SEPARATION OF THE KING AND QUEEN.
(MARCH TO JUNE 1531.)
The king, having obtained so important a concession from the clergy,
turned to his parliament to ask a service of another kind,—one in his
eyes still more urgent.
On the 30th of March, 1531, the session being about to terminate, Sir
Thomas More, the chancellor, went down to the House of Commons, and
submitted to them the decision of the various universities on the king’s
marriage and the power of the pope. The Commons looked at the affair
essentially from a political point of view; they did not understand
that, because the king had lived twenty years with the queen, he ought
not to be separated from her. The documents placed before their eyes
‘made them detest the marriage’ of Henry and Catherine.[119] The
chancellor desired the members to report in their respective counties
and towns that the king had not asked for this divorce of his own will
or pleasure, but ‘only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of
the succession of his crown.’[120] ‘Enlighten the people,’ he said, ‘and
preserve peace in the nation, with the sentiments of loyalty due to the
monarch.’
[Sidenote: Catherine’s Reply.]
The king hastened to use the powers which universities, clergy, and
parliament had placed in his hands. Immediately after the prorogation
certain lords went down to Greenwich and laid before the queen the
decisions which condemned her marriage, and urged her to accept the
arbitration of four bishops and four lay peers. Catherine replied, sadly
but firmly,—‘I pray you tell the king I say I am his lawful wife, and in
that point I will abide until the court of Rome determine to the
contrary.’[121]
The divorce which, notwithstanding Catherine’s refusal, was approaching,
caused great agitation among the people; and the members of parliament
had some trouble to preserve order, as Sir Thomas More had desired them.
Priests proclaimed from their pulpits the downfall of the Church and the
coming of Antichrist; the mendicant friars scattered discontent in every
house which they entered, the most fanatical of them not fearing to
insinuate that the wrath of God would soon hurl the impious prince from
his throne. In towns and villages, in castles and alehouses, men talked
of nothing but the divorce and the primacy claimed by the king. Women
standing at their doors, men gathering round the blacksmith’s forge,
spoke more or less disrespectfully of parliament, the bishops, the
dangers of the Romish Church, and the prospects of the Reformation. If a
few friends met at night around the hearth, they told strange tales to
one another. The king, queen, pope, devil, saints, Cromwell, and the
higher clergy formed the subject of their conversation. The gipsies at
that time strolling through the country added to the confusion.
Sometimes they would appear in the midst of these animated discussions,
and prophesy lamentable events, at times calling up the dead to make
them speak of the future. The terrible calamities they predicted froze
their hearers with affright, and their sinister prophecies were the
cause of disorders and even of crimes. Accordingly an act was passed
pronouncing the penalty of banishment against them.[122]
An unfortunate event tended still more to strike men’s imaginations. It
was reported that the Bishop of Rochester, that prelate so terrible to
the reformers and so good to the poor, had narrowly escaped being
poisoned by his cook. Seventeen persons were taken ill after eating
porridge at the episcopal palace. One of the bishop’s gentlemen died, as
well as a poor woman to whom the remains of the food had been given. It
was maliciously remarked that the bishop was the only one who frankly
opposed the divorce and the royal supremacy. Calumny even aimed at the
throne. When Henry heard of this, he resolved to make short work of all
such nonsense; he ordered the offence to be deemed as high-treason, and
the wretched cook was taken to Smithfield, there to be _boiled to
death_.[123] This was a variation of the penalty pronounced upon the
evangelicals. Such was the cruel justice of the sixteenth century.
[Sidenote: Reginald Pole.]
While the universities, parliament, convocation, and the nation appeared
to support Henry VIII., one voice was raised against the divorce. It was
that of a young man brought up by the king, and that voice moved him
deeply. There still remained in England some scions of the house of
York, and among them a nephew of that unhappy Warwick whom Henry VII.
had cruelly put to death. Warwick had left a sister Margaret, and the
king, desirous of appeasing the remorse he suffered on account of the
tragical end of that prince, ‘the most innocent of men,’[124] had
married her to Sir Richard Pole, a gentleman of her own family. She was
left a widow with two daughters and three sons. The youngest, Reginald,
became a favorite with Henry VIII., who destined him for the
archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. ‘Your kindnesses are such,’ said Pole
to him, ‘that a king could grant no more, even to a son.’[125] But
Reginald, to whom his mother had told the story of the execution of the
unhappy Warwick, had contracted an invincible hatred against the Tudors.
Accordingly, in despite of certain evangelical tendencies, Pole, seeing
Henry separating from the pope, resolved to throw himself into the arms
of the pontiff. Reginald, invested with the Roman purple, rose to be
president of the council and primate of all England under Queen Mary.
Elegant in his manners, with a fine intellect, and sincere in his
religious convictions, he was selfish, irritable, and ambitious. Desires
of elevation and revenge led a noble nature astray. If the branch of
which he was the representative was ever to recover the crown, it could
only be by the help of the Roman pontiffs. Henceforward their cause was
his. Loaded with benefits by Henry VIII., he was incessantly pursued by
the recollection of the rights of Rome and of the White Rose; and he
went so far as to insult before all Europe the prince who had been his
first friend.
At this time Pole was living at a house in the country, which Henry had
given him. One day he received at this charming retreat a communication
from the Duke of Norfolk. ‘The king destines you for the highest honors
of the English Church,’ wrote this nobleman, ‘and offers you at once the
important sees of York and Winchester, left vacant by the death of
Cardinal Wolsey.’ At the same time the duke asked Pole’s opinion about
the divorce. Reginald’s brothers, and particularly Lord Montague,
entreated him to answer as all the catholic world had answered, and not
irritate a prince whose anger would ruin them all. The blood of Warwick
and the king’s revolt against Rome induced Pole to reject with horror
all the honors which Henry offered; and yet that prince was his
benefactor. He fancied he had discovered a middle course which would
permit him to satisfy alike his conscience and his king.
He went to Whitehall, where Henry received him like a friend. Pole
hesitated in distress; he wished to let the king know his thoughts, but
the words would not come to his lips. At last, encouraged by the
prince’s affability, he summoned up his resolution, and, in a voice
trembling with emotion, said: ‘You must not separate from the queen.’
Henry had expected something different. Is it thus that his kindnesses
are repaid? His eyes flashed with anger, and he laid his hand on his
sword. Pole humbled himself. ‘If I possess any knowledge, to whom do I
owe it unless to your Majesty? In listening to me you are listening to
your own pupil.’[126] The king recovered himself, and said,—‘I will
consider your opinion, and send you my answer.’ Pole withdrew. ‘He put
me in such a passion,’ said the king to one of his gentlemen, ‘that I
nearly struck him.... But there is something in the man that wins my
heart.’
Montague and Reginald’s other brother again conjured him to accept the
high position which the king reserved for him; but his soul revolted at
being subordinate to a Tudor. He therefore wrote a memoir, which he
presented to Henry, and in which he entreated him to submit implicitly
the divorce question to the court of Rome. ‘How could I speak against
your marriage with the queen?’ he said. ‘Should I not accuse your
Majesty of having lived for more than twenty years in an unlawful
union?[127] By the divorce you will array all the powers against
you,—the pope, the emperor; and as for the French ... we can never find
in our hearts to trust them. You are at this moment on the verge of an
abyss.... One step more, and all is over.[128] There is only one way of
safety left your Grace, and that is submission to the pope.’ Henry was
moved. The boldness with which this young nobleman dared accuse him,
irritated his pride; still his friendship prevailed, and he forgave it.
Pole received the permission he had asked to leave England, with the
promise of the continued payment of his pension.
[Sidenote: Catherine Leaves Windsor.]
Reginald Pole was, as it were, the last link that united the royal pair.
Thus far the king had continued to show the queen every respect; their
mutual affection seemed the same, only they occupied separate
rooms.[129] Henry now decided to take an important step. On the 14th of
July a new deputation entered the queen’s apartment, one of whom
informed her that as her marriage with Prince Arthur had been duly
consummated she could not be the wife of her husband’s brother. Then
after reproaching her with having, contrary to the laws of England and
the dignity of the crown, cited his Majesty before the pope’s tribunal,
he desired her to choose for her residence either the castle of Oking or
of Estamsteed, or the monastery of Bisham. Catherine remained calm, and
replied,—‘Wheresoever I retire, nothing can deprive me of the title
which belongs to me. I shall always be his Majesty’s wife.’[130] She
left Windsor the same day, and removed to the More, a splendid mansion
which Wolsey had surrounded with beautiful gardens; then to Estamsteed,
and finally to Ampthill. The king never saw her again; but all the
papists and discontented rallied round her. She entered into
correspondence with the sovereigns of Europe, and became the centre of a
party opposed to the emancipation of England.
Footnote 119:
Lord Herbert, p. 353.
Footnote 120:
Hall, _Chron. of England_, p. 780.
Footnote 121:
Herbert, p. 354.
Footnote 122:
Bill against conjuration, witchcraft, sorcerers, &c. Henry VIII. cap.
viii.
Footnote 123:
Burnet, i. p. 110.
Footnote 124:
‘Omnium innocentissimum.’—Pole, _De Unitate_, p. 57.
Footnote 125:
‘Ut nec rex pater principi filio majus dare possit.’—Pole, _De
Unitate_, p. 85.
Footnote 126:
‘Cum me audies, alumnum tuum audies.’—Pole, _De Unitate_, p. 3.
Footnote 127:
‘Infra etiam belluarum vitam.’—Ibid. p. 55.
Footnote 128:
‘The king standeth even upon the brink of the water; all his honor is
drowned.’—Ibid.
Footnote 129:
‘Had he not forborne to come to her bed.’—Lord Herbert, p. 335.
Footnote 130:
‘To what place soever she removed, nothing could remove her from being
the king’s wife.’—Herbert, p. 354.