MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN
Although in the question of the divorce the king had interfered
despotically to control the judgment of the universities, he had made no
attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he had
desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of
proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which
made a crime of a difference of opinion on the pope's dispensing powers;
and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had
free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the
anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a _locus
suspectus_, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried
there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an ostentatious
display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been made chancellor,
although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert Tunstal, who had
been her counsel, was promoted to the see of Durham. The Nun of Kent, if
her word was to be believed, had been offered an abbey,[364] and that Henry
permitted language to pass unnoticed of the most uncontrolled violence,
appears from a multitude of informations which were forwarded to the
government from all parts of the country. But while imposing no restraint
on the expression of opinion, the council were careful to keep themselves
well informed of the opinions which were expressed, and an instrument was
ready made to their hands, which placed them in easy possession of what
they desired. Among the many abominable practices which had been introduced
by the ecclesiastical courts, not the least hateful was the system of
espionage with which they had saturated English society; encouraging
servants to be spies on their masters, children on their parents,
neighbours on their neighbours, inviting every one who heard language
spoken anywhere of doubtful allegiance to the church, to report the words
to the nearest official, as an occasion of instant process. It is not
without a feeling of satisfaction, that we find this detestable invention
recoiling upon the heads of its authors. Those who had so long suffered
under it, found an opportunity in the turning tide, of revenging themselves
on their oppressors; and the country was covered with a ready-made army of
spies, who, with ears ever open, were on the watch for impatient or
disaffected language in their clerical superiors, and furnished steady
reports of such language to Cromwell.[365]
Specimens of these informations will throw curious light on the feelings of
a portion at least of the people. The English licence of speech, if not
recognised to the same extent as it is at present, was certainly as fully
practised. On the return of the Abbot of Whitby from the convocation at
York in the summer of 1532, when the premunire money was voted, the
following conversation was reported as having been overheard in the abbey.
The prior of the convent asked the abbot what the news were. "What news,"
said the abbot, "evil news. The king is ruled by a common ---- Anne Boleyn,
who has made all the spiritualty to be beggared, and the temporalty also.
Further he told the prior of a sermon that he had heard in York, in which
it was said, when a great wind rose in the west we should hear news. And he
asked what that was; and he said a great man told him at York, and if he
knew as much as three in England he would tell what the news were. And he
said who were they? and he said the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire,
and the common ---- Anne Boleyn."[366]
The dates of these papers cannot always be determined; this which follows,
probably, is something later, but it shows the general temper in which the
clergy were disposed to meet the measures of the government.
"Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a prophecy
among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in his
mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that his
Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the church is the mother,
and the church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth that he
hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them that the
King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his Grace's
father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no secular knave
should be head of the church; also that the abbot did know of these
treasons, and had made no report thereof."[367]
Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous
language was ventured. The pulpit of St. Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday
with the polemics of the divorce; and if "the holy water of the court" made
the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in London
itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts with
entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, Father
Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to distinguish
himself. Forest was warden of a convent of Observants at Greenwich attached
to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's confessor, remained, with
the majority of the friars, faithful to her interests, and fearless in the
assertion of them. From their connection with the palace, the intercourse
of these monks with the royal household was considerable; their position
gave them influence, and Anne Boleyn tried the power of her charms, if
possible, to gain them over. She had succeeded with a few of the weaker
brothers, but she was unable (and her inability speaks remarkably for
Henry's endurance of opposition through the early stages of the
controversy) to protect those whose services she had won from the anger of
their superiors. One monk in whom she was interested the warden
imprisoned,[368] another there was an effort to expel,[369] because he was
ready to preach on her side; and Forest himself preached a violent sermon
at Paul's Cross, attacking Cromwell and indirectly the king.[370] He was
sent for to the court, and the persecuted brothers expected their triumph;
but he returned, as one of them wrote bitterly to Cromwell, having been
received with respect and favour, as if, after all, the enmity of a brave
man found more honour at the court than the complacency of cowardice.
Father Forest, says this letter, has been with the king. "He says he spake
with the king for half an hour and more, and was well retained by his
Grace; and the King's Grace did send him a great piece of beef from his own
table; and also he met with my Lord of Norfolk, and he says he took him in
his arms and bade him welcome."[371]
Forest, unfortunately for himself, misconstrued forbearance into fear, and
went his way at last, through treason and perjury, to the stake. In the
meantime the Observants were left in possession of the royal chapel, the
weak brother died in prison, and the king, when at Greenwich, continued to
attend service, submitting to listen, as long as submission was possible,
to the admonitions which the friars used the opportunity to deliver to him.
In these more courteous days we can form little conception of the licence
which preachers in the sixteenth century allowed themselves, or the
language which persons in high authority were often obliged to bear.
Latimer spoke as freely to Henry VIII. of neglected duties, as to the
peasants in his Wiltshire parish. St. Ambrose did not rebuke the Emperor
Theodosius more haughtily than John Knox lectured Queen Mary and her
ministers on the vanities of Holyrood; and Catholic priests, it seems, were
not afraid to display even louder disrespect.
On Sunday, the first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was occupied by
Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe as a Catholic
incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of the Observants
convent. His sermon had been upon the story of Ahab and Naboth, and his
text had been, "Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall
they lick thy blood, O king." Henry, the court, and most likely Anne Boleyn
herself, were present; the first of May being the great holy-day of the
English year, and always observed at Greenwich with peculiar splendour.
The preacher had dilated at length upon the crimes and the fall of Ahab,
and had drawn the portrait in all its magnificent wickedness. He had
described the scene in the court of heaven, and spoken of the lying
prophets who had mocked the monarch's hopes before the fatal battle. At the
end, he turned directly to Henry, and assuming to himself the mission of
Micaiah, he closed his address in the following audacious words:--"And now,
O king," he said, "hear what I say to thee. I am that Micaiah whom thou
wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful,
and I know that I shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the waters of
sorrow, yet because the Lord hath put it in my mouth I must speak it.
There are other preachers, yea too many, which preach and persuade thee
otherwise, feeding they folly and frail affections upon hopes of their own
worldly promotion; and by that means they betray thy soul, thy honour, and
thy posterity; to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and bishops,
and I know not what. These I say are the four hundred prophets who, in the
spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee. Take heed lest thou, being seduced,
find Ahab's punishment, who had his blood licked up by the dogs."
Henry must have been compelled to listen to many such invectives. He left
the chapel without noticing what had passed; and in the course of the week
Peto went down from Greenwich to attend a provincial council at Canterbury,
and perhaps to communicate with the Nun of Kent. Meantime a certain Dr.
Kirwan was commissioned to preach on the other side of the question the
following Sunday.
Kirwan was one of those men of whom the preacher spoke prophetically, since
by the present and similar services he made his way to the archbishopric of
Dublin and the bishopric of Oxford, and accepting the Erastian theory of a
Christian's duty, followed Edward VI. into heresy, and Mary into popery and
persecution. He regarded himself as an official of the state religion; and
his highest conception of evil in a Christian was disobedience to the
reigning authority. We may therefore conceive easily the burden of his
sermon in the royal chapel. "He most sharply reprehended Peto," calling him
foul names, "dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, rebel, and traitor,"
saying "that no subject should speak so audaciously to his prince:" he
"commended" Henry's intended marriage, "thereby to establish his seed in
his seat for ever;" and having won, as he supposed, his facile victory, he
proceeded with his peroration, addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak
to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah,
that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being
fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In the royal
chapel at Greenwich there was more reality than decorum. A voice out of the
rood-loft cut short the eloquent declamation. "Good sir," it said, "you
know Father Peto is gone to Canterbury to a provincial council, and not
fled for fear of you; for to-morrow he will return again. In the meantime I
am here as another Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove those things
true which he hath taught. And to this combat I challenge thee; thee
Kirwan, I say, who art one of the four hundred into whom the spirit of
lying is entered, and thou seekest by adultery to establish the succession,
betraying thy king for thy own vain glory into endless perdition."
A scene of confusion followed, which was allayed at last by the king
himself, who rose from his seat and commanded silence. It was thought that
the limit of permissible licence had been transcended, and the following
day Peto and Elstowe, the other speaker, were summoned before the council
to receive a reprimand. Lord Essex told them they deserved to be sewn into
a sack and thrown into the Thames. "Threaten such things to rich and dainty
folk, which have their hope in this world," answered Elstowe, gallantly,
"we fear them not; with thanks to God we know the way to heaven to be as
ready by water as by land."[372] Men of such metal might be broken, but
they could not be bent. The two offenders were hopelessly unrepentant and
impracticable, and it was found necessary to banish them. They retired to
Antwerp, where we find them the following year busy procuring copies of the
Bishop of Rochester's book against the king, which was broadly disseminated
on the continent, and secretly transmitting them into England; in close
correspondence also with Fisher himself, with Sir Thomas More, and for the
ill fortune of their friends, with the court at Brussels, between which and
the English Catholics the intercourse was dangerously growing.[373]
The Greenwich friars, with their warden, went also a bad way. The death of
the persecuted brother was attended with circumstances in a high degree
suspicious.[374] Henry ordered an enquiry, which did not terminate in any
actual exposure; but a cloud hung over the convent, which refused to be
dispelled; the warden was deposed, and soon after it was found necessary to
dissolve the order.
If the English monks had shared as a body the character of the Greenwich
Observants, of the Carthusians of London and Richmond, and of some other
establishments,--which may easily be numbered,--the resistance which they
might have offered to the government, with the sympathy which it would have
commanded, would have formed an obstacle to the Reformation that no power
could have overcome. It was time, however, for the dissolution of the
monasteries, when the few among them, which on other grounds might have
claimed a right to survive, were driven by their very virtues into treason.
The majority perished of their proper worthlessness; the few remaining
contrived to make their existence incompatible with the safety of the
state.
Leaving for the present these disorders to mature themselves, I must now
return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous
course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying
what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very
Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and
we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that,
although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the
hard ground is immediately beyond.
We shall, perhaps, be able most readily to comprehend the position of the
various parties in Europe, by placing them before us as they stood
severally in the summer of 1532, and defining briefly the object which each
was pursuing.
Henry only, among the great powers, laid his conduct open to the world,
declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. He was
determined to proceed with the divorce, and he was determined also to
continue the Reformation of the English Church. If consistently with these
two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was sincerely
anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to risk great
sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he considered of
vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of Rome. If his
efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to secure himself
by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having induced Francis
to urge compliance upon the pope by a threat of separation if he refused,
to prevail on him, in the event of the pope's continued obstinacy, to put
his threat in execution, and unite with England in a common schism. All
this is plain and straightforward--Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact,
had nothing to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties,
we feel entire certainty that he was speaking his real thoughts.
The emperor's position, also, though not equally simple, is intelligible,
and commands our respect. Although if he had consented to sacrifice his
aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment; although both by
the pope and by the consistory such a resolution would probably have been
welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was
determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing
Europe. At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty. The
Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his
relations with Francis--fortunately for the prospects of the
Reformation--were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had
been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the
pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines
should be represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made
to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert
themselves into open support.
With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor, combined
with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore
France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of
Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first object, to
which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a rupture with the
pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by
French statesmen. It was a contingency which the pope feared:--which the
hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was--and Francis, like his
rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the
chair of St. Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his
wishes. With respect to Henry's divorce, his conduct to the University of
Paris, and his assurances repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that
he was sincerely desirous to forward it. He did not care for Henry, or for
England, or for the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach
between Henry and Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that
"his two great rivals" should become friends together; and by inducing the
pope to consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome
conclusively from the imperial interests.
The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing one
against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion of the
church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the threat of
passing over to her enemies. By a dexterous use of the cards which were in
his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two alternatives.
Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and the pope, against
the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to it, which he would
extort from Clement, should be the cement; or, if this failed him, he would
avail himself of the vantage ground which was given to him by the English
alliance to obtain such concessions for himself at the emperor's expense as
the pope could be induced to make, and the emperor to tolerate.
Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic correspondence,
appear to have been the open positions and the secret purposes of the great
European powers.
There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself, labouring
with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the interests of the
church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of the princes, by
playing upon their respective selfishnesses. On the central question, that
of the divorce, his position was briefly this. Both the emperor and Henry
pressed for a decision. If he decided for Henry, he lost Germany; if he
decided for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and
England threatened both to fall from him. It was therefore necessary for
him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the
King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he
trusted that Henry would yield in despair. This most subtle and difficult
policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing
years. It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its
unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success. That it failed at all,
in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a
courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of
France to the Roman see, succeeded also--and this is no small thing to have
accomplished--in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be
met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.
With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties
in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.
Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an
anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and
clamouring for a general council.
Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against
Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor. They had undertaken to
concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for
them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon
were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a
verdict in Henry's favour, the Kings of France and England, being _une
mesme chose_, would pursue some policy with respect to him,[375] to which
he would regret that he had compelled them to have recourse. So far their
instructions were avowed and open. A private message revealed the secret
means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the cardinals were
to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and the pope's niece
(afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis. The marriage, as
Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity of a prince of
France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for Henry's
sake;[376] but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the
engagement, for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady's dowry.
Henry, threatened as we have seen with domestic disturbance, and with
further danger on the side of Scotland, which Charles had succeeded in
agitating, concluded, on the 23rd of June, a league, offensive and
defensive, with Francis, the latter engaging to send a fleet into the
Channel, and to land 15,000 troops in England if the emperor should attempt
an invasion from the sea.[378] For the better consolidation of this league,
and to consult upon the measures which they would pursue on the great
questions at issue in Christendom, and lastly to come to a final
understanding on the divorce, it was agreed further that in the autumn the
two kings should meet at Calais. The conditions of the interview were still
unarranged on the 22nd of July, when the Bishop of Paris, who remained
ambassador at the English court, wrote to Montmorency to suggest that Anne
Boleyn should be invited to accompany the King of England on this occasion,
and that she should be received in state. The letter was dated from
Ampthill, to which Henry had escaped for a while from his Greenwich friars
and other troubles, and where the king was staying a few weeks before the
house was given up to Queen Catherine. Anne Boleyn was with him; she now,
as a matter of course, attended him everywhere. Intending her, as he did,
to be the mother of the future heir to his crown, he preserved what is
technically called her honour unimpeached and unimpaired. In all other
respects she occupied the position and received the homage due to the
actual wife of the English sovereign; and in this capacity it was the
desire of Henry that she should be acknowledged by a foreign prince.
The bishop's letter on this occasion is singularly interesting and
descriptive. The court were out hunting, he said, every day; and while the
king was pursuing the heat of the chase, he and Mademoiselle Anne were
posted together, each with a crossbow, at the point to which the deer was
to be driven. The young lady, in order that the appearance of her reverend
cavalier might correspond with his occupation, had made him a present of a
hunting cap and frock, a horn and a greyhound. Her invitation to Calais he
pressed with great earnestness, and suggested that Marguerite de Valois,
the Queen of Navarre, should be brought down to entertain her. The Queen of
France being a Spaniard, would not, he thought, be welcome: "the sight of a
Spanish dress being as hateful in the King of England's eyes as the devil
himself." In other respects the reception should be as magnificent as
possible, "and I beseech you," he concluded, "keep out of the court, _deux
sortes de gens_, the imperialists, and the wits and mockers; the English
can endure neither of them."[379]
Through the tone of this language the contempt is easily visible with which
the affair was regarded in the French court. But for Francis to receive in
public the rival of Queen Catherine, to admit her into his family, and to
bring his sister from Paris to entertain her, was to declare in the face of
Europe, in a manner which would leave no doubt of his sincerity, that he
intended to countenance Henry. With this view only was the reception of
Anne desired by the King of England; with this view it was recommended by
the bishop, and assented to by the French court. Nor was this the only
proof which Francis was prepared to give, that he was in earnest. He had
promised to distribute forty thousand crowns at Rome, in bribing cardinals
to give their voices for Henry in the consistory, with other possible
benefactions.[380]
He had further volunteered his good offices with the court of Scotland,
where matters were growing serious, and where his influence could be used
to great advantage. The ability of James the Fifth to injure Henry happily
fell short of his inclination, but encouraged by secret promises from
Clement and from the emperor, he was waiting his opportunity to cross the
Border with an army; and in the meantime he was feeding with efficient
support a rebellion in Ireland. Of what was occurring at this time in that
perennially miserable country I shall speak in a separate chapter. It is
here sufficient to mention, that on the 23rd of August, Henry received
information that McConnell of the Isles, after receiving knighthood from
James, had been despatched into Ulster with four thousand men,[381] and was
followed by Mackane with seven thousand more on the 3rd of September.[382]
Peace with England nominally continued; but the Kers, the Humes, the Scotts
of Buccleugh, the advanced guard of the Marches, were nightly making forays
across the Border, and open hostilities appeared to be on the point of
explosion.[383] If war was to follow, Henry was prepared for it. He had a
powerful force at Berwick, and in Scotland itself a large party were
secretly attached to the English interests. The clan of Douglas, with their
adherents, were even prepared for open revolt, and open transfer of
allegiance.[384] But, although Scottish nobles might be gained over, and
Scottish armies might be defeated in the field, Scotland itself, as the
experience of centuries had proved, could never be conquered. The policy of
the Tudors had been to abstain from aggression, till time should have
soothed down the inherited animosity between the two countries; and Henry
was unwilling to be forced into extremities which might revive the bitter
memories of Flodden. The Northern counties also, in spite of their Border
prejudices, were the stronghold of the papal party, and it was doubtful how
far their allegiance could be counted upon in the event of an invasion
sanctioned by the pope. The hands of the English government were already
full without superadded embarrassment, and the offered mediation of Francis
was gratefully welcomed.
These were the circumstances under which the second great interview was to
take place between Francis the First and Henry of England.[385] Twelve
years had passed since their last meeting, and the experience which those
years had brought to both of them, had probably subdued their inclination
for splendid pageantry. Nevertheless, in honour of the occasion, some faint
revival was attempted of the magnificence of the Field of the Cloth of
Gold. Anne Boleyn was invited duly; and the Queen of Navarre, as the Bishop
of Paris recommended, came down to Boulogne to receive her. The French
princes came also to thank Henry in person for their deliverance out of
their Spanish prison; and he too, on his side, brought with him his young
Marcellus, the Duke of Richmond, his only son--illegitimate
unfortunately--but whose beauty and noble promise were at once his father's
misery and pride; giving point to his bitterness at the loss of his sons by
Catherine; quickening his hopes of what might be, and deepening his
discontent with that which was. If this boy had lived, he would have been
named to follow Edward the Sixth in the succession, and would have been
King of England;[386] but he too passed away in the flower of his
loveliness, one more evidence of the blight which rested upon the stem of
the Tudors.
The English court was entertained by Francis at Boulogne. The French court
was received in return at Calais by the English. The outward description of
the scene, the magnificent train of the princes, the tournaments, the
feasts, the dances, will be found minutely given in the pages of Hall, and
need not be repeated here. To Hall indeed, the outward life of men, their
exploits in war, and their pageantries in peace, alone had meaning or
interest; and the backstairs secrets of Vatican diplomacy, the questionings
of opinion, and all the brood of mental sicknesses then beginning to
distract the world, were but impertinent interferences with the true
business of existence. But the healthy objectiveness of an old English
chronicler is no longer possible for us; we may envy where we cannot
imitate; and our business is with such features of the story as are of
moment to ourselves.
The political questions which were to be debated at the conference, were
three; the Turkish Invasion, the General Council, and King Henry's divorce.
On the first, it was decided that there was no immediate occasion for
France and England to move. Solyman's retreat from Vienna had relieved
Europe from present peril; and the enormous losses which he had suffered,
might prevent him from repeating the experiment. If the danger became again
imminent, however, the two kings agreed to take the field in person the
following year at the head of eighty thousand men.
On the second point they came to no conclusion, but resolved only to act in
common.
On the third and most important, they parted with a belief that they
understood each other; but their memories, or the memory of one of them,
proved subsequently treacherous; and we can only extract what passed
between them out of their mutual recriminations.
It was determined certainly that at the earliest convenient moment, a
meeting should take place between the pope and Francis; and that at this
meeting Francis should urge in person concession to Henry's demands. If the
pope professed himself unable to risk the displeasure of the emperor, it
should be suggested that he might return to Avignon, where he would be
secure under the protection of France and England. If he was still
reluctant, and persisted in asserting his right to compel Henry to plead
before him at Rome, or if he followed up his citations by inhibitions,
suspensions, excommunications, or other form of censure, Francis declared
that he would support Henry to the last, whether against the pope himself
or against any prince or potentate who might attempt to enforce the
sentence. On this point the promises of the King of France were most
profuse and decided; and although it was not expressly stated in words,
Henry seems to have persuaded himself that, if the pope pressed matters to
extremities, Francis had engaged further that the two countries should
pursue a common course, and unite in a common schism. The two princes did
in fact agree, that if the general council which they desired was refused,
they would summon provincial councils on their own authority. Each of them
perhaps interpreted their engagements by their own wishes or
interests.[387]
We may further believe, since it was affirmed by Henry, and not denied by
Francis, that the latter advised Henry to bring the dispute to a close, by
a measure from which he could not recede; that he recommended him to act on
the general opinion of Europe that his marriage with Queen Catherine was
null, and at once upon his return to England to make Anne Boleyn his
wife.[388]
So far the account is clear. This advice was certainly given, and as
certainly Francis undertook to support Henry through all the consequences
in which the marriage might involve him. But a league for mutual defence
fell short of what Henry desired, and fell short also of what Francis, by
the warmth of his manner, had induced Henry for the moment to believe that
he meant. It is probable that the latter pressed upon him engagements which
he avoided by taking refuge in general professions; and no sooner had Henry
returned to England, than either misgivings occurred to him as to the
substantial results of the interview, or he was anxious to make the French
king commit himself more definitely. He sent to him to beg that he would
either write out, or dictate and sign, the expressions which he had used;
professing to wish it only for the comfort which he would derive from the
continual presence of such refreshing words--but surely for some deeper
reason.[389]
Francis had perhaps said more than he meant; Henry supposed him to have
meant more than he said. Yet some promise was made, which was not
afterwards observed; and Francis acknowledged some engagement in an apology
which he offered for the breach of it. He asserted, in defence of himself,
that he had added a stipulation which Henry passed over in silence,--that
no steps should be taken towards annulling the marriage with Catherine in
the English law courts until the effect had been seen of his interview with
the pope, provided the pope on his side remained similarly inactive.[390]
Whatever it was which he had bound himself to do, this condition, if made
at all, could be reconciled only with his advice that Henry should marry
Anne Boleyn without further delay, on the supposition that the interview in
question was to take place immediately; for the natural consequences of the
second marriage would involve, as a matter of course, some speedy legal
declaration with respect to the first. And when on various pretexts the
pope postponed the meeting, and on the other part of his suggestion Henry
had acted within a few months of his return from Calais, it became
impossible that such a condition could be observed. It availed for a formal
excuse; but Francis vainly endeavoured to disguise his own infirmity of
purpose behind the language of a negotiation which conveyed, when it was
used, a meaning widely different.
The conference was concluded on the 1st of November, but the court was
detained at Calais for a further fortnight by violent gales in the Channel.
In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves ordinary
assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen Catherine, to
whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous augury, and the
nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a time would have
plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the storm with anxious
agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the
churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme and imminent peril.
The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted to conferences with
angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial instruction, as a
conspiracy against Heaven. The king, she said, but for her interposition,
would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious marriage;[391] and
God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his
unholy eyes the blessed Sacrament. "It was written in her revelations,"
says the statute of her attainder, "that when the King's Grace was at
Calais, and his Majesty and the French king were hearing mass in the Church
of Our Lady, that God was so displeased with the King's Highness, that his
Grace saw not at that time the blessed sacrament in the form of bread, for
it was taken away from the priest, being at mass, by an angel, and was
ministered to the said Elizabeth, there being present and invisible, and
suddenly conveyed and rapt thence again into the nunnery where she was
professed."[392]
She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to try
the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still
delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened by
her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an equinoctial
storm. Many motives combined to dissuade him from further hesitation. Six
years of trifling must have convinced him that by decisive action alone he
could force the pope to a conclusion. He was growing old, and the
exigencies of the succession, rendered doubly pressing by the long
agitation, required immediate resolution. He was himself satisfied that he
was at liberty to marry whom he pleased and when he pleased, his
relationship to Catherine, according to his recent convictions, being such
as had rendered his connection with her from the beginning invalid and
void. His own inclinations and the interests of the nation pointed to the
same course. The King of France had advised it. Even the pope himself, at
the outset of the discussion, had advised it also. "Marry freely," the pope
had said; "fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire." He had
forborne to take the pope at his word; he had hoped that the justice of his
demands might open a less violent way to him; and he had shrunk from a step
which might throw even a causeless shadow over the legitimacy of the
offspring for which he longed. The case was now changed; no other
alternative seemed to be open to his choice, and it was necessary to bring
the matter to a close once and for all.
But Henry, as he said himself, was past the age when passion or appetite
would be likely to move him, and having waited so many years, he could
afford to wait a little longer, till the effects of the Calais conferences
upon the pope should have had time to show themselves. In December, Clement
was to meet the emperor at Bologna. In the month following, it might be
hoped that he would meet Francis at Marseilles or Avignon, and from their
interview would be seen conclusively the future attitude of the papal and
imperial courts. Experience of the past forbade anything like sanguine
expectation; yet it was not impossible that the pope might be compelled at
last to yield the required concessions. The terms of Henry's understanding
with Francis were not perhaps made public, but he was allowed to dictate
the language which the French cardinals were to make use of in the
consistory;[394] and the reception of Anne Boleyn by the French king was
equivalent to the most emphatic declaration that if the censures of the
church were attempted in defence of Catherine, the enforcement of them
would be resisted by the combined arms of France and England.
And the pope did in fact feel himself in a dilemma from which all his
address was required to extricate him. He had no support from his
conscience, for he knew that he was acting unjustly in refusing the
divorce; while to risk the emperor's anger, which was the only honest
course before him, was perhaps for that very reason impossible. He fell
back upon his Italian cunning, and it did not fail him in his need. But his
conduct, though creditable to his ingenuity, reflects less pleasantly on
his character; and when it is traced through all its windings, few
reasonable persons will think that they have need to blush at the causes
which led to the last breach between England and the papacy.
From the time of Catherine's appeal and the retirement of Campeggio,
Clement, with rare exceptions, had maintained an attitude of impassive
reserve. He had allowed judgment to be delayed on various pretexts, because
until that time delay had answered his purposes sufficiently. But to the
English agents he had been studiously cold, not condescending even to hold
out hopes to them that concession might be possible. Some little time
before the meeting at Calais, however, a change was observed in the
language both of the pope himself and of the consistory. The cardinals were
visibly afraid of the position which had been taken by the French king;
questions supposed to be closed were once more admitted to debate in a
manner which seemed to show that their resolution was wavering; and one
day, at the close of a long argument, the following curious conversation
took place between some person (Sir Gregory Cassalis, apparently), who
reported it to Henry, and Clement himself. "I had desired a private
interview with his Holiness," says the writer, "intending to use all my
endeavours to persuade him to satisfy your Majesty. But although I did my
best, I could obtain nothing from him; he had an answer for everything
which I advanced, and it was in vain that I laboured to remove his
difficulties. At length, however, in reply to something which I had
proposed, he said shortly,--Multo minus scandalosum fuisset dispensare cum
majestate vestrâ super duabus uxoribus, quam ea cedere quæ ego petebam, _it
would have created less scandal to have granted your Majesty a dispensation
to have two wives than to concede what I was then demanding_. As I did not
know how far this alternative would be pleasing to your Majesty, I
endeavoured to divert him from it, and to lead him back to what I had been
previously saying. He was silent for a while, and then, paying no regard to
my interruption, he continued to speak of the 'two wives,' admitting
however that there were difficulties in the way of such an arrangement,
principally it seemed because the emperor would refuse his consent from the
possible injury which it might create to his cousin's prospects of the
succession. I replied, that as to the succession, I could not see what
right the emperor had to a voice upon the matter. If some lawful means
could be discovered by which your Majesty could furnish yourself with male
offspring, the emperor could no more justly complain than if the queen were
to die and the prospects of the princess were interfered with by a second
marriage of an ordinary kind. To this the pope made no answer. I cannot
tell what your Majesty will think, nor how far this suggestion of the pope
would be pleasing to your Majesty. Nor indeed can I feel sure, in
consequence of what he said about the emperor, that he actually would grant
the dispensation of which he spoke. I have thought it right, however, to
inform you of what passed."[395]
This letter is undated, but it was written, as appears from internal
evidence, some time in the year 1532.[396]
The pope's language was ambiguous, and the writer did not allow himself to
derive from it any favourable augury; but the tone in which the suggestions
had been made was by many degrees more favourable than had been heard for a
very long time in the quarter from which they came, and the symptoms which
it promised of a change of feeling were more than confirmed in the
following winter.
Charles was to be at Bologna in the middle of December, where he was to
discuss with Clement the situation of Europe, and in particular of Germany,
with the desirableness of fulfilling the engagements into which he had
entered for a general council.
This was the avowed object of the meeting. But, however important the
question of holding a council was becoming, it was not immediately
pressing; and we cannot doubt that the disquiet occasioned by the alliance
of England and France was the cause that the conference was held at so
inconvenient a season. The pope left Rome on the 18th of November, having
in his train a person who afterwards earned for himself a dark name in
English history, Dr. Bonner, then a famous canon lawyer attached to the
embassy. The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable; and
Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous
account of it to Cromwell.[397] Three wretched weeks the party were upon
the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on the 8th
of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is
important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these
movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of
several curious documents. On the 12th of December the pope and the emperor
met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry's able secretary, who had
been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to
report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to repeated
interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor's arrival;
and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and
was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in
which he was placing himself towards the imperial faction. Bennet's letter
was as follows:--
"I have been sundry and many times with the pope, as well afore the coming
of the emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his Holiness
more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness than now of
late,--insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind than he was
accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly without any
observance or respect at all. At which time, I greatly lamented (your
Highness's cause being so just) no means could be found and taken to
satisfy your Highness therein; and I said also that I doubted not but that
(if his Holiness would) ways might be found by his wisdom, now at the
emperour's being with him, to satisfy your Highness; and that done, his
Holiness should not only have your Highness in as much or more friendship
than he hath had heretofore, but also procure thereby that thing which his
Holiness hath chiefly desired, which is, as he hath said, a universal
concord among the princes of Christendom. His Holiness answered, that he
would it had cost him a joint of his hand that such a way might be
excogitate; and he said also, that the best thing which he could see to be
done therein at this present, for a preparation to that purpose, was the
thing which is contained in the first part of the cipher.[398] Speaking of
the justness of your cause, he called to his remembrance the thing which he
told me two years past; which was, that the opinion of the lawyers was more
certain, favourable, and helping to your cause than the opinion of the
divines; for he said that as far as he could perceive, the lawyers, though
they held quod Papa possit dispensare in this case, yet they commonly do
agree quod hoc fieri debeat ex maximâ causâ, adhibitâ causæ cognitione,
which in this case doth not appear; and he said, that to come to the truth
herein he had used all diligence possible, and enquired the opinion of
learned men, being of fame and indifferency both in the court here and in
other places. And his Holiness promised me that he would herein use all
good policy and dexterity to imprint the same in the emperour's head; which
done, he reckoneth many things to be invented that may be pleasant and
profitable to your Highness; adding yet that this is not to be done with a
fury, but with leisure and as occasion shall serve, lest if he should
otherwise do, he should let and hinder that good effect which peradventure
might ensue thereby."[399]
This letter has all the character of truth about it. The secretary had no
interest in deceiving Henry, and it is quite certain that, whether honestly
or not, the pope had led him to believe that his sympathies were again on
the English side, and that he was using his best endeavours to subdue the
emperor's opposition.
On the 26th of December, two days later, Sir Gregory Cassalis, who had also
followed the papal court to Bologna, wrote to the same effect. He, too, had
been with the pope, who had been very open and confidential with him. The
emperor, the pope said, had complained of the delay in the process, but he
had assured him that it was impossible for the consistory to do more than
it had done. The opinion of the theologians was on the whole against the
papal power of dispensation in cases of so close relationship; of the canon
lawyers part agreed with the theologians, and those who differed from them
were satisfied that such a power might not be exercised unless there were
most urgent cause, unless, that is, the safety of a kingdom were dependent
upon it. Such occasion he had declared that he could not find to have
existed for the dispensation granted by his predecessor. The emperor had
replied that there had been such occasion: the dispensation had been
granted to prevent war between Spain and England; and that otherwise great
calamities would have befallen both countries. But this was manifestly
untrue; and his Holiness said that he had answered, It was a pity, then,
that these causes had not been submitted at the time, as the reason for the
demand, which it was clear that they had not been: as the case stood, it
was impossible for him to proceed further. Upon which he added, "Se vidisse
Cæsarem obstupefactum." "I write the words," continued Sir Gregory,
"exactly as the pope related them to me. Whether he really spoke in this
way, I cannot tell; of this, however, I am sure, that on the day of our
conversation he had taken the blessed sacrament. He assured me further,
that he had laboured to induce the emperor to permit him to satisfy your
Majesty. I recommended him that when next the emperor spoke with him upon
the subject, he should enter at greater length on the question of
_justice_, and that some other person should be present at the conference,
that there might be no room left for suspicion."[400]
The manner of Clement was so unlike what Cassalis had been in the habit
of witnessing in him, that he was unable, as we see, wholly to persuade
himself that the change was sincere: the letter, however, was despatched
to England, and was followed in a few days by Bonner, who brought
with him the result of the pope's good will in the form of definite
propositions--instructions of similar purport having been forwarded at the
same time to the papal nuncio in England. The pope, so Henry was informed,
was now really well disposed to do what was required; he had urged upon the
emperor the necessity of concessions, and the cause might be settled in one
of two ways, to either of which he was himself ready to consent. Catherine
had appealed against judgment being passed in England, as a place which was
not indifferent. Henry had refused to allow his cause to be heard anywhere
but in his own realm; pleading first his privilege as a sovereign prince;
and secondly, his exemption as an Englishman.[401] The pope, with
appearance of openness, now suggested that Henry should either "send a
mandate requiring the remission of his cause to an indifferent place, in
which case he would himself surrender his claim to have it tried in the
courts at Rome, and would appoint a legate and two auditors to hear the
trial elsewhere;" or else, a truce of three or four years being concluded
between England, France, and Spain, the pope would "with all celerity
indict a general council, to which he would absolutely and wholly remit the
consideration of the question."[402]
Both proposals carried on their front a show of fair dealing, and if
honestly proffered, were an evidence that something more might at length be
hoped than words. But the true obstacle to a settlement lay, as had been
long evident, rather in the want of an honest will, than in legal
difficulties or uncertainty as to the justice of the cause; and while
neither of the alternatives as they stood were admissible or immediately
desirable, there were many other roads, if the point of honesty were once
made good, which would lead more readily to the desired end. Once for all
Henry could not consent to plead out of England; while an appeal to a
council would occupy more time than the condition of the country could
conveniently allow. But the offer had been courteously made; it had been
accompanied with language which might be sincere; and the king replied with
grace, and almost with cordiality; not wholly giving Clement his
confidence, but expressing a hope that he might soon be no longer justified
in withholding it. He was unable, he said, to accept the first condition,
because it was contrary to his coronation oath; "it so highly touched the
prerogative royal of the realm, that though he were minded to do it, yet
must he abstain without the assent of the court of parliament, which he
thought verily would never condescend to it."[403] The other suggestion he
did not absolutely reject, but the gathering of a council was too serious a
matter to be precipitated, and the situation of Christendom presented many
obstacles to a measure which would be useless unless it were carried
through by all the great powers in a spirit of cordial unanimity. He
trusted therefore that if the pope's intentions were really such as he
pretended to entertain, he would find some method more convenient of
proving his sincerity.
It was happy for Henry that experience had taught him to be distrustful.
Events proved too clearly that Clement's assumed alteration of tone was no
more than a manoeuvre designed to entice him to withdraw from the position
in which he had entrenched himself, and to induce him to acknowledge that
he was amenable to an earthly authority exterior to his own realm.[404] In
his offer to refer the cause to a general council, he proved that he was
insincere, when in the following year he refused to allow a council to be a
valid tribunal for the trial of it. The course which he would have followed
if the second alternative had been accepted, may be conjectured from the
measures which, as I shall presently show, he was at this very moment
secretly pursuing. Henry, however, had happily resolved that he would be
trifled with no further; he felt instinctively that only action would cut
the net in which he was entangled; and he would not hesitate any longer to
take a step which, in one way or another, must bring the weary question to
a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a resolution which made
further procrastination impossible; if he did not mean well, he could not
be permitted to dally further with the interests of the English nation.
Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return from Bologna, he took the
final step from which there was no retreat, and "somewhere about St. Paul's
day,"[405] Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven
long years, in the hand of the King of England. The ceremony was private.
No authentic details are known either of the scene of it or the
circumstances under which it took place; but it is said to have been
performed by the able Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, summoned up for the
purpose from the Welsh Marches, of which he was warden. It was done,
however--in one way or other finally done--the cast was thrown, and a match
was laid to the train which now at length could explode the spell of
intrigue, and set Henry and England free.
We have arrived at a point from which the issue of the labyrinth is clearly
visible. The course of it has been very dreary; and brought in contact as
we have been with so much which is painful, so much which is discreditable
to all parties concerned, we may perhaps have lost our sense of the broad
bearings of the question in indiscriminate disgust. It will be well,
therefore, to pause for a moment to recapitulate those features of the
story which are the main indications of its character, and may serve to
guide our judgment in the censure which we shall pass.
It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had
been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of
the kingdom, if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront
the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he
had shown her that respect which her high character gave her a right to
demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it
impossible to him to refuse; his conduct would have been liable to no
imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side.
He could not have been expected to love a person to whom he had been
married as a boy for political convenience, merely because she was his
wife; especially when she was many years his senior in age, disagreeable in
her person, and by the consciousness of it embittered in her temper. His
kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it
may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and
looking upon it as the sentence of Heaven upon a connection, the legality
of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he
had been living in incest, and that his misfortunes were the consequence of
it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a
divorce.[406]
The causa urgentissima of the canon law for which, by the pope's own
showing, the dispensing powers had been granted to him, had arisen in an
extreme form; and when the vital interests of England were sacrificed to
the will of a foreign prince, sufficient reason had arisen for the nation
to decline submission to so emphatic injustice, and to seek within itself
its own remedies for its own necessities. These considerations must be
allowed all their weight; and except for them, it is not to be supposed
that Henry would have permitted private distaste or inclination to induce
him to create a scandal in Europe. In his conduct, however, as in that of
most men, good was chequered with evil, and sincerity with self-deception.
Personal feeling can be traced from the first, holding a subsidiary,
indeed, but still an influential place, among his motives; and exactly so
far as he was influenced by it, his course was wrong, as the consequence
miserably proved. The position which, in his wife's presence, he assigned
to another woman, however he may have persuaded himself that Catherine had
no claim to be considered his wife, admits neither of excuse nor of
palliation; and he ought never to have shared his throne with a person who
consented to occupy that position. He was blind to the coarseness of Anne
Boleyn, because, in spite of his chivalry, his genius, his accomplishments,
in his relations with women he was without delicacy himself. He directed,
or attempted to direct, his conduct by the broad rules of what he thought
to be just; and in the wide margin of uncertain ground where rules of
action cannot be prescribed, and where men must guide themselves by
consideration for the feelings of others, he--so far as women were
concerned--was altogether or almost a stranger. Such consideration is a
virtue which can be learned only in the society of equals, where necessity
obliges men to practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had
been surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and
exposed as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped
uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those
excellences which he conquered for himself, than to blame the defects which
he retained.
But if in his private relations the king was hasty and careless, towards
the pope to whom we must now return, he exhausted all resources of
forbearance: and although, when separation from Rome was at length forced
upon him, he then permitted no half measures, and swept into his new career
with the strength of irresistible will, it was not till he had shown
resolution no less great in the endurance of indignity; and of the three
great powers in Europe, the prince who was compelled to break the unity of
the Catholic church, was evidently the only one who was capable of real
sacrifices to preserve it unbroken. Clement comprehended his reluctance,
but presumed too far upon it; and if there was sin in the "great schism" of
the Reformation, the guilt must rest where it is due. We have now to show
the reverse side of the transactions at Bologna, and explain what a person
wearing the title of his Holiness, in virtue of his supposed sanctity, had
been secretly doing.
In January, 1532, some little time before his conversation with Sir Gregory
Cassalis on the subject of the two wives, the pope had composed a pastoral
letter to Henry, which had never been issued. From its contents it would
seem to have been written on the receipt of an indignant remonstrance of
Queen Catherine, in which she had complained of her desertion by her
husband, and of the public position which had been given to her rival. She
had supposed (and it was the natural mistake of an embittered and injured
woman) that Anne Boleyn had been placed in possession of the rights of an
actual, and not only of an intended wife; and the pope, accepting her
account of the situation, had written to implore the king to abstain, so
long as the cause remained undetermined, from creating so great a scandal
in Christendom, and to restore his late queen to her place at his side.
This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest
compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could
be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character,
which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion
of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects
which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the
Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had
deserved that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more
than justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced
no effect, and on the 15th of November, three days before Clement's
departure to Bologna, where he pretended (we must not forget) that he
considered Henry substantially right; he added a postscript, in a tone not
contrasting only with his words to the ambassadors, but with the language
of the brief itself.
Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and the
scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him, under
penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of those
injunctions, to restore the queen to her place, and to abstain
thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of
the trial. "Otherwise," the pope continued, "when the said term shall have
elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said Anne, to be
_ipso facto_ excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your
presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such a thought of
your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of the Rota an
inhibition has been already issued against you; although the act of which
you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human and divine, yet
the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that once more we do
inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the aforesaid Catherine, or
from continuing process, in your own courts, of divorce from her. And we do
also hereby warn you, that you presume not to contract any new marriage
with the said or with any other woman; we declare such marriage, if you
still attempt it, to be vain and of none effect, and so to be regarded by
all persons in obedience to the Apostolic see."[408]
An inhibitory mandate, was a natural consequence of the conference of
Calais, provided that the pope intended to proceed openly and uprightly;
and if it had been sent upon the spot, Henry could have complained of
nothing worse than of an honourable opposition to his wishes. But the
mystery was not yet exhausted. The postscript was not issued, it was not
spoken of; it was carried secretly to Bologna, and it bears at its foot a
further date of the 23rd of December, the very time, that is to say, at
which the pope was representing himself to Bennet as occupied only in
devising the best means of satisfying Henry, and to Sir Gregory Cassalis,
as so convinced of the justice of the English demands, that he had ventured
in defence of them to the edge of rupture with the emperor.
It might be urged that he was sincere both in his brief and in his
conversation; that he believed that a verdict ought to be given, and would
at last be given, against the original marriage, and that therefore he was
the more anxious to prevent unnecessary scandal. Yet a menace of
excommunication couched in so haughty a tone, could have been honestly
reconciled with his other conduct, only by his following a course with
respect to it which he did not follow--by informing the ambassadors openly
of what he had done, and transmitting his letter through their hands to
Henry himself. This he might have done; and though the issue of such a
document at such a time would have been open to question, it might
nevertheless have been defended. His Holiness, however, did nothing of the
kind. No hint was let fall of the existence of any minatory brief; he
sustained his pretence of good will, till there was no longer any occasion
for him to counterfeit; and two months later it suddenly appeared on the
doors of the churches in Flanders.
Henry at first believed it to be forgery, One forged brief had already been
produced by the imperialists in the course of their transactions, and he
imagined that this was another; even his past experience of Clement had not
prepared him for this last venture of effrontery; he wrote to Bennet,
enclosing a copy, and requiring him to ascertain if it were really
genuine.[409]
The pope could not deny his hand, though the exposure, and the strange
irregular character of the brief itself troubled him, and Bonner, who was
again at the papal court, said that "he was in manner ashamed, and in great
perplexity what he might do therein."[410]
His conduct will be variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse the
motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but a
comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances in
which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events,
points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely
disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France, the
pope found it necessary to pretend for a time an altered disposition
towards Henry; and that the emperor, unable to feel wholly confident that a
person who was false to others was true to himself, had exacted the brief
from him as a guarantee for his good faith; Charles, on his side, reserving
the publication until Francis had been gained over, and until Clement was
screened against the danger which he so justly feared, from the
consequences of the interview at Calais.
There was duplicity of a kind; this cannot be denied; and if not designed
to effect this object, this object in fact it answered. While Clement was
talking smoothly to Bennet and Cassalis, secret overtures were advanced at
Paris for a meeting at Nice between the pope, the emperor, and the King of
France, from which Henry was to be excluded.[411] The emperor made haste
with concessions to Francis, which but a few months before would have
seemed impossible. He withdrew his army out of Lombardy, and left Italy
free; he consented to the marriage which he had so earnestly opposed
between Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Orleans, agreeing also, it is
probable, to the contingency of the Duchy of Milan becoming ultimately her
dowry. And Francis having coquetted with the proposal for the Nice
meeting,[412] not indeed accepting, but not absolutely rejecting it,
Charles consented also to waive his objections to the interview between
Francis and the pope, on which he had looked hitherto with so much
suspicion; provided that the pope would bear in mind some mysterious and
unknown communication which had passed at Bologna.[413]
Thus was Francis won. He cared only, as the pope had seen, for his own
interests; and from this time he drew away, by imperceptible degrees, from
his engagements to England. He did not stoop to dishonour or treacherous
betrayal of confidence, for with all his faults he was, in the technical
acceptation of that misused term, a gentleman. He declined only to maintain
the attitude which, if he had continued in it, would have compelled the
pope to yield; and although he continued honestly to urge him to make
concessions, he no longer affected to make them the price of preserving
France in allegiance to the Holy See. Nor need we regret that Francis
shrank from a resolution which Henry had no right to require of him. To
have united with France in a common schism at the crisis of the Reformation
would have only embarrassed the free motions of England; and two nations
whose interests and whose tendencies were essentially opposite, might not
submit to be linked together by the artificial interests of their princes.
The populace of England were unconsciously on the rapid road to
Protestantism. The populace of France were fanatically Catholic. England
was to go her way through a golden era of Elizabeth to Cromwell, the
Puritans, and a Protestant republic; a republic to be perpetuated, if not
in England herself, yet among her great children beyond the sea. France was
to go her way through Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a
polished Louis the Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron
of Revolution, out of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common
road could have been found for such destinies as these; and the French
prince followed the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred a
quiet arrangement with the pope, in virtue of which his church should be
secured by treaty the liberties which she desired, to a doubtful struggle
for a freedom which his people neither wished nor approved. The interests
of the nation were in fact his own. He could ill afford to forsake a
religion which allowed him so pleasantly to compound for his amatory
indulgences by the estrapade[414] and a zeal for orthodoxy.
It became evident to Henry early in the spring that he was left
substantially alone. His marriage had been kept secret with the intention
that it should be divulged by the King of France to the pope when he met
him at Marseilles; and as the pope had pretended an anxiety that either the
King of England should be present in person at that interview, or should be
represented by an ambassador of adequate rank, a train had been equipped
for the occasion, the most magnificent which England could furnish. Time,
meanwhile, passed on; the meeting, which was to have taken place first in
January, and then in April, was delayed till October, and in the interval
the papal brief had appeared in Flanders; the queen's pregnancy could not
admit of concealment; and the evident proof which appeared that France was
no longer to be depended upon, convinced the English government that they
had nothing to hope for from abroad, and that Henry's best resources were
to be found, where in fact they had always been, in the strength and
affection of his own people.
From this choking atmosphere, therefore, we now turn back to England and
the English parliament; and the change is from darkness to light, from
death to life. Here was no wavering, no uncertainty, no smiling faces with
false hearts behind them; but the steady purpose of resolute men, who
slowly, and with ever opening vision, bore the nation forward to the fair
future which was already dawning.
Parliament met at the beginning of February, a few days after the king's
marriage, which, however, still remained a secret. It is, I think, no
slight evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of the day
proceeded with their work, that in a session so momentous, in a session in
which the decisive blow was to be struck of the most serious revolution
through which the country as yet had passed, they should have first settled
themselves calmly down to transact what was then the ordinary business of
legislation, the struggle with the vital evils of society. The first nine
statutes which were passed in this session were economic acts to protect
the public against the frauds of money-making tradesmen; to provide that
shoes and boots should be made of honest leather; that food should be sold
at fair prices, that merchants should part with their goods at fair
profits; to compel, or as far as the legislature was able to do it, to
compel all classes of persons to be true men; to deal honestly with each
other, in that high Quixotic sense of honesty which requires good subjects
at all times and under all circumstances to consider the interests of the
commonwealth as more important than their own. I have already spoken of
this economic legislation, and I need not dwell now upon details of it;
although under some aspects it may be thought that more which is truly
valuable in English history lies in these unobtrusive statutes than in all
our noisy wars, reformations, and revolutions. The history of this as of
all other nations (or so much of it as there is occasion for any of us to
know), is the history of the battles which it has fought and won with evil;
not with political evil merely, or spiritual evil; but with all
manifestations whatsoever of the devil's power. And to have beaten back, or
even to have struggled against and stemmed in ever so small a degree those
besetting basenesses of human nature, now held so invincible that the
influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic
science; this appears to me a greater victory than Agincourt, a grander
triumph of wisdom and faith and courage than even the English constitution
or the English liturgy. Such a history, however, lies beside the purpose
which I may here permit myself; and the two acts with which the session
closed, alone in this place require our attention.
The first of these is one of the many "Acts of Apparel," which are to be
found in the early volumes of the statute book. The meaning of these laws
becomes intelligible when we reflect upon the condition of the people. The
English were an organised nation of soldiers; they formed an army
perpetually ready for the field, where the degrees were determined by
social position; and the dresses prescribed to the various orders of
society were the graduated uniforms which indicated the rank of the
wearers. When every man was a soldier, and every gentleman was an officer,
the same causes existed for marking, by costume, the distinctions of
authority, which lead to the answering differences in the modern regiments.
The changing conditions of the country at the time of the Reformation, the
growth of a middle class, with no landed possessions, yet made wealthy by
trade or other industry, had tended necessarily to introduce confusion; and
the policy of this reign, which was never more markedly operative than
during the most critical periods of it, was to reinvigorate the discipline
of the feudal system; and pending the growth of what might better suit the
age, pending the great struggle in which the nation was engaged, to hold
every man at his post. The statute specifies its object, and the motives
with which it was passed.
"Whereas," says the preamble, "divers laws, ordinances, and statutes have
been with great deliberation and advice provided and established for the
necessary repressing and avoiding the inordinate excess daily more and more
used in the sumptuous and costly array and apparel accustomably worn in
this realm, whereof hath ensued, and daily do chance such sundry high and
notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious detriment of the
commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge and distinction of
people according to their preeminence and degrees, to the utter
impoverishment and undoing of many light and inexpert persons inclined to
pride, the mother of all vices: Be it enacted,"[415]--but I need not enter
into the particulars of the uniforms worn by the nobles and gentlemen of
the court of Henry VIII.; the temper, not the detail, is of importance; and
of the wisdom or unwisdom of such enactments, we who live in a changed age
should be cautious of forming a hasty opinion. The ends which the old
legislation proposed to itself, have in latter ages been resigned as
impracticable. We are therefore no longer adequate judges how far those
ends may in other times have been attainable, and we can still less judge
of the means through which the attainment of them was sought.
The second act of which I have to speak is open to no such ambiguity; it
remains among the few which are and will be of perpetual moment in our
national history. The conduct of the pope had forced upon the parliament
the reconsideration of the character of his supremacy; and when the
question had once been asked, in the existing state of feeling but one
answer to it was possible.