HENRY VIII. AND CARDINAL WOLSEY. A.D. 1509--1529.
The new king was very fond of the Princess Katharine, and he married
her soon after his father's death, without asking any more questions
about the right or wrong of it. He began with very gallant and
prosperous times. He was very handsome, and skilled in all sports
and games, and had such frank, free manners, that the people felt as
if they had one of their best old Plantagenets back again. They were
pleased, too, when he quarreled with the King of France, and like an
old Plantagenet, led an army across the sea and besieged the town of
Tournay. Again, it was like the time of Edward III., for James IV.
of Scotland was a friend of the French king, and came across the
Border with all the strength of Scotland, to ravage England while
Henry was away. But there were plenty of stout Englishmen left, and
under the Earl of Surrey, they beat the Scots entirely at the battle
of Flodden field; and King James himself was not taken, but left dead
upon the field, while his kingdom went to his poor little baby son.
Though there had been a battle in France it was not another Crecy,
for the French ran away so fast that it was called the battle of the
Spurs. However, Henry's expedition did not come to much, for he did
not get all the help he was promised; and he made peace with the
French king, giving him in marriage his beautiful young sister Mary--
though King Louis was an old, helpless, sickly man. Indeed, he only
lived six weeks after the wedding, and before there was time to fetch
Queen Mary home again, she had married a gentleman named Charles
Brandon. She told he brother that she had married once to please
him, and now she had married to please herself. But he forgave her,
and made her husband Duke of Suffolk.
Henry's chief adviser, at this time, was Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop
of York; a very able man, and of most splendid tastes and habits--
outdoing even the Tudors in love of show. The pope had made him a
cardinal--that is, one of the clergy, who are counted as parish
priests in the diocese of Rome, and therefore have a right to choose
the pope. They wear scarlet hats, capes, and shoes, and are the
highest rank of all the clergy except the pope. Indeed, Cardinal
Wolsey was in hopes of being chosen pope himself, and setting the
whole Church to rights--for there had been several very wicked men
reigning at Rome, one after the other, and they had brought things
to such a pass that everyone felt there would be some great judgment
from God if some improvement were not made. Most of Wolsey's
arrangements with foreign princes had this end in view. The new
king of France, Francis I., was young, brilliant and splendid, like
Henry, and the two had a conference near Calais, when they brought
their queens and their whole Court, and put up tents of velvet, silk,
and gold--while everything was so extraordinarily magnificent, that
the meeting has ever since been called the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
However, nothing came of it all. Cardinal Wolsey thought Francis's
enemy--the Emperor Charles V.--more likely to help him to be pope,
and make his master go over to that side; but after all an Italian
was chosen in his stead. And there came a new trouble in his way.
The king and queen had been married a good many years, and they had
only one child alive, and that was a girl, the Lady Mary--all the
others had died as soon as they were born--and statesmen began to
think that if there never was a son at all, there might be fresh wars
when Henry died; while others said that the loss of the children was
to punish them for marrying unlawfully. Wolsey himself began to wish
that the pope would say that it had never been a real marriage, and
so to set the king free to put Katharine away and take another wife--
some grand princess abroad. This was thinking more of what seemed
prudent than of the right; and it turned out ill for Wolsey and all
besides, for no sooner had the notion of setting aside poor Katharine
come into his mind, than the king cast his eyes on Anne Boleyn, one
of her maids of honor--a lively lady, who had been to France with his
sister Mary. He was bent on marrying her, and insisted on the pope's
giving sentence against Katharine. But the pope would not make any
answer at all; first, because he was enquiring, and then because he
could not well offend Katharine's nephew, the Emperor. Time went on,
and the king grew more impatient, and at last a clergyman, named
Thomas Cranmer, said that he might settle the matter by asking the
learned men at the universities whether it was lawful for a man to
marry his brother's widow. "He has got the right sow by the ear,"
cried Henry, who was not choice in his words, and he determined that
the universities should decide it. But Wolsey would not help the
king here. He knew that the pope had been the only person to decide
such questions all over the Western Church for many centuries; and,
besides, he had never intended to assist the king to lower himself by
taking a wife like Anne Boleyn. But his secretary, Thomas Crumwell,
told the king all of Wolsey's disapproval, and between them they found
out something that the cardinal had done by the king's own wish, but
which did not agree with the old disused laws. He was put down from
all his offices of state, and accused of treason against the king; but
while he was being brought to London to be tried, he became so ill at
the abbey at Leicester that he was forced to remain there, and in a
few days he died, saying, sadly--"If I had served God as I have served
my king, He would not have forsaken me in my old age."
With Cardinal Wolsey ended the first twenty years of Henry's reign,
and all that had ever been good in it.