, it was said that the
Pope would be asked to authorise Henry to put her aside, and to marry a
French bride. Had not his new French brother-in-law done the like years
ago?[25] To what extent this idea had really entered Henry's head at the
time it is difficult to say; but courtiers and diplomatists have keen
eyes, and they must have known which way the wind was blowing before they
talked thus. In October 1514 Katharine was borne slowly in a litter to
Dover, with the great concourse that went to speed Mary Tudor on her
loveless two months' marriage; and a few weeks afterwards Katharine gave
birth prematurely to a dead child. Once more the hopes of Henry were
dashed, and though Peter Martyr ascribed the misfortune to Henry's
unkindness, the superstitious time-servers of the King, and those in
favour of the French alliance, began to hint that Katharine's offspring
was accursed, and that to get an heir the King must take another wife. The
doings at Court were still as brilliant and as frivolous as ever; the
King's great delight being in adopting some magnificent, and, of course,
perfectly transparent disguise in masque or ball, and then to disclose
himself when every one, the Queen included, was supposed to be lost in
wonder at the grace and agility of the pretended unknown. Those who take
pleasure in the details of such puerility may be referred to Hall's
_Chronicle_ for them: we here have more to do with the hearts beneath the
finery, than with the trappings themselves.
That Katharine was striving desperately at this time to retain her
influence over her husband, and her popularity in England, is certain from
the letter of Ferdinand's ambassador (6th December 1514). He complains
that on the recommendation of Friar Diego Katharine had thrown over her
father's interests in order to keep the love of Henry and his people. The
Castilian interest and the Manuels have captured her, wrote the
ambassador, and if Ferdinand did not promptly "put a bridle on this colt"
(_i.e._ Henry) and bring Katharine to her bearings as her father's
daughter, England would be for ever lost to Aragon.[26] There is no doubt
that at this time Katharine felt that her only chance of keeping her
footing was to please Henry, and "forget Spain," as Friar Diego advised
her to do.
When the King of France died on New Year's Day, 1515, and his young
widow--Katharine's friend, Mary Tudor--clandestinely married her lover,
Charles Brandon, Katharine's efforts to reconcile her husband to the
peccant pair are evidence, if no other existed, that Henry's anger was
more assumed than real, and that his vanity was pleased by the submissive
prayers for his forgiveness. As no doubt the Queen, and Wolsey, who had
joined his efforts with hers, foresaw, not only were Mary and Brandon
pardoned, but taken into high favour. At the public marriage of Mary and
Brandon at Greenwich at Easter 1515 more tournaments, masques and balls,
enabled the King to show off his gallantry and agility in competition with
his new brother-in-law; and on the subsequent May Day at Shooter's Hill,
Katharine and Mary, who were inseparable, took part in elaborate and
costly _al fresco_ entertainments in which Robin Hood, several pagan
deities, and the various attributes of spring, were paraded for their
delectation. It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the
endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing,
and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there
ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the
ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently
put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Essex, where Lady
Tailebois lived.
A gleam of hope and happiness came to her late in 1515 when she was again
expecting to become a mother. By liberal gifts--"the greatest presents
ever brought to England," said Henry himself--and by flattery unlimited,
Ferdinand, almost on his death-bed, managed to "bridle" his son-in-law, to
borrow a large sum of money from him and draw him anew into a coalition
against France. But the hope was soon dashed; King Ferdinand died almost
simultaneously with the birth of a girl-child to his daughter Katharine.
It is true the babe was like to live, but a son, not a daughter, was what
Henry wanted. Yet he put the best face on the matter publicly. The
Venetian ambassador purposely delayed his congratulations, because the
child was of the wrong sex; and when finally he coldly offered them, he
pointedly told the King that they would have been much more hearty if the
child had been a son. "We are both young," replied Henry. "If it is a
daughter this time, by the grace of God sons will follow." The desire of
the King for a male heir was perfectly natural. No Queen had reigned
independently over England; and for the perpetuation of a new dynasty like
the Tudors the succession in the male line was of the highest importance.
In addition to this, Henry was above all things proud of his manliness,
and he looked upon the absence of a son as in some sort reflecting a
humiliation upon him.
Katharine's health had never been robust; and at the age of thirty-three,
after four confinements, she had lost her bloom. Disappointment and
suffering, added to her constitutional weakness, was telling upon her, and
her influence grew daily smaller. The gorgeous shows and frivolous
amusements in which her husband so much delighted palled upon her, and she
now took little pains to feign enjoyment in them, giving up much of her
time to religious exercises, fasting rigidly twice a week and saints' days
throughout the year, in addition to the Lenten observances, and wearing
beneath her silks and satins a rough Franciscan nun's gown of serge. As in
the case of so many of her kindred, mystical devotion was weaving its grey
web about her, and saintliness of the peculiar Spanish type was covering
her as with a garment. Henry, on the contrary, was a full-blooded young
man of twenty-eight, with a physique like that of a butcher, held by no
earthly control or check upon his appetites, overflowing with vitality and
the joy of life; and it is not to be wondered at that he found his
disillusioned and consciously saintly wife a somewhat uncomfortable
companion.
The death of Louis XII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand, and the peaceful
accession of young Charles to the throne of Spain and the prospective
imperial crown, entirely altered the political aspect of Europe. Francis
I. needed peace in the first years of his reign; and to Charles it was
also desirable, in order that his rule over turbulent Spain could be
firmly established and his imperial succession secured. All the English
ministers and councillors were heavily bribed by France, Wolsey himself
was strongly in favour of the French connection, and everybody entered
into a conspiracy to flatter Henry. The natural result was a league first
of England and France, and subsequently a general peace to which all the
principal Christian potentates subscribed, and men thought that the
millennium had come. Katharine's international importance had disappeared
with the death of her father and the accession of Charles to the throne of
Aragon as well as to that of Castile. Wolsey was now Henry's sole adviser
in matters of state and managed his master dexterously, whilst
endeavouring not entirely to offend the Queen. Glimpses of his harmonious
relations with Katharine at this time (1516-1520) are numerous. At the
splendid christening of the Princess Mary, Wolsey was one of the sponsors,
and he was "gossip" with Katharine at the baptism of Mary Tudor Duchess of
Suffolk's son.
Nor can the Queen's famous action after the evil May Day (1517) have been
opposed or discountenanced by the Cardinal. The universal peace had
brought to London hosts of foreigners, especially Frenchmen, and the alien
question was acute. Wolsey, whose sudden rise and insolence had deeply
angered the nobles, had, as principal promoter of the unpopular peace with
France, to bear a full share of the detestation in which his friends the
aliens were held. Late in April there were rumours that a general attack
upon foreigners by the younger citizens would be made, and at Wolsey's
instance the civic authorities ordered that all the Londoners should keep
indoors. Some lads in Chepe disregarded the command, and the Alderman of
the Ward attempted to arrest one of them. Then rose the cry of "'Prentices
and Clubs! Death to the Cardinal!" and forth there poured from lane and
alley riotous youngsters by the hundred, to wreak vengeance on the
insolent foreigners who took the bread out of worthy Englishmen's mouths.
Sack and pillage reigned for a few hours, but the guard quelled the boys
with blood, the King rode hastily from Richmond, the Lieutenant of the
Tower dropped a few casual cannon-balls into the city, and before sunset
all was quiet. The gibbets rose at the street corners and a bloody
vengeance fell upon the rioters. Dozens were hanged, drawn, and quartered
with atrocious cruelty; and under the ruthless Duke of Norfolk four
hundred more were condemned to death for treason to the King, who, it was
bitterly said in London, loved outlanders better than his own folk. It is
unlikely that Henry really meant to plunge all his capital in mourning by
hanging the flower of its youth, but he loved, for vanity's sake, that
his clemency should be publicly sought, and to act the part of a deity in
restoring to life those legally dead. In any case, Katharine's spontaneous
and determined intercession for the 'prentice lads would take no denial,
and she pleaded with effect. Her intercession, nevertheless, could hardly
have been so successful as it was if Wolsey had been opposed to it; and
the subsequent comedy in the great Hall at Westminster on the 22nd May was
doubtless planned to afford Henry an opportunity of appearing in his
favourite character. Seated upon a canopied throne high upon a dais of
brocade, surrounded by his prelates and nobles and with Wolsey by his
side, Henry frowned in crimson velvet whilst the "poore younglings and
olde false knaves" trooped in, a sorry procession, stripped to their
shirts, with halters around their necks. Wolsey in stern words rebuked
their crime, and scolded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their laxity;
ending by saying they all deserved to hang. "Mercy! gracious lord, mercy!"
cried the terrified boys and their distracted mothers behind; and the
Cardinal and the peers knelt before the throne to beg the life of the
offenders, which the King granted, and with a great shout of joy halters
were stripped from many a callow neck, and cast into the rafters of the
Hall for very joy. But all men knew, and the mothers too, that Wolsey's
intercession was only make-believe, and that what they saw was but the
ceremonial act of grace. The Queen they thanked in their hearts and not
the haughty Cardinal, for the King had pardoned the 'prentices privately
days before, when Katharine and her two sisters-in-law, the widowed Queens
of France and Scotland, had knelt before the King in unfeigned tears, and
had clamoured for the lives of the Londoners. To the day of the Queen's
unhappy death this debt was never forgotten by the citizens, who loved her
faithfully to the end far better than any of her successors.
The sweating sickness in the autumn of 1517 sent Henry and his wife as far
away from contagion as possible, for sickness always frightened the big
bully into a panic. During his absence from London, Wolsey was busy
negotiating a still closer alliance with France, by the marriage of the
baby Princess Mary to the newly born Dauphin. It can hardly have been the
match that Katharine would have chosen for her cherished only child, but
she was a cypher by the side of Wolsey now, and made no open move against
it at the time. Early in the spring of 1518 the plague broke out again,
and Henry in dire fear started upon a progress in the midlands. Richard
Pace, who accompanied him, wrote to Wolsey on the 12th April telling him
as a secret that the Queen was again pregnant. "I pray God heartily," he
continued, "that it may be a prince to the surety and universal comfort of
the realm;" and he begs the Cardinal to write a kind letter to the Queen.
In June the glad tidings were further confirmed, as likely to result in
"an event most earnestly desired by the whole kingdom." Still dodging the
contagion, the King almost fled from one place to another, and when at
Woodstock in July Henry himself wrote a letter to Wolsey which tells in
every line how anxious he was that the coming event should be the
fulfilment of his ardent hope. Katharine had awaited him at Woodstock,
and he had been rejoiced at the confident hope she gave him. He tells
Wolsey the news formally, and says that he will remove the Queen as little
and as quietly as may be to avoid risk. Soon all the diplomatists were
speculating at the great things that would happen when the looked-for
prince was born; and it was probably the confident hope that this time
Henry would not be disappointed, that made possible the success of
Wolsey's policy and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the infant
Dauphin. Of Wolsey's magnificent feasts that accompanied the ratification
of peace and the betrothal on the 5th October, feasts more splendid, says
the Venetian ambassador, than ever were given by Caligula or Cleopatra, no
account can be given here. It was Wolsey's great triumph, and he surpassed
all the records of luxury in England in its celebration. The sweet little
bride dressed in cloth of gold stood before the thrones upon which her
father and mother sat in the great Hall of Greenwich, and then, carried in
the arms of a prelate, was held up whilst the Cardinal slipped the diamond
wedding-ring upon her finger and blessed her nuptials with the baby
bridegroom. That the heir of France should marry the heiress of England
was a danger to the balance of Europe, and especially a blow to Spain. It
was, moreover, not a match which England could regard with equanimity; for
a French King Consort would have been repugnant to the whole nation, and
Henry could never have meant to conclude the marriage finally, unless the
expected heir was born. But alas! for human hopes. On the night of 10th
November 1518, Katharine was delivered of a daughter, "to the vexation of
as many as knew it," and King and nation mourned together, now that, after
all, a Frenchman might reign over England.
To Katharine this last disappointment was bitter indeed. Her husband,
wounded and irritated, first in his pride, and now in his national
interests, avoided her; her own country and kin had lost the English tie
that meant so much to them, and she herself, in poor health and waning
attractions, could only mourn her misfortunes, and cling more closely than
ever to her one darling child, Mary, for the new undesired infant girl had
died as soon as it was born. The ceaseless round of masking, mummery, and
dancing, which so much captivated Henry, went on without abatement, and
Katharine perforce had to take her part in it; but all the King's
tenderness was now shown not to his wife but to his little daughter, whom
he carried about in his arms and praised inordinately.[27] So frivolous
and familiar indeed had Henry's behaviour grown that his Council took
fright, and, under the thin veil of complaints against the behaviour of
his boon companions, Carew, Peachy, Wingfield, and Brian, who were
banished from Court, they took Henry himself seriously to task. The four
French hostages, held for the payment of the war indemnity, were also
feasted and entertained so familiarly by Henry, under Wolsey's influence,
as to cause deep discontent to the lieges, who had always looked upon
France as an enemy, and knew that the unpopular Cardinal's overwhelming
display was paid for by French bribes. At one such entertainment
Katharine was made to act as hostess at her dower-house of Havering in
Essex, where, in the summer of 1519, we are told that, "for their
welcomyng she purveyed all thynges in the most liberalist manner; and
especially she made to the Kyng suche a sumpteous banket that he thanked
her hartely, and the strangers gave it great praise." Later in the same
year Katharine was present at a grand series of entertainments given by
the King in the splendid new manor-house which he had built for Lady
Tailebois, who had just rejoiced him by giving birth to a son. We have no
record of Katharine's thoughts as she took part here in the tedious
foolery so minutely described by Hall. She plucked off the masks, we are
told, of eight disguised dancers in long dominos of blue satin and gold,
"who danced with the ladies sadly, and communed not with them after the
fashion of maskers." Of course the masqueraders were the Duke of Suffolk
(Brandon) and other great nobles, as the poor Queen must well have known;
but when she thought that all this mummery was to entertain Frenchmen, and
the house in which it passed was devoted to the use of Henry's mistress,
she must have covered her own heart with a more impenetrable mask than
those of Suffolk and his companions, if her face was attuned to the gay
sights and sounds around her.
[Illustration: _KATHARINE OF ARAGON_
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the National Portrait Gallery_]
Katharine had now almost ceased to strive for the objects to which her
life had been sacrificed, namely, the binding together of England and
Spain to the detriment of France. Wolsey had believed that his own
interests would be better served by a close French alliance, and he
had had his way. Henry himself was but the vainglorious figure in the
international pageant; the motive power was the Cardinal. But a greater
than Wolsey, Charles of Austria and Spain, though he was as yet only a lad
of nineteen, had appeared upon the scene, and soon was to make his power
felt throughout the world. Wolsey's close union with France and the
marriage of the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been meant as a blow to
Spain, to lead if possible to the election of Henry to the imperial crown,
in succession to Maximilian, instead of the latter's grandson Charles. If
the King of England were made Emperor, the way of the Cardinal of York to
the throne of St. Peter was clear. Henry was flattered at the idea, and
was ready to follow his minister anywhere to gain such a showy prize. But
quite early in the struggle it was seen that the unpopular French alliance
which had already cost England the surrender of the King's conquests in
the war was powerless to bring about the result desired. Francis I., as
vain and turbulent as Henry, and perhaps more able, was bidding high for
the Empire himself. His success in the election would have been disastrous
both to Spain and England, and yet the French alliance was too dear to
Wolsey to be easily relinquished, and Francis was assured that all the
interest of his dear brother of England should be cast in his favour,
whilst, with much more truth, the Spanish candidate was plied with good
wishes for his success, and underhand attempts were made at the same time
to gain the electors for the King of England.[28] Wolsey hoped thus to
win in any case; and up to a certain point he did so; for he gave to
Charles the encouragement he needed for the masterly move which soon after
revolutionised political relations.
Charles at this time (1519), young as he was, had already developed his
marvellous mental and physical powers. Patient and self-centred, with all
his Aragonese grandfather's subtlety, he possessed infinitely greater
boldness and width of view. He knew well that the seven prince electors
who chose the Emperor might, like other men, be bought, if enough money
could be found. To provide it and give to him the dominant power of the
world, he was ready to crush the ancient liberties of Castile, to squeeze
his Italian and Flemish dominions of their last obtainable ducat, for he
knew that his success in the election would dazzle his subjects until they
forgot what they had paid for it. And so it happened. Where Francis bribed
in hundreds Charles bribed in thousands, and England in the conflict of
money-bags and great territorial interests hardly counted at all. When
Charles was elected Emperor in June 1519, Henry professed himself
delighted; but it meant that the universal peace that had been proclaimed
with such a flourish of trumpets only three years before was already
tottering, and that England must soon make a choice as to which of the two
great rivals should be her friend, and which her enemy.
Francis nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and did his best to retain
Henry and Wolsey on his side. Bribes and pensions flowed freely from
France upon English councillors, the inviolable love of Henry and Francis,
alike in gallantry and age, was insisted upon again and again; the
three-year-old Princess Mary was referred to always as Dauphiness and
future Queen of France, though when the little Dauphin was spoken of as
future King of England, Henry's subjects pulled a wry face and cursed all
Frenchmen. A meeting between the two allies, which for its splendour
should surpass all other regal displays, was constantly urged by the
French hostages in England by order of Francis, as a means of showing to
the world that he could count upon Henry. To the latter the meeting was
agreeable as a tribute to his power, and as a satisfaction to his love of
show, and to Wolsey it was useful as enhancing his sale value in the eyes
of two lavish bidders. To Charles, who shared none of the frivolous tastes
of his rival sovereigns, it only appealed as a design against him to be
forestalled and defeated. When, therefore, the preparations for the Field
of the Cloth of Gold were in full swing early in the year 1520, Charles,
by a brilliant though risky move such as his father Philip would have
loved, took the first step to win England to his side in the now
inevitable struggle for supremacy between the Empire and France. Whilst he
was still wrangling with his indignant Castilian parliament in March,
Charles sent envoys to England to propose a friendly meeting with Henry
whilst on his way by sea from Spain to Flanders. It was Katharine's
chance and she made the most of it. She had suffered long and patiently
whilst the French friendship was paramount; but if God would vouchsafe her
the boon of seeing her nephew in England it would, she said to his envoys,
be the measure of her desires. Wolsey, too, smiled upon the suggestion,
for failing Francis the new Emperor in time might help him to the Papacy.
So, with all secrecy, a solemn treaty was signed on the 11th April 1520,
settling, down to the smallest details, the reception of Charles by Henry
and Katharine at Sandwich and Canterbury, on his voyage or else at a
subsequent meeting of the monarchs between Calais and Gravelines.
It was late in May when news came from the west that the Spanish fleet was
sailing up the Channel;[29] and Henry was riding towards the sea from
London ostensibly to embark for France when he learnt that the Emperor's
ships were becalmed off Dover. Wolsey was despatched post-haste to greet
the imperial visitor and invite him to land; and Charles, surrounded by a
gorgeous suite of lords and ladies, with the black eagle of Austria on
cloth of gold fluttering over and around him, was conducted to Dover
Castle, where before dawn next morning, the 27th May, Henry arrived and
welcomed his nephew. There was no mistaking the cordiality of the English
cheers that rang in peals from Dover to Canterbury and through the ancient
city, as the two monarchs rode side by side in gorgeous array. They meant,
as clearly as tone could speak, that the enemy of France and Queen
Katharine's nephew was the friend for the English people, whatever the
Cardinal of York might think. To Katharine it was a period of rejoicing,
and her thoughts were high as she welcomed her sister's son; the sallow
young man with yellow hair, already in title the greatest monarch in the
world, though beset with difficulties. By her stood beautiful Mary Tudor,
Duchess of Suffolk, twice married since she had, as a child, been
betrothed under such heavy guarantees to Charles himself; and, holding her
mother's hand, was the other Mary Tudor, a prim, quaint little maid of
four, with big brown eyes. Already great plans for her filled her mother's
brain. True, she was betrothed to the Dauphin; but what if the hateful
French match fell through, and the Emperor, he of her own kin, were to
seal a national alliance by marrying the daughter of England? Charles
feasted for four days at Canterbury, and then went on his way amidst
loving plaudits to his ships at Sandwich; but before he sailed he
whispered that to Wolsey which made the Cardinal his servant; for the
Emperor, suzerain of Italy and King of Naples, Sicily, and Spain, might do
more than a King of France in future towards making a Pope.
By the time that Henry and Francis met early in June on the ever-memorable
field between Ardres and Guisnes, the riot of splendour which surrounded
the sovereigns and Wolsey, though it dazzled the crowd and left its mark
upon history as a pageant, was known to the principal actors of the scene
to be but hollow mockery. The glittering baubles that the two kings
loved, the courtly dallying, the pompous ceremony, the masques and devices
to symbolise eternal amity, were not more evanescent than the love they
were supposed to perpetuate. Katharine went through her ceremonial part of
the show as a duty, and graciously received the visit of Francis in the
wonderful flimsy palace of wood, drapery, and glass at Guisnes; but her
heart was across the Flemish frontier a few miles away, where her nephew
awaited the coming of the King of England to greet him as his kinsman and
future ally. Gravelines was a poor place, but Charles had other ways of
influencing people than by piling up gewgaws before them. A single day of
rough, hearty feasting was an agreeable relief to Henry after the
glittering insincerity of Guisnes; and the four days following, in which
Charles was entertained at Calais as the guest of Henry and Katharine,
made up in prodigality for the coarseness of the Flemish fare;[30] whilst
Wolsey, who was already posing as the arbitrator between all Christian
potentates, was secured to the side of the Emperor in future by a grant of
the bulk of the income from two Spanish bishoprics, Badajoz and Palencia.
Already the two great rivals were bidding against each other for allies,
and Charles, though his resources were less concentrated than those of
Francis, could promise most. Leo X. for his own territorial ambition, and
in fear of Luther, rallied to the side of the Emperor, the German princes
seconded their suzerain, and the great struggle for the supremacy of
Christendom began in March 1521. England by treaty was bound to assist
France, but this did not suit Wolsey or Henry in their new mood, and the
Cardinal pressed his arbitration on the combatants. Francis reluctantly
consented to negotiate; but minds were aflame with a subject that added
fierceness to the political rivalry between Charles and Francis. The young
Emperor, when he had met the German princes at Worms (April 1521), had
thrown down the gage to Luther, and thenceforward it was war to the knife
between the old faith and the new spirit. Henry, we may be certain to the
delight of Katharine, violently attacked Luther in his famous book, and
was flattered by the fulsome praises of the Pope and the Emperor. In the
circumstances Wolsey's voyage to Calais for the furtherance of arbitration
was turned into one to conclude an armed alliance with Charles and the
Pope. The Cardinal, who had bent all others to his will, was himself bent
by the Emperor; and the arbitrator between two monarchs became the servant
of one. By the treaty signed at Bruges by Wolsey for Henry, Charles
contracted an engagement to marry his little cousin, Princess Mary, and to
visit England for a formal betrothal in the following year.
How completely Wolsey had at this time surrendered himself to the Emperor,
is evident from Katharine's new attitude towards him. During his period of
French sympathy she had been, as we have seen, practically alienated from
state affairs, but now in Henry's letters to Wolsey her name is
frequently mentioned and her advice was evidently welcome.[31] During his
absence in Flanders, for instance, Wolsey received a letter from Henry, in
which the King says: "The Queen, my wife, hath desired me to make her most
hearty recommendation unto you, as to him that she loveth very well; and
both she and I would fain know when you would repair unto us." Great news
came that the Emperor and his allies were brilliantly successful in the
war, but in the midst of victory the great Medici, Pope Leo X., though
still a man in his prime, died. There is no doubt that a secret promise
had been made by Charles to Wolsey of his support in case a vacancy in the
Papacy arose, but no one had dreamed of its occurring so quickly,[32] and
Charles found his hand forced. He needed for his purpose a far more
pliable instrument in the pontifical chair than the haughty Cardinal of
York. So, whilst pretending to work strenuously to promote Wolsey's
elevation, and thus to gain the goodwill of Henry and his minister, he
took care secretly that some humbler candidate, such as the one
ultimately chosen by the Conclave, his old schoolmaster, Cardinal Adrian,
should be the new Pope. Wolsey was somewhat sulky at the result of the
election, and thenceforward looked with more distrust on the imperial
connection; but, withal, he put as good a face on the matter as possible;
and when, at the end of May 1522, he again welcomed the Emperor in Henry's
name as he set foot on English soil at Dover, the Cardinal, though
watchful, was still favourable to the alliance. This visit of the young
Emperor was the most splendid royal sojourn ever made in England; and
Henry revelled in the ceremonies wherein he was the host of the greatest
monarch upon earth.
Charles came with a train of a thousand horse and two thousand courtiers;
and to feed and house such a multitude, the guilds of London, and even the
principal citizens, were obliged to make return of all their spare beds
and stocks of provisions in order to provide for the strangers. The
journey of the monarchs was a triumphal progress from Dover through
Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester to Gravesend. On the downs
between Dover and Canterbury, Henry and a great train of nobles was to
have met his nephew; but the more to do him honour the King rode into
Dover itself, and with pride showed his visitor his new great ship the
_Harry Grace a Dieu_, and the rest of the English fleet; whereupon, "the
Emperor and his lords much praised the making of the ships, and especially
the artillery: they said they had never seen ships so armed." From
Gravesend the gallant company rowed in the royal barges amidst salvoes of
guns to Greenwich. There at the hall door of the palace stood Katharine
surrounded by her ladies, and holding her tiny daughter by the hand.
Sinking upon one knee the Emperor craved his aunt's blessing, which was
given, and thenceforward for five weeks the feasting and glorious shows
went on without intermission.
On the second day after the arrival at Greenwich, whilst Henry was arming
for a joust, a courier, all travel-stained and weary, demanded prompt
audience, to hand the King a letter from his ambassador in France. The
King read the despatch with knitted brows, and, turning to his friend Sir
William Compton, said: "Go and tell the Emperor I have news for him." When
Charles came the letter was handed to him, and it must have rejoiced his
heart as he read it. Francis bade defiance to the King of England, and
thenceforward Henry and the Emperor were allies in arms against a common
enemy. Glittering pageants followed in London and Windsor, where Charles
sat as Knight of the Garter under triumphant Henry's presidency; masques
and dances, banquets and hunting, delighted the host and surprised the
guests with the unrestrained lavishness of the welcome;[33] but we may be
certain that what chiefly interested Katharine and her nephew was not this
costly trifling, but the eternal friendship between England and Spain
solemnly sworn upon the sacrament in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the
Emperor and Henry, and the binding alliance between them in peace and war,
cemented by the pledge that Charles should marry his cousin Mary Tudor and
no one else in the world. It was Katharine's final and greatest triumph,
and the shadows fell thick and fast thereafter.
Henry promptly took his usual showy and unprofitable part in the war. Only
a few weeks after the Emperor bade his new ally farewell, an English force
invaded Picardy, and the Earl of Surrey's fleet threatened all French
shipping in the Channel. Coerced by the King of England too, Venice
deserted France and joined forces with the allies; the new Pope and the
Italian princes did the same, and the Emperor's arms carried all before
them in Italy. Henry was kept faithful to his ally by the vain hope of a
dismemberment of France, in which he should be the principal gainer; the
Pope Clement VII., the ambitious Medici, who succeeded Adrian in September
1523, hungered for fresh territory which Charles alone could give him; the
rebel De Bourbon, the greatest soldier of France, was fighting against his
own king; and in February 1525 the crushing blow of Pavia fell, and
Francis, "all lost except honour," was a prisoner in the hands of his
enemy, who looking over Christendom saw none to say him nay but the bold
monk at Wittemberg.
Three years of costly war for interests not primarily their own had
already disillusioned the English people. By methods more violent and
tyrannical than ever had been adopted by any previous king, Henry had
wrung from parliament supplies so oppressive and extortionate for the
purposes of the war as to disgust and incense the whole country. Wolsey,
too, had been for the second time beguiled about the Papacy he coveted,
and knew now that he could not trust the Emperor to serve any interests
but his own. The French collapse at Pavia, moreover, and pity for the
captive Francis languishing at Madrid, had caused in England and elsewhere
a reaction in his favour. Henry himself was, as was his wont, violently
angry at the cynical way in which his own hopes in France were shelved by
Charles; and the Pope, alarmed now at the Emperor's unchecked dominion in
Italy, and the insufficient share of the spoil offered to him, also began
to look askance at his ally. So, notwithstanding the official rejoicings
in England when the news of Pavia came, and the revived plan of Henry and
Wolsey to join Bourbon in his intention to dismember France, with or
without the aid of Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham,
correctly interpreted the prevailing opinion in England in his letter to
Wolsey (quoted by Hallam), saying that the people had "more cause to weep
than to rejoice" at the French defeat. The renewed extortionate demands
for money aroused in England discontent so dangerous as to reach rebellion
against the King's officers.[34] Risings in Kent and the eastern counties,
and the outspoken remonstrances of the leaders of the middle and working
classes at length convinced Wolsey, and through him the King, that a
change of policy was inevitable. England once more had been made the
cat's-paw of Spain; and now, with an empty exchequer and a profoundly
discontented people, was obliged again to shift its balance to the side
which promised the best hopes for peace, and to redress the equilibrium in
Europe upon which the English power depended. France was still rich in
resources, and was made to pay or rather promise the vast sum of two
million crowns in instalments, and an annuity of a hundred thousand a year
to the King for England's friendship, whilst Francis was forced to abandon
all his claims on Italy and Burgundy (January 1526), and marry the
Emperor's sister Leonora, before he was permitted to return to France, at
peace once more. It is true that every party to the treaties endeavoured
to evade the fulfilment of his pledges; but that was the custom of the
times. The point that interests us here is that the new policy now
actively pursued by Wolsey of close friendship with France, necessarily
meant the ruin of Katharine, unless she was dexterous and adaptable enough
either to reverse the policy or openly espouse it. Unfortunately she did
neither. She was now forty-one years of age, and had ceased for nearly two
years to cohabit with her husband. Her health was bad; she had grown
stout, and her comeliness had departed; all hopes of her giving to the
King the son and heir for whom he so ardently craved had quite vanished,
and with them much of her personal hold upon her husband. To her alarm and
chagrin, Henry, as if in despair of being succeeded by a legitimate heir,
in 1525, before signing the new alliance with France, had created his
dearly loved natural son, Henry Fitzroy, a duke under the royal title of
Duke of Richmond, which had been borne by his father; and Katharine, not
without reason, feared the King's intention to depose her daughter, the
betrothed of the Emperor, in favour of an English bastard. We have in
previous pages noticed the peculiar absence of tact and flexibility in
Katharine's character; and Wolsey's ostentatious French leanings after
1525 were met by the Queen with open opposition and acrimonious reproach,
instead of by temporising wiliness. The Emperor's off-hand treatment of
his betrothed bride, Mary Tudor, further embittered Katharine, who was
thus surrounded on every side by disillusionment and disappointment.
Charles sent commissioners to England just before the battle of Pavia to
demand, amongst other unamiable requirements, the prompt sending of Mary,
who was only nine years old, to Flanders with an increased dowry. This was
no part of the agreement, and was, as no doubt Charles foresaw and
desired, certain to be refused. The envoys received from Henry and
Katharine, and more emphatically from Wolsey, a negative answer to the
request,[35] Mary being, as they said, the greatest treasure they had, for
whom no hostages would be sufficient.[36] Katharine would not let her
nephew slip out of his engagement without a struggle. Mary herself was
made soon after to send a fine emerald to her betrothed with a grand
message to the effect that when they came together she would be able to
know (_i.e._ by the clearness or otherwise of the gem) "whether his
Majesty do keep himself as continent and chaste as, with God's grace, she
will." As at this time the Emperor was a man of twenty-five, whilst his
bride had not reached ten years, the cases were hardly parallel; and
within three months (in July 1525) Charles had betrothed himself to his
cousin of Portugal. The treaty that had been so solemnly sworn to on the
high altar at Windsor only three years before, had thus become so much
waste-paper, and Katharine's best hopes for her child and herself were
finally defeated. A still greater trial for her followed; for whilst
Wolsey was drawing nearer and nearer to France, and the King himself was
becoming more distant from his wife every day, the little Princess was
taken from the loving care of her mother, and sent to reside in her
principality of Wales.[37] Thenceforward the life of Katharine was a
painful martyrdom without one break in the monotony of misfortune.
Katharine appears never to have been unduly jealous of Henry's various
mistresses. She, one of the proudest princesses in Christendom, probably
considered them quite beneath her notice, and as usual adjuncts to a
sovereign's establishment. Henry, moreover, was far from being a generous
or complaisant lover; and allowed his lady favourites no great social and
political power, such as that wielded by the mistresses of Francis I. Lady
Tailebois (Eleanor Blount) made no figure at Court, and Mary Boleyn, the
wife of William Carey, a quite undistinguished courtier, who had been
Henry's mistress from about 1521,[38] was always impecunious and sometimes
disreputable, though her greedy father reaped a rich harvest from his
daughter's attractions. Katharine evidently troubled herself very little
about such infidelity on the part of her husband, and certainly Wolsey had
no objection. The real anxiety of the Queen arose from Henry's ardent
desire for a legitimate son, which she could not hope to give him; and
Wolsey, with his eyes constantly fixed on the Papacy, decided to make
political capital and influence for himself by binding France and England
so close together both dynastically and politically as to have both kings
at his bidding before the next Pope was elected. The first idea was the
betrothal of the jilted Princess Mary of ten to the middle-aged widower
who sat upon the throne of France. An embassy came to London from the
Queen Regent of France, whilst Francis was still a prisoner in Madrid in
1525, to smooth the way for a closer intimacy. Special instructions were
given to the ambassador to dwell upon the complete recovery of Francis
from his illness, and to make the most of the Emperor's unfaithfulness to
his English betrothed for the purpose of marrying the richly dowered
Portuguese. Francis eventually regained his liberty on hard conditions
that included his marriage with Charles's widowed sister Leonora, Queen
Dowager of Portugal; and his sons were to remain in Spain as hostages for
his fulfilment of the terms. But from the first Francis intended to
violate the treaty of Madrid, wherever possible; and early in 1527 a
stately train of French nobles, headed by De Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes,
came with a formal demand for the hand of young Mary Tudor for the already
much-married Francis. Again the palace of Greenwich was a blaze of
splendour for the third nuptials of the little princess; and the elaborate
mummery that Henry loved was re-enacted.[39] On the journeys to and from
their lodgings in Merchant Taylors' Hall, the Bishop of Tarbes and
Viscount de Turenne heard nothing but muttered curses, saw nothing but
frowning faces of the London people; for Mary was in the eyes of Henry's
subjects the heiress of England, and they would have, said they, no
Frenchman to reign over them when their own king should die.[40] Katharine
took little part in the betrothal festivities, for she was a mere shadow
now. Her little daughter was made to show off her accomplishments to the
Frenchmen, speaking to them in French and Latin, playing on the
harpsichord, and dancing with the Viscount de Turenne, whilst the poor
Queen looked sadly on. Stiff with gems and cloth of gold, the girl,
appearing, we are told, "like an angel," gravely played her part to her
proud father's delight, and the Bishop of Tarbes took back with him to his
master enthusiastic praises of this "pearl of the world," the backward
little girl of eleven, who was destined, as Francis said, to be the
"cornerstone of the new covenant" between France and England, either by
her marriage with himself, or, failing that, with his second son, the Duke
of Orleans, which in every respect would have been a most suitable match.
No sooner had the treaty of betrothal been signed than there came (2nd
June 1527) the tremendous news that the Emperor's troops under Bourbon had
entered and sacked Rome with ruthless fury, and that Pope Clement was a
prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo, clamouring for aid from all
Christian princes against his impious assailants. All those kings who
looked with distrust upon the rapidly growing power of Charles drew closer
together. When the news came, Wolsey was in France on his embassy of
surpassing magnificence, whilst public discontent in England at what was
considered his warlike policy was already swelling into fierce
denunciations against him, his pride, his greed, and his French
proclivities. English people cared little for the troubles of the Italian
Pope; or indeed for anything else, so long as they were allowed to live
and trade in peace; and they knew full well that war with the Emperor
would mean the closing of the rich Flemish and Spanish markets to them, as
well as the seizure of their ships and goods. But to Wolsey's ambition the
imprisonment of Clement VII. seemed to open a prospect of unlimited power.
If Francis and Henry were closely allied, with the support of the Papacy
behind them, Wolsey might be commissioned to exercise the Papal authority
until he relieved the Pontiff from duress, and in due course might succeed
to the chair of St. Peter. So, deaf to the murmuring of the English
people, he pressed on; his goal being to bind France and England closely
together that he might use them both.
The marriage treaty of Mary with the Duke of Orleans, instead of with his
father, was agreed upon by Francis and the Cardinal at Amiens in August
1527. But Wolsey knew that the marriage of the children could not be
completed for some years yet, and he was impatient to forge an immediately
effective bond. Francis had a sister and a sister-in-law of full age,
either of whom might marry Henry. But Katharine stood in the way, and she
was the personification of the imperial connection. Wolsey had no
scruples: he knew how earnestly his master wished for a son to inherit his
realm, and how weak of will that master was if only he kept up the
appearance of omnipotence. He knew that Katharine, disappointed, glum, and
austere, had lost the charm by which women rule men, and the plan, that
for many months he had been slowly and stealthily devising, was boldly
brought out to light of day. Divorce was easy, and it would finally
isolate the Emperor if Katharine were set aside. The Pope would do
anything for his liberators: why not dissolve the unfruitful marriage, and
give to England a new French consort in the person of either the widowed
Margaret Duchess of Alencon, or of Princess Renee? It is true that the
former indignantly refused the suggestion, and dynastic reasons prevented
Francis from favouring that of a marriage of Renee of France and Brittany
with the King of England; but women, and indeed men, were for Wolsey but
puppets to be moved, not creatures to be consulted, and the Cardinal went
back to England exultant, and hopeful that, at last, he would compass his
aspiration, and make himself ruler of the princes of Christendom. Never
was hope more fallacious or fortune's irony more bitter. With a strong
master Wolsey would have won; with a flabby sensualist as his
stalking-horse he was bound to lose, unless he remained always at his
side. The Cardinal's absence in France was the turning-point of his
fortunes; whilst he was glorying abroad, his enemies at home dealt him a
death-blow through a woman.
At exactly what period, or by whom, the idea of divorcing Katharine at
this time had been broached to Henry, it is difficult to say; but it was
no unpardonable or uncommon thing for monarchs, for reasons of dynastic
expediency, to put aside their wedded wives. Popes, usually in a hurry to
enrich their families, could be bribed or coerced; and the interests of
the individual, even of a queen-consort, were as nothing in comparison of
those of the State, as represented by the sovereign. If the question of
religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a
Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended,
instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been
little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of
the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of
his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time
consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered
by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move.
It is probable that the Bishop of Tarbes, when he was in England in the
spring of 1527 for the betrothal of Mary, conferred with Wolsey as to the
possibility of Henry's marriage to a French princess, which of course
would involve the repudiation of Katharine. In any case the King and
Wolsey--whether truly or not--asserted that the Bishop had first started
the question of the validity of Henry's marriage with his wife, with
special reference to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, who was to be
betrothed to Francis I. or his son. It may be accepted as certain,
however, that the matter had been secretly fermenting ever since Wolsey
began to shift the centre of gravity from the Emperor towards France.
Katharine may have suspected it, though as yet no word reached her. But
she was angry at the intimate hobnobbing with France, at her daughter's
betrothal to the enemy of her house, and at the elevation of Henry's
bastard son to a royal dukedom. She was deeply incensed, too, at her
alienation from State affairs, and had formed around her a cabal of
Wolsey's enemies, for the most part members of the older nobility
traditionally in favour of the Spanish alliance and against France, in
order, if possible, to obstruct the Cardinal's policy.[41]
The King, no doubt fully aware of Wolsey's plan, was as usual willing to
wound, but yet afraid to strike; not caring how much wrong he did if he
could only gloze it over to appear right and save his own responsibility
before the world. The first formal step, which was taken in April 1527,
was carefully devised with this end. Henry, representing that his
conscience was assailed by doubts, secretly consulted certain of his
councillors as to the legality of his union with his deceased brother's
widow. It is true that he had lived with her for eighteen years, and that
any impediment to the marriage on the ground of affinity had been
dispensed with to the satisfaction of all parties at the time by the
Pope's bull. But trifles such as these could never stand in the way of so
tender a conscience as that of Henry Tudor, or so overpowering an ambition
as that of his minister. The councillors--most of those chosen were of
course French partisans--thought the case was very doubtful, and were
favourable to an inquiry.
On the 17th May 1527, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, it will be
recollected, had always been against the marriage; with Wolsey, Stephen
Gardiner, and certain doctors-of-law, held a private sitting at the York
House, Westminster, at which the King had been cited to appear and answer
the charge of having lived in incest with his sister-in-law. The Court was
adjourned twice, to the 20th and 31st May, during which time the sham
pleadings for and against the King were carefully directed to the desired
end. But before the first sitting was well over the plot got wind and
reached Katharine. The Queen and the imperial connection were popular,
Wolsey and the French were feared and detested. The old nobility and the
populace were on the Queen's side; the mere rumour of what was intended by
the prelates at York House set people growling ominously, and the friends
of the Spanish-Flemish alliance became threateningly active. The King and
Wolsey saw that for a decree of nullity to be pronounced by Warham and
Wolsey alone, after a secret inquiry at which the Queen was not
represented, would be too scandalous and dangerous in the state of public
feeling, and an attempt was made to get the bishops generally to decide,
in answer to a leading question, that such a marriage as that of the King
and Katharine was incestuous. But the bishops were faithful sons of the
Papacy, and most of them shied at the idea of ignoring the Pope's bull
allowing the marriage. Henry had also learnt during the proceedings of
the sacking of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, which was another
obstacle to his desires, for though the Pope would doubtless have been
quite ready to oblige his English and French friends to the detriment of
the Emperor when he was free, it was out of the question that he should do
so now that he and his dominions were at the mercy of the imperial troops.
The King seems to have had an idea that he might by his personal
persuasion bring his unaccommodating wife to a more reasonable frame of
mind. He and Wolsey had been intensely annoyed that she had learnt so
promptly of the plot against her, but since some spy had told her, it was
as well, thought Henry, that she should see things in their proper light.
With a sanctimonious face he saw her on the 22nd June 1527, and told her
how deeply his conscience was touched at the idea that they had been
living in mortal sin for so many years. In future, he said, he must
abstain from her company, and requested that she would remove far away
from Court. She was a haughty princess--no angel in temper,
notwithstanding her devout piety; and she gave Henry the vigorous answer
that might have been expected. They were man and wife, as they had always
been, she said, with the full sanction of the Church and the world, and
she would stay where she was, strong in her rights as an honest woman and
a queen. It was not Henry's way to face a strong opponent, unless he had
some one else to support him and bear the brunt of the fight, and, in
accordance with his character, he whined that he never meant any harm: he
only wished to discover the truth, to set at rest the scruples raised by
the Bishop of Tarbes. All would be for the best, he assured his angry
wife; but pray keep the matter secret.[42]
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.