knew the gyze of England as well as few men did, and if the king should die
without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred thousand men's
lives. Wherefore he thought, supposing his Grace should have no more
children by the queen, and that by taking of another wife he might have
heirs male, the bringing to pass that matter, and by that to avoid the
mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."[137] Whatever
doubt their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with
Catherine was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about
the national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had
been free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to
doubt that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to
Henry to marry a second wife--his first being formally, though not
judicially, separated from him--or in some other way.[138] But the emperor
was "a lion in his path;" the question of strength between the French and
the Spaniards remained undecided, and Clement would come to no decision
until he was assured of the power of the allies to protect him from the
consequences. Accordingly he said and unsaid, sighed, sobbed, beat his
breast, shuffled, implored, threatened;[139] in all ways he endeavoured to
escape from his dilemma, to say yes and to say no, to do nothing, to offend
no one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man's hope that
"something might happen" to extricate him. Embassy followed embassy from
England, each using language more threatening than its predecessor. The
thing, it was said, must be done, and should be done. If it was not done by
the pope it would be done at home in some other way, and the pope must take
the consequences.[140] Wolsey warned him passionately of the rising
storm,[141] a storm which would be so terrible when it burst "that it would
be better to die than to live." The pope was strangely unable to believe
that the danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information
from the friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the
attachment of the people to the emperor. He acted throughout in a manner
natural to a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which
he was unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity
his embarrassment. He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to
be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his
judgment seat--a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey's secretary,
thought it well to remind him in the following striking language:--
"Unless," said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the close
of a weary day of unprofitable debating, "unless some other resolution be
taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be gathered a
marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of cardinals, and of
the authority of this See. The King's Highness, and the nobles of the realm
who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think that your Holiness and
these most reverend and learned councillors either will not answer in this
cause, or cannot answer. If you will not, if you do not choose to point out
the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they
will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most
oblivious! You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and
craft, and dissembling. If the king's cause be good, we require that you
pronounce it good. If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to
hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with
it? We ask nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values,
that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will
follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for
the marriage or against the marriage.'
"But if the King's Majesty," continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of
the difficulty, "if the King's Majesty and the nobility of England, being
persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to
doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion
respecting this See--namely, that God has taken from it the key of
knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some
persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those papal laws
which neither the pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only
to be committed to the flames." "I desired his Holiness," he adds, "to
ponder well this matter."[142]
Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never failed
him. He answered that he was not learned, and "to speak truth, albeit there
was a saying in the canon law, that _Pontifex habet omnia jura in scrinio
pectoris_ (the pope has all laws locked within his breast), yet God had
never given him the key to open that lock." He was but "seeking pretexts"
for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the Italian campaign of the
French in the summer of 1528 was decided. He had been liberated, or had
been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that if detained longer he
might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an old ruined castle at
Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City still occupied by the
Prince of Orange. In the preceding autumn, immediately after the congress
at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by several English noblemen, had led
an army across the Alps. He had defeated the Imperialists in the north of
Italy in several minor engagements; and in January his success appeared so
probable, that the pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis,
that if the French would only approach near enough to enable him to plead
compulsion, he would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to
conclude the cause.[143] De Lautrec, however, foiled in his desire to bring
the Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in
ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy
plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the battle
of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the Alps; and
with them all Wolsey's hopes of realising his dream. Struck down, not by a
visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French general himself,
his English friends, and all his army melted away from off the earth. The
pope had been wise in time. He had committed himself in words and
intentions; but he had done nothing which he could not recall. He obtained
his pardon from the emperor by promising to offend no more; and from that
moment never again entertained any real thought of concession. Acting under
explicit directions, he made it his object thenceforward to delay and to
procrastinate. Charles had no desire to press matters to extremities. War
had not yet been declared[144] against him by Henry; nor was he anxious
himself to precipitate a quarrel from which, if possible, he would gladly
escape. He had a powerful party in England, which it was unwise to alienate
by hasty, injudicious measures; and he could gain all which he himself
desired by a simple policy of obstruction. His object was merely to
protract the negotiation and prevent a decision, in the hope either that
Henry would be wearied into acquiescence, or that Catherine herself would
retire of her own accord, or, finally, that some happy accident might occur
to terminate the difficulty. It is, indeed, much to the honour of Charles
V. that he resolved to support the queen. She had thrown herself on his
protection; but princes in such matters consider prudence more than
feeling, and he could gain nothing by defending her: while, both for
himself and for the church he risked the loss of much. He over-rated the
strength of his English connection, and mistook the English character; but
he was not blind to the hazard which he was incurring, and would have
welcomed an escape from the dilemma perhaps as warmly as Henry would have
welcomed it himself. The pope, who well knew his feelings, told Gardiner,
"It would be for the wealth of Christendom if the queen were in her
grave; and he thought the emperor would be thereof most glad of all;"
saying, also, "that he thought like as the emperor had destroyed the
temporalities of the church, so should she be the destruction of the
spiritualities."[145]
In the summer of 1528, before the disaster at Naples, Cardinal Campeggio
had left Rome on his way to England, where he was to hear the cause in
conjunction with Wolsey. An initial measure of this obvious kind it had
been impossible to refuse; and the pretexts under which it was for many
months delayed, were exhausted before the pope's ultimate course had been
made clear to him. But Campeggio was instructed to protract his journey to
its utmost length, giving time for the campaign to decide itself. He
loitered into the autumn, under the excuse of gout and other convenient
accidents, until the news reached him of De Lautrec's death, which took
place on the 21st of August; and then at length proceeding, he betrayed to
Francis I., on passing through Paris, that he had no intention of allowing
judgment to be passed upon the cause.[146] Even Wolsey was beginning to
tremble at what he had attempted, and was doubtful of success.[147] The
seeming relief came in time, for Henry's patience was fast running out. He
had been over-persuaded into a course which he had never cordially
approved. The majority of the council, especially the Duke of Norfolk and
the Duke of Suffolk, were traditionally imperial, and he himself might well
doubt whether he might not have found a nearer road out of his difficulties
by adhering to Charles. Charles, after all, was not ruining the papacy, and
had no intention of ruining it; and his lightest word weighed more at the
court of Rome than the dubious threats and prayers of France. The Bishop of
Bayonne, resident French ambassador in London, whose remarkable letters
transport us back into the very midst of that unquiet and stormy scene,
tells us plainly that the French alliance was hated by the country, that
the nobility were all for the emperor, and that among the commons the
loudest discontent was openly expressed against Wolsey from the danger of
the interruption of the trade with Flanders. Flemish ships had been
detained in London, and English ships in retaliation had been arrested in
the Zealand ports; corn was unusually dear, and the expected supplies from
Spain and Germany were cut off;[148] while the derangement of the woollen
trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to venture purchases, was
causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey had been driven to the
most arbitrary measures to prevent open disturbance.[149] He had set his
hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not believe could
fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel his declining
credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the 20th of August, 1528, that
the cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in confidence, that "if
he could only see the divorce arranged, the king remarried, the succession
settled, and the laws and the manners and customs of the country reformed,
he would retire from the world and would serve God the remainder of his
days."[150] To these few trifles he would be contented to confine
himself--only to these; he was past sixty, he was weary of the world, and
his health was breaking, and he would limit his hopes to the execution of a
work for which centuries imperfectly sufficed. It seemed as if he measured
his stature by the lengthening shadow, as his sun made haste to its
setting. Symptoms of misgiving may be observed in the many anxious letters
which he wrote while Campeggio was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of
Bayonne, whose less interested eyes could see more deeply into the game,
warned him throughout that the pope was playing him false.[151] Only in a
revulsion from violent despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed
himself, on the mere arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from
him, to write in the following strain to Sir Gregory Cassalis:--
"You cannot believe the exultation with which at length I find myself
successful in the object for which these many years, with all my industry,
I have laboured. At length I have found means to bind my most excellent
sovereign and this glorious realm to the holy Roman see in faith and
obedience for ever. Henceforth will this people become the most sure pillar
of support to bear up the sacred fabric of the church. Henceforth, in
recompense for that enduring felicity which he has secured to it, our most
Holy Lord has all England at his devotion. In brief time will this noble
land make its grateful acknowledgments to his clemency at once for the
preservation of the most just, most wise, most excellent of princes, and
for the secure establishment of the realm and the protection of the royal
succession."[152]
This letter was dated on the fourth of October, and was written in the hope
that the pope had collected his courage, and that the legate had brought
powers to proceed to judgment. In a few days the prospect was again
clouded, and Wolsey was once more in despair.[153] Campeggio had brought
with him instructions if possible to arrange a compromise,--if a compromise
was impossible, to make the best use of his ingenuity, and do nothing and
allow nothing to be done. In one of two ways, however, it was hoped that he
might effect a peaceful solution. He urged the king to give way and to
proceed no further; and this failing, as he was prepared to find, he urged
the same thing upon the queen.[154] He invited Catherine, or he was
directed to invite her, in the pope's name,[155] for the sake of the
general interests of Christendom, to take the vows and enter what was
called _religio laxa_, a state in which she might live unincumbered by
obligations except the easy one of chastity, and free from all other
restrictions either of habit, diet, or order. The proposal was Wolsey's,
and was formed when he found the limited nature of Campeggio's
instructions;[156] but it was adopted by the latter; and I cannot but think
(though I have no proof of it) that it was not adopted without the
knowledge of the emperor. Whatever were his own interests, Charles V. gave
Catherine his unwavering support: he made it his duty to maintain her in
the ignominious position in which she was placed, and submitted his own
conduct to be guided by her wishes. It cannot be doubted, however, from the
pope's words, and also from the circumstances of the case, that if she
could have prevailed upon herself to yield, it would have relieved him from
a painful embarrassment. As a prince, he must have felt the substantial
justice of Henry's demand, and in refusing to allow the pope to pass a
judicial sentence of divorce, he could not but have known that he was
compromising the position of the Holy See: while Catherine herself, on the
other hand, if she had yielded, would have retired without a stain; no
opinion would have been pronounced upon her marriage; the legitimacy of the
Princess Mary would have been left without impeachment; and her right to
the succession, in the event of no male heir following from any new
connection which the king might form, would have been readily secured to
her by act of parliament. It may be asked why she did not yield, and it is
difficult to answer the question. She was not a person who would have been
disturbed by the loss of a few court vanities. Her situation as Henry's
wife could not have had many charms for her, nor can it be thought that she
retained a personal affection for him. If she had loved him, she would have
suffered too deeply in the struggle to have continued to resist, and the
cloister would have seemed a paradise. Or if the cloister had appeared too
sad a shelter for her, she might have gone back to the gardens of the
Alhambra, where she had played as a child, carrying with her the
affectionate remembrance of every English heart, and welcomed by her own
people as an injured saint. Nor again can we suppose that the possible
injury of her daughter's prospects from the birth of a prince by another
marriage could have seemed of so vast moment to her. Those prospects were
already more than endangered, and would have been rather improved than
brought into further peril.
It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under
injuries so cruel ought to have pursued. She had a right to choose the
course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not
claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might have
demanded and exacted of one of its own children. We may regret, however,
what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity could
scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which the Queen
returned to the legate's request. She seems to have said that she was ready
to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same. It does not appear
whether the request was _formally_ made, or whether it was merely suggested
to her in private conversation. That she told the legates, however, what
her answer would be, appears certain from the following passage, sadly
indicating the "devices of policy" to which in this unhappy business
honourable men allowed themselves to be driven:--
"Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous difficulty,
and in nowise be conformable to enter religion[157] or take vows of
chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means of
high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to the
same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will condescend
so to do, unless that the King's Highness also do the semblable for his
part; the king's said orators shall therefore in like wise ripe and
instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the court of Rome,
if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king's succession, realm, and
subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his Grace should promise so to
enter religion on vows of chastity for his part, only thereby to conduce
the queen thereunto, whether in that case the Pope's Holiness may dispense
with the King's Highness for the same promise, oath, or vow, discharging
his Grace clearly of the same."[158]
The explanation of the queen's conduct lies probably in regions into which
it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged delicacy
and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been enacted behind
the scenes. From the significant hints which are let fall of the original
cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more difficult to endure than
the ordinary trial of married women, the transfer of a husband's affection
to some fairer face; and a wife whom so painful a misfortune had failed to
crush would be likely to have been moved by it to a deeper and more bitter
indignation even, because while she could not blame herself, she knew not
whom she might rightly allow herself to blame. And if this were so, the
king is not likely to have allayed the storm when at length, putting faith
in Wolsey's promises, he allowed himself openly to regard another person as
his future wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same
roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position
openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy
dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival.
Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile
would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be
surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the
bitterness of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own
personal wrongs outweighed the interests of the world. Henry had proceeded
to the last unjustifiable extremity as soon as the character of Campeggio's
mission had been made clear to him, as if to demonstrate to all the world
that he was determined to persevere at all costs and hazards.[160] Taking
the management of the negotiation into his own keeping, he sent Sir Francis
Bryan, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, to the pope, to announce that what he
required must be done, and to declare peremptorily, no more with covert
hints, but with open menace, that in default of help from Rome, he would
lay the matter before parliament, to be settled at home by the laws of his
own country.
Meanwhile, the emperor, who had hitherto conducted himself with the
greatest address, had fallen into his first error. He had retreated
skilfully out of the embarrassment in which the pope's imprisonment
involved him, and mingling authority and dictation with kindness and
deference, he had won over the Holy See to his devotion, and neutralised
the danger to which the alliance of France and England threatened to expose
him. His correspondence with the latter country assured him of the
unpopularity of the course which had been pursued by the cardinal; he was
aware of the obstruction of trade which it had caused, and of the general
displeasure felt by the people at the breach of an old friendship; while
the league with France in behalf of the Roman church had been barren of
results, and was made ridiculous by the obvious preference of the pope for
the enemy from whom it was formed to deliver him. If Charles had understood
the English temper, therefore, and had known how to avail himself of the
opportunity, events might have run in a very different channel. But he was
not aware of the earnestness with which the people were bent upon securing
the succession, nor of their loyal attachment to Henry. He supposed that
disapproval of the course followed by Wolsey to obtain the divorce implied
an aversion to it altogether; and trusting to his interest in the privy
council, and to his commercial connection with the city, he had attempted
to meet menace with menace; he had replied to the language addressed by
Henry to the pope with an attempt to feel the pulse of English
disaffection, and he opened a correspondence with the Earl of Desmond for
an Irish revolt.[161]
The opportunity for a movement of this kind had not yet arrived. There was,
in England at least, as yet no wide disaffection; but there was a chance of
serious outbreaks; and Henry instantly threw himself upon the nation. He
summoned the peers by circular to London, and calling a general meeting,
composed of the nobility, the privy council, the lord mayor, and the great
merchants of the city, he laid before them a specific detail of his objects
in desiring the divorce;[162] and informed them of the nature of the
measures which had been taken.[163] This, the French ambassador informs us,
gave wide satisfaction and served much to allay the disquiet; but so great
was the indignation against Wolsey, that disturbances in London were every
day anticipated; and at one time the danger appeared so threatening, that
an order of council was issued, commanding all strangers to leave the city,
and a general search was instituted for arms.[164] The strangers aimed at
were the Flemings, whose numbers made them formidable, and who were,
perhaps, supposed to be ready to act under instruction from abroad. The
cloud, however, cleared away; the order was not enforced; and the
propitious moment for treason had not yet arrived. The emperor had felt so
confident that, in the autumn of 1528, he had boasted that, "before the
winter was over, he would fling Henry from his throne by the hands of his
own Subjects." The words had been repeated to Wolsey, who mentioned them
openly at his table before more than a hundred gentlemen. A person present
exclaimed, "That speech has lost the emperor more than a hundred thousand
hearts among us;"[165] an expression which reveals at once the strength and
the weakness of the imperial party. England might have its own opinions of
the policy of the government, but it was in no humour to tolerate treason,
and the first hint of revolt was followed by an instant recoil. The
discovery of more successful intrigues in Scotland and Ireland completed
the destruction of Charles's influence;[166] and the result of these
ill-judged and premature efforts was merely to unite the nation in their
determination to prosecute the divorce.
Thus were the various parties in the vast struggle which was about to
commence gravitating into their places; and mistake combined with policy to
place them in their true positions. Wolsey, in submitting "the king's
matter" to the pope, had brought to issue the question whether the papal
authority should be any longer recognised in England; and he had secured
the ruin of that authority by the steps through which he hoped to establish
it; while Charles, by his unwise endeavours to foment a rebellion, severed
with his own hand the links of a friendship which would have been seriously
embarrassing if it had continued. By him, also, was dealt the concluding
stroke in this first act of the drama; and though we may grant him credit
for the ingenuity of his contrivance, he can claim it only at the expense
of his probity. The pope, when the commission was appointed for the trial
of the cause in England, had given a promise in writing that the commission
should not be revoked. It seemed, therefore, that the legates would be
compelled, in spite of themselves, to pronounce sentence; and that the
settlement of the question, in one form or other, could not long be
delayed. At the pressure of the crisis in the winter of 1528-9, a document
was produced alleged to have been found in Spain, which furnished a pretext
for a recall of the engagement, and opening now questions, indefinite and
inexhaustible, rendered the passing of a sentence in England impossible.
Unhappily, the weight of the king's claim (however it had been rested on
its true merits in conversation and in letters) had, by the perverse
ingenuity of the lawyers, been laid on certain informalities and defects in
the original bull of dispensation, which had been granted by Julius II. for
the marriage of Henry and Catherine. At the moment when the legates' court
was about to be opened, a copy of a brief was brought forward, bearing the
same date as the bull, exactly meeting the objection. The authenticity of
this brief was open, on its own merits, to grave doubt; and suspicion
becomes certainty when we find it was dropped out of the controversy so
soon as the immediate object was gained for which it was produced. But the
legates' hands were instantly tied by it. The "previous question" of
authenticity had necessarily to be tried before they could take another
step; and the "original" of the brief being in the hands of the emperor,
who refused to send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the
cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was
unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision.
He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the
purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that
he did not intend--of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to
the supremacy of the Holy See.
The spring of 1529 was wasted in fruitless efforts to obtain the brief. At
length, in May, the proceedings were commenced; but they were commenced
only in form, and were never more than an illusion. Catherine had been
instructed in the course which she was to pursue. She appealed from the
judgment of the legates to that of the pope; and the pope, with the plea of
the new feature which had arisen in the case, declared that he could not
refuse to revoke his promise. Having consented to the production of the
brief, he had in fact no alternative; nor does it appear what he could have
urged in excuse of himself. He may have suspected the forgery; nay, it is
certain that in England he was believed to be privy to it; but he could not
ignore an important feature of necessary evidence, especially when pressed
upon him by the emperor; and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to
admit the authority of a papal commission, and to refuse to permit an
appeal from it to the pope in person. We may thank Clement for dispelling a
chimera by a simple act of consistency. The power of the See of Rome in
England was a constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that
it would consent to be inert. So long as a legate's court sat in London,
men were able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign
jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence
was respected; when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one
consequence was possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a
foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to
inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.
So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of
maintaining the pope's authority in England under any form. The people were
smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to see
the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the
arbitration of a foreign prince. The emperor, not the pope, was the true
judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to
tolerate longer a national dishonour.
"The great men of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in bitter
wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they
are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to
themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to
see the pope's authority in this country diminished or annulled, are
speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror."[167]
And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of
negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties, when they
were informed that the further hearing of the cause was transferred to
Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in protest before
such a dream of shame. He was no more the Roman legate, but the English
minister.
"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,[168] "or shall now at
any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by
proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or
excommunication, _vel cum invocatione brachii sæcularis_, whereby the king
should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and
prerogative royal of the king's crown, whereunto all the nobles and
subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not
tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed. And to say the truth, in so
doing the pope should not only show himself the king's enemy, but also as
much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the
semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen that the king's cause shall be
ventilated or decided in any place out of his own realm; _but that if his
Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same
with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all
Italy_."[169]
Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed,
Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a
revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII., the
country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who
being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and
whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been
directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either
evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or
retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving
evidence of their inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the
ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain
power, had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the
legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.
Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to
venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an
ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was
obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country,
had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.
The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the
torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away. In
modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of
ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been
irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and
who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of
excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his better
judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit without
reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or
permitting it to be obstructed. Like all great English statesmen, he was
constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to perceive the
conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is possible; and
although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of the papacy, he
would not, for the sake of the pope's interest, delay further the
investigation of the complaints of the people against the church; while in
the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to take no steps
except with the consent of the legislature, and in a question of national
moment, to consult only the nation's wishes.
The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the
commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being
the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey's
fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy
from sweeping measures. An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the more
old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,
Archbishop of Canterbury, probably because he originally opposed the
marriage between the king and his sister-in-law, and because it was hoped
that his objections remained unaltered. Warham, however, as we shall see,
had changed his mind: he declined, on the plea of age, and the office of
chancellor was given to Sir Thomas More, perhaps the person least
disaffected to the clergy who could have been found among the leading
laymen. The substance of power was vested in the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the great soldier-nobles of the age, and Sir William Fitz-William,
lord admiral; to all of whom the ecclesiastical domination had been most
intolerable, while they had each of them brilliantly distinguished
themselves in the wars with France and Scotland. According to the French
ambassador, we must add one more minister, supreme, if we may trust him,
above them all. "The Duke of Norfolk," he writes, "is made president of the
council, the Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above them both is
Mistress Anne;"[170] this last addition to the council being one which
boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long detained her
in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of the temper of
the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible pressure of the times,
that the general burden of conversation of the dinner-tables in the great
houses in London was an exulting expectation of a dissolution of the church
establishment, and a confiscation of ecclesiastical property; the king
himself being the only obstacle which was feared by them. "These noble
lords imagine," continues the same writer, "that the cardinal once dead of
ruined, they will incontinently plunder the church, and strip it of all its
wealth," adding that there was no occasion for him to write this in cipher,
for it was everywhere openly spoken of.[171]
Movements, nevertheless, which are pregnant with vital change, are slow in
assuming their essential direction, even after the stir has commenced.
Circumstances do not immediately open themselves; the point of vision
alters gradually; and fragments of old opinions, and prepossessions, and
prejudices remain interfused with the new, even in the clearest minds, and
cannot at a moment be shaken off. Only the unwise change suddenly; and we
can never too often remind ourselves, when we see men stepping forward with
uncertainty and hesitation over a road, where to us, we know the actual
future, all seems so plain, that the road looked different to the actors
themselves, who were beset with imaginations of the past, and to whom the
gloom of the future appeared thronged with phantoms of possible
contingencies. The hasty expectations of the noble lords were checked by
Henry's prudence; and though parties were rapidly arranging themselves,
there was still confusion. The city, though disinclined to the pope and the
church, continued to retain an inclination for the emperor; and the pope
had friends among Wolsey's enemies, who, by his overthrow, were pressed
forward into prominence, and divided the victory with the reformers. The
presence of Sir Thomas More in the council was a guarantee that no
exaggerated measures against the church would be permitted so long as he
held the seals; and Henry, perhaps, was anxious to leave room for
conciliation, which he hoped that the pope would desire as much as himself,
so soon as the meeting of parliament had convinced him that the mutinous
disposition of the nation had not been overstated by his own and Wolsey's
letters.
The impression conceived two years before of the hostile relations between
the pope and Charles had not yet been wholly effaced; and even as late as
September, 1529, after the closing of the legates' court, in the very heat
of the public irritation, there were persons who believed that when Clement
met his imperial captor face to face, and the interview had taken place
which had been arranged for the ensuing January, his eyes would be opened,
and that he would fall back upon England.[172] At the same time, the
incongruities in the constitution of the council became so early apparent,
that their agreement was thought impossible, and Wolsey's return to power
was discussed openly as a probability[173]--a result which Anne Boleyn,
who, better than any other person, knew the king's feelings, never ceased
to fear, till, a year after his disgrace, the welcome news were brought to
her that he had sunk into his long rest, where the sick load of office and
of obloquy would gall his back no more.
There was a third party in the country, unconsidered as yet, who had a part
to play in the historical drama: a party which, indeed, if any one had
known it, was the most important of all; the only one which, in a true,
high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which, little as
it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be done--composed at that
time merely of poor men, poor cobblers, weavers, carpenters, trade
apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low birth and low estate, who
might be seen at night stealing along the lanes and alleys of London,
carrying with them some precious load of books which it was death to
possess; and giving their lives gladly, if it must be so, for the brief
tenure of so dear a treasure. These men, for the present, were likely to
fare ill from the new ministry. They were the disturbers of order, the
anarchists, the men disfigured _pravitate hereticâ_, by monstrous
doctrines, and consequently by monstrous lives--who railed at authorities,
and dared to read New Testaments with their own eyes--who, consequently, by
their excesses and extravagances, brought discredit upon liberal opinions,
and whom moderate liberals (as they always have done, and always will do
while human nature remains itself) held it necessary for their credit's
sake to persecute, that a censorious world might learn to make no confusion
between true wisdom and the folly which seemed to resemble it. The
Protestants had not loved Wolsey, and they had no reason to love him; but
it was better to bear a fagot of dry sticks in a procession when the
punishment was symbolic, than, lashed fast to a stake in Smithfield, amidst
piles of the same fagots kindled into actual flames, to sink into a heap of
blackened dust and ashes; and before a year had passed, they would gladly
have accepted again the hated cardinal, to escape from the philosophic
mercies of Sir Thomas More. The number of English Protestants at this time
it is difficult to conjecture. The importance of such men is not to be
measured by counting heads. In 1526, they were organised into a society,
calling themselves "the Christian brotherhood,"[174] with a central
committee sitting in London; with subscribed funds, regularly audited, for
the purchase of Testaments and tracts; and with paid agents, who travelled
up and down the country to distribute them. Some of the poorer clergy
belonged to the society;[175] and among the city merchants there were many
well inclined to it, and who, perhaps, attended its meetings "by night,
secretly, for fear of the Jews." But, as a rule, "property and influence"
continued to hold aloof in the usual haughty style, and the pioneers of the
new opinions had yet to win their way along a scorched and blackened path
of suffering, before the State would consent to acknowledge them. We think
bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is
inevitable from the constitution of the world. New doctrines ever gain
readiest hearing among the common people; not only because the interests of
the higher classes are usually in some degree connected with the
maintenance of existing institutions; but because ignorance is itself a
protection against the many considerations which embarrass the judgment of
the educated. The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own
apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms;
while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories
which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and one there
which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality,
where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage
and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which,
by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain
them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more
believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily
fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be
attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us,
making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the
proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again
to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves,
the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as
much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than
the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think,
no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of
persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the
injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be
just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human
feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of
harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance,
and even with exultation. The heart, when it is rightly constituted,
corrects the folly of the head; and wise good men, even though they
entertain no conscious misgiving as to the soundness of their theories, may
be delivered from the worst consequences of those theories, by trusting
their more genial instincts. And thus, and thus only, are we justified in
censuring those whose names figure largely in the persecuting lists. Their
defence is impregnable to logic. We blame them for the absence of that
humanity which is deeper than logic, and which should have taught them to
refuse the conclusions of their speculative creed.
Such, then, was the state of parties in the autumn of 1529. The old
conservatives, the political ecclesiastics, had ceased to exist, and the
clergy as a body were paralysed by corruption. There remained--
The English party who had succeeded to power, and who were bent upon a
secular revolt.
The papal party, composed of theoretic theologians, like Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, and represented on the council by Sir Thomas More.
And both of these were united in their aversion to the third party, that of
the doctrinal Protestants, who were still called heretics.
These three substantially divided what was sound in England; the first
composed of the mass of the people, representing the principles of
prudence, justice, good sense, and the working faculties of social life:
the two last sharing between them the higher qualities of nobleness,
enthusiasm, self-devotion; but in their faith being without discretion, and
in their piety without understanding. The problem of the Reformation was to
reunite virtues which could be separated only to their mutual confusion;
and to work out among them such inadequate reconciliation as the wilfulness
of human nature would allow.
Before I close this chapter, which is intended as a general introduction, I
have to say something of two prominent persons whose character antecedent
to the actions in which we are to find them engaged it is desirable that we
should understand; I mean Henry VIII. himself, and the lady whom he had
selected to fill the place from which Catherine of Arragon was to be
deposed.
If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his
loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had
ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have
taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince or of
the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character
unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination,
and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his
senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore
through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had
been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have
resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in
Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of
his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match
him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk: he drew with ease as
strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were
sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant
exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the
suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters
may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose
nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the
perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they
breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this
he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in
four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with
which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the
reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his
age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new
constructions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending
incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding.
His reading was vast, especially in theology, which has been ridiculously
ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the
Archbishopric of Canterbury; as if the scientific mastery of such a subject
could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no
more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the
full maturity of his intellect; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate
interest in the subject itself.[176]
In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural powers of the
highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was
"attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at
the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity,
and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in
the energy and purity of his life. In private he was good-humoured and
good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though never undignified, are
simple, easy, and unrestrained; and the letters written by them to him are
similarly plain and businesslike, as if the writers knew that the person
whom they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as
a man. Again, from their correspondence with one another, when they
describe interviews with him, we gather the same pleasant impression. He
seems to have been always kind, always considerate; inquiring into their
private concerns with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence,
their warm and unaffected attachment.
As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful.
He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and
he had substantially acted out his own theory of his duty which was
expressed in the following words:--
"Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their
subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the
office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be
maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and
governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all
things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and
commonweal may increase; and to defend them from oppression and invasion,
as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be
administered unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly all their
complaints; and to show towards them, although they offend, fatherly pity.
And, finally, so to correct them that be evil, that they had yet rather
save them than lose them if it were not for respect of justice, and
maintenance of peace and good order in the commonweal."[177]
These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his
earlier years. His social administration we have partially seen in the
previous chapter. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which
he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and
London long recollected the great scene which followed "evil May-day,"
1517, when the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive
their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might
have provoked a mild government to severity; but the king contented himself
with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners,
after being paraded down the streets in white shirts with halters round
their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he
pronounced it.[178]
It is certain that if, as I said, he had died before the divorce was
mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been
_consensu omnium dignus imperii nisi imperasset_, would have been
considered by posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the
Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.
We must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career, and be
careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not many men
would have borne themselves through the same trials with the same
integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had not tested the true
defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the Plantagenet
blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses,
in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life,
when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with
difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to
contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more
correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and
early independence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had
capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest
of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of
his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to
govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.
The other person whose previous history we have to ascertain is one, the
tragedy of whose fate has blotted the remembrance of her sins--if her sins
were, indeed, and in reality, more than imaginary. Forgetting all else in
shame and sorrow, posterity has made piteous reparation for her death in
the tenderness with which it has touched her reputation; and with the
general instincts of justice, we have refused to qualify our indignation at
the wrong which she experienced, by admitting either stain or shadow on her
fame. It has been with Anne Boleyn as it has been with Catherine of
Arragon--both are regarded as the victims of a tyranny which catholics and
protestants unite to remember with horror; and each has taken the place of
a martyred saint in the hagiology of the respective creeds. Catholic
writers have, indeed, ill repaid, in their treatment of Anne, the
admiration with which the mother of Queen Mary has been remembered in the
Church of England; but the invectives which they have heaped upon her have
defeated their object by their extravagance. It has been believed that
matter failed them to sustain a just accusation, when they condescended to
outrageous slander. Inasmuch, however, as some natural explanation can
usually be given of the actions of human beings in this world without
supposing them to have been possessed by extraordinary wickedness, and if
we are to hold Anne Boleyn entirely free from fault, we place not the king
only, but the privy council, the judges, the Lords and Commons, and the two
Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour and degrading to
ordinary humanity; we cannot without inquiry acquiesce in so painful a
conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, deserves justice at
our hands; and it must not be thought uncharitable if we look with some
scrutiny at the career of a person who, except for the catastrophe with
which it was closed, would not so readily have obtained forgiveness for
having admitted the addresses of the king, or for having received the
homage of the court as its future sovereign, while the king's wife, her
mistress, as yet resided under the same roof, with the title and the
position of queen, and while the question was still undecided of the
validity of the first marriage. If in that alone she was to blame, her
fault was, indeed, revenged a thousandfold,--and yet no lady of true
delicacy would have accepted such a position; and feeling for Queen
Catherine should have restrained her, if she was careless of respect for
herself. It must, therefore, be permitted me, out of such few hints and
scattered notices as remain, to collect such information as may be trusted
respecting her early life before her appearance upon the great stage. These
hints are but slight, since I shall not even mention the scandals of
Sanders, any more than I shall mention the panegyrics of Foxe; stories
which, as far as I can learn, have no support in evidence, and rest on no
stronger foundation than the credulity of passion.
Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a gentleman of
noble family, though moderate fortune;[179] who, by a marriage with the
daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, was brought into connection with the
highest blood in the realm. The year of her birth has not been certainly
ascertained, but she is supposed to have been seven years old[180] in 1514,
when she accompanied the Princess Mary into France, on the marriage of that
lady with Louis XII. Louis dying a few months subsequently, the princess
married Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards created Duke of Suffolk, and
returned to England. Anne Boleyn did not return with her; she remained in
Paris to become accomplished with the graces and elegancies, if she was not
contaminated by the vices, of that court, which, even in those days of
loyal licentiousness, enjoyed an undesirable pre-eminence in profligacy. In
the French capital she could not have failed to see, to hear, and to become
familiar with occurrences with which no young girl can be brought in
contact with impunity, and this poisonous atmosphere she continued to
breathe for nine years. She came back to England in 1525, to be maid of
honour to Queen Catherine, and to be distinguished at the court, by general
consent, for her talents, her accomplishments, and her beauty. Her
portraits, though all professedly by Holbein, or copied from pictures by
him, are singularly unlike each other. The profile in the picture which is
best known is pretty, innocent, and piquant, though rather insignificant:
there are other pictures, however, in which we see a face more powerful,
though less prepossessing. In these the features are full and languid. The
eyes are large; but the expression, though remarkable, is not pleasing, and
indicates cunning more than thought, passion more than feeling; while the
heavy lips and massive chin wear a look of sensuality which is not to be
mistaken. Possibly all are like the original, but represented her under
different circumstances, or at different periods of her life. Previous to
her engagement with the king, she was the object of fleeting attentions
from the young noblemen about the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord
Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He
was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him
there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be
true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself. The story
is not without its difficulties, since Lord Percy had been contracted,
several years previously, to a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury,[181]
whom he afterwards married, and by the law he could not have formed a
second engagement so long as the first was undissolved. And again, he
himself, when subsequently examined before the privy council, denied
solemnly on his oath that any contract of the kind had existed.[182] At the
same time, we cannot suppose Cavendish to have invented so circumstantial a
narrative, and Percy would not have been examined if there had been no
reason for suspicion. Something, therefore, probably had passed between him
and the young maid of honour, though we cannot now conjecture of what
nature; and we can infer only that it was not openly to her discredit, or
she would not have obtained the position which cost her so dear. She
herself confessed subsequently, before Archbishop Cranmer, to a connection
of some kind into which she had entered before her acquaintance with Henry.
No evidence survives which will explain to what she referred, for the act
of parliament which mentions the fact furnishes no details.[183] But it was
of a kind which made her marriage with the king illegal, and
illegitimatised the offspring of it; and it has been supposed, therefore,
that, in spite of Lord Percy's denial, he had really engaged himself to
her, and was afraid to acknowledge it.[184] This supposition, however, is
not easy to reconcile with the language of the act, which speaks of the
circumstance, whatever it was, as only "recently known;" nor could a
contract with Percy have invalidated her marriage with the king, when Percy
having been pre-contracted to another person, it would have been itself
invalid. A light is thrown upon the subject by a letter found among
Cromwell's papers, addressed by some unknown person to a Mr. Melton, also
unknown, but written obviously when "Mistress Anne" was a young lady about
the court, and before she had been the object of any open attention from
Henry.
"MR. MELTON.--This shall be to advertise you that Mistress Anne is changed
from that she was at when we three were last together. Wherefore I pray you
that ye be no devil's sakke, but according to the truth ever justify, as ye
shall make answer before God; and do not suffer her in my absence to be
married to any other man. I must go to my master, wheresoever he be, for
the Lord Privy Seal desireth much to speak with me, whom if I should speak
with in my master's absence, it would cause me to lose my head; and yet I
know myself as true a man to my prince as liveth, whom (as my friend
informeth me) I have offended grievously in my words. No more to you, but
to have me commended unto Mistress Anne, and bid her remember her promise,
which none can loose, but God only, to whom I shall daily during my life
commend her."[185]
The letter must furnish its own interpretation; for it receives little from
any other quarter. Being in the possession of Cromwell, however, it had
perhaps been forwarded to him at the time of Queen Anne's trial, and may
have thus occasioned the investigation which led to the annulling of her
marriage.
From the account which was written of her by the grandson of Sir Thomas
Wyatt the poet, we still gather the impression (in spite of the admiring
sympathy with which Wyatt writes) of a person with whom young men took
liberties,[186] however she might seem to forbid them. In her diet she was
an epicure, fond of dainty and delicate eating, and not always contented if
she did not obtain what she desired. When the king's attentions towards her
became first marked, Thomas Heneage, afterwards lord chamberlain, wrote to
Wolsey, that he had one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress
Anne for supper"; adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she
wished she had some of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and
others."[187] And this was not said in jest, since Heneage related it as a
hint to Wolsey, that he might know what to do, if he wished to please her.
In the same letter he suggested to the cardinal that she was a little
displeased at not having received a token or present from him; she was
afraid she was forgotten, he said, and "the lady, her mother, desired him
to send unto his Grace, and desire his Grace to bestow a morsel of tunny
upon her." Wolsey made her presents also at times of a more valuable
character, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated
gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier
history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed
the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the
Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that
she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title
of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most
cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and
continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter
destruction."[190]
Taking these things together, and there is nothing to be placed beside them
of a definitely pleasing kind, except beauty and accomplishments, we form,
with the assistance of her pictures, a tolerable conception of this lady; a
conception of her as a woman not indeed questionable, but as one whose
antecedents might lead consistently to a future either of evil or of good;
and whose character removes the surprise which we might be inclined to feel
at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which she consented to
be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this evidence, as a
self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the obligations of gratitude, and
something careless of the truth. From the letter referring to her,
preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had broken a definite promise at
a time when such promises were legally binding, and that she had really
done so was confirmed by her subsequent confession. The breach of such
promises by a woman who could not be expected to understand the grounds on
which the law held them to be sacred, implies no more than levity, and
levity of this kind has been found compatible with many high qualities.
Levity, however, it does undoubtedly imply, and the symptom, if a light
one, must be allowed the weight which is due to it.
It is a miserable duty to be compelled to search for these indications of
human infirmities; above all when they are the infirmities of a lady whose
faults, let them have been what they would, were so fearfully and terribly
expiated; and, if there were nothing else at issue but poor questions of
petty scandal, it were better far that they perished in forgetfulness, and
passed away out of mind and memory for ever. The fortunes of Anne Boleyn
were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet
accomplished in this country was committed; and the characters of a king of
England, and of the three estates of the realm, are compromised in the
treatment which she received from them.