and here Wolsey had the immense advantage of the great hoards
accumulated during the last reign. In spite of the heavy expenditure
involved in ministering to the king’s pleasures, and on such pageantry
as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, government in Wolsey’s hands was
economically conducted. The great revenues which fell into his own
hands not merely from the numerous preferments he held in England,
but also from foreign sources, enabled him to defray the magnificence
of his own establishment, public as well as private: and there were
indirect methods of throwing much of the cost of the Court upon private
persons. It was not till 1523 that the Cardinal found himself forced
to look to the country for supplies by the necessities of a war budget.
For very nearly ten years he had carried on the government without
calling Parliament, although it had hardly been summoned during the
preceding decade; under a continuance of the same _régime_, England
might have become accustomed to doing almost without Parliament.
The second principle in establishing absolutism was the further
depression of the nobility, who--again, as in the days of Henry
VII.--were steadily kept from offices of State. Even the Howards
exercised no control; and the most powerful of all, the Duke of
Buckingham, was suddenly brought to the block. In that, as in
everything the king did that was unpopular, the minister was charged
with being the moving spirit, and his determination to destroy all
rivals was accounted the moving cause. As a matter of fact, the duke’s
execution fitted in with the Cardinal’s policy: but there is no direct
ground for supposing that he had any active share in the matter. On the
whole, there is no evidence that he was particularly vindictive. Still,
personal ambition apart, since none of the nobles would willingly
have been associated with him as a colleague it was necessary to the
carrying out of his policy that his rivals should have their talons
pared as far as possible; and also of course that there should be none
powerful enough to form a disaffected party. Wolsey knew that, except
for one or two ecclesiastics who had already in effect retired from the
political arena, he stood practically alone. He had to make himself
necessary to the king, and, since he could not be loved by the nobles,
it undoubtedly suited him that they should fear him. In the result he
succeeded so completely in destroying all possibility of opposition to
Henry’s will that there was no man in the kingdom whom the king could
not destroy if he chose merely to raise a finger.
Successful as he was in building up the power of the Crown, he was
still apparently at the height of his own influence when he learnt
that the power of the purse still lay elsewhere; and the king learnt
a very important lesson at the same time--a lesson which he was to
turn to account before very long--the importance of conciliating
popular sentiment. Money was needed for the French war. Wolsey would
have treated the Parliament, called to provide it, as a mere passive
instrument for carrying out the royal behest. Had the House of Commons
in 1523 suffered itself to be brow-beaten, it would have virtually
surrendered its place in the Constitution. The House refused to be
brow-beaten: it refused point-blank to discuss or to vote in the
Cardinal’s presence. When he retired in wrath, a substantial sum was
voted, but as a free grant to the king, not obligatory. Two years
later, more money was wanted. Wolsey did not dare to ask a Parliament
for it. He resorted to Benevolences, and found the citizens of London
obstinate in their assertion that Benevolences were illegal. However
willing Parliaments or burgesses might be to leave measures to the king
and his minister, they were absolutely determined to provide nothing
out of their own pockets unless their own consent had first been
obtained through strictly constitutional channels.
In this thing Henry was quick to prove himself shrewder than the
Cardinal. Like his daughter after him, he had an intuitive perception
of the national temper, and lost no time in repudiating the idea of
coercion. His personal popularity was doubled, and all the odium for
the attempt fell upon the minister. But the scheme towards which he was
strongly predisposed had been foiled, and Wolsey, though the result
favoured his own views, knew that it would be fatal to him if he failed
a second time to give effect to the king’s desires.
Therefore the Cardinal now gave himself up to the effort to meet his
master’s demands in the matter on which he had set his heart, the
separation from Katharine. But in this one matter, success for him was
sufficiently improbable from the outset, and as time went on events
which he was wholly unable to control made it a sheer impossibility. He
failed, and the failure spelt his ruin. Giving himself utterly to the
king’s service, his compliance did not save him. Hitherto he had been
a statesman, pursuing ends which certainly magnified both his country
and his sovereign with extraordinary ability and amazing success, by
methods certainly not more unscrupulous than were sanctioned by the
universal practice of the time. Now he devoted himself to an object
wholly unworthy, which he must have felt to be utterly unrighteous. The
king for whom he degraded himself served him--characteristically. Did
the fallen man feel that his punishment was just, even while the hand
that dealt it was supremely unjust? It would seem so. The sentiment, if
not the words, which Shakespeare put in his mouth is authentic:
O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
V
THE DIVORCE
The whole story of the divorce is an ugly one; no amount of sophistry
will ever make it anything else. Mr. Froude succeeded in persuading
himself that pure unsullied patriotism was Henry’s ruling motive: and
brings himself, apparently with some difficulty, to grant a qualified
pardon to Katharine for her resistance, on the ground that after all
she was a woman, and weak. If Henry had acted as some others have done,
and had taken up definitely the position that by hook or by crook the
legalisation of a new marriage for him was a national necessity, in
order that a male heir to the throne might be born, the issue would
have been a plain one. If bigamy could be justified on the grounds of
national expediency, there was a decently good case for authorising
a bigamous union. To provide a technical trick for evading the form
of bigamy would no doubt have made the process easier, not affecting
the ethics of it one way or other. But it followed logically that
national interests alone were first to be taken into consideration in
the selection of the new spouse. The fact that in that choice Henry was
guided by passion and no other consideration whatever is sufficient
proof that the actuating motive with him was not _salus populi suprema
lex_. The grotesque nemesis by which later on Henry found himself with
three acknowledged children of his body of whom two were born in what
was supposed to be wedlock, both in virtue of marriages which the
Courts had subsequently declared void, while the third, a boy, had no
pretensions to legitimate birth--that nemesis is really a _reductio ad
absurdum_ of the whole position.
If on the other hand the awakening of Henry’s conscientious scruples
had not coincided with a violent passion for another woman it would
have been easier to believe that they were genuine, and that all he
really wanted--as he frequently affirmed--was to have those scruples
allayed. A genuine doubt would assuredly have demanded an authoritative
pronouncement. Unfortunately, he made it perfectly clear that no
authority could allay the scruples; he was absolutely determined that
the Pope and the Cardinal between them must see to it that the doubts
should be confirmed.
The precise stage at which Henry discovered that the weal of his people
required a male heir of his body at any cost; at which his conscience
began to question the validity of the dispensation under which he had
married Katharine; at which he determined that Anne Boleyn should
supplant the queen: all these are matter of some doubt. It is fairly
clear that in 1526--certainly in 1527--if not before, Wolsey had been
made aware that the king was desirous of exchanging Katharine for Anne;
that Wolsey on his knees entreated the king to think better of it; that
he found the king obdurate. There is no sign at all that the ethics of
the divorce troubled Wolsey in any way; on the other hand no one has
ever questioned that the Boleyn marriage was a thing hateful to him
from every point of view. But he had to choose between lending himself
to the king’s desire and rushing on his own ruin. Perhaps there are
not many men who would have dared to take the nobler course; Wolsey,
_deteriora secutus_, none the less fell.
It would seem that Wolsey first set himself to discover some legal
expedient for nullifying the marriage, hit upon the idea that the
dispensation granted by Julius was invalid, and tried more than one
scheme with a view to its being pronounced invalid--hoping, it may
be, that the law’s delays would give the king time to get over his
infatuation for Anne, and that when--if ever--he should be legally free
to take a new wife, the new wife would be a more fitting person.
First of all then, Wolsey, as Papal Legate, took steps for holding a
Legatine Court in England before which the issue should be tried. But
this plan contained a material flaw. Katharine might appeal to the
Pope against the decision of the Legatine Court, and Wolsey, in the
event of such appeal, would become a mere party in the suit instead
of a judge. The Pope therefore must be induced either to give a
favourable pronouncement on his own account, or to appoint a Legatine
Court _ad hoc_--a Court whose judgment would be final. A very difficult
matter; for precisely at this time the recent misfortunes of France
were bearing their fruit: the emperor became entirely predominant in
Italy, and obtained complete control of Clement--and the emperor was
Katharine’s most affectionate nephew. So the hapless Pope, who was
very anxious to keep friends with Henry but was naturally even more
anxious not to offend Charles, desired above everything to evade giving
a decision himself. On the other hand, Wolsey felt that there must be
no pretext for subsequently questioning the legality of the process
by which the dispensation was to be quashed, and therefore it was
imperative that in form that process should convey the Papal sanction.
Besides this, he had a very powerful personal reason for insisting on
it. In England the Boleyn connection, who knew perfectly well what were
Wolsey’s views about Anne, were working hard and not without success
to destroy the king’s trust in the Cardinal, who saw his influence
tottering. Failure to procure the divorce would certainly mean for him
destruction; success, followed by the Boleyn marriage, would place more
power in the hands of the most hostile faction, and he would be left
absolutely alone to bear the whole obloquy of an extremely unpopular
measure, unless the ultimate responsibility could be forced on the
reluctant Pope.
As far as Wolsey was concerned, Clement won the game after apparently
yielding. A Legatine Commission was appointed, but Campeggio was
associated with Wolsey as judge: he managed to spend the best part
of a year in reaching England; it was in fact fifteen months after
the appointment that the Court began its sittings. A few weeks later,
the Pope revoked the case to Rome. For all practical purposes, the
revocation sealed the Cardinal’s fate.
For two years past Wolsey’s position, for all that it seemed to the
world so assured, had been extremely precarious. The king had sent
one agent to Rome behind his minister’s back. The agent’s mission
failed ignominiously, but the thing was significant. Wolsey had gone
to France on a diplomatic errand; on his return, instead of being
summoned to a confidential meeting with the king, he found Anne Boleyn
in the presence. He had been soundly rated by the king because, in
appointing an abbess to Wilton, he had rejected a most unsuitable
_protégée_ of the Boleyns. He knew the stake for which he was playing:
he can hardly have doubted, from the beginning of what was called “The
King’s Affair,” that his fate was bound up with success or failure.
The illusion that he ruled the king was one from which it does not
appear that he ever suffered himself. All he did was to rule England
and English policy precisely so long as he retained the personal
favour of the king, and his policy did not clash with any of the royal
predilections.
In this matter of the “divorce,” Wolsey has found an earnest apologist
in Father Taunton. In his view, it would seem that the Cardinal was
justified, because he believed that there really was a technical flaw
in the form of the dispensation as granted by Pope Julius: if there
was such a flaw, the king was entitled to the benefit of it: and its
existence would enable the Pope to quash the dispensation, without so
much as raising the question whether the granting of it at all was
_ultra vires_ for any Pope. Now the ingenuity of the lawyer who wins
his client’s case on a technical quibble may be admired--in a way: the
ingenuity of the ecclesiastic, who would have provided the Pope with a
golden bridge for evading an awkward question, is also to be admired.
But in presenting these grounds for admiration, the last possibility of
a _moral_ defence is given away. Persons honestly believing that the
relation between Henry and Katharine was by the moral law incestuous,
and could not be otherwise, despite any possible Papal dispensation,
were entitled to urge the dissolution of their union. But if that
relation was not inherently immoral, and was capable of being made
legal as well, then the barest sense of justice demanded, that no
dubious point of law should be brought in, in order to engineer a
dissolution.
The whole case for Wolsey, according to Father Taunton, rests precisely
on this very dubious point of law. The dispensation was formally
drawn to make the marriage between Henry and Katharine lawful even
if affinity had been contracted. But in the ordinary course, as the
law stood, a woman being not married but fully betrothed to a man
might not--although no actual marriage had taken place--marry that
man’s brother, her doing so being against “public honesty.” Since the
greater includes the less, and the whole includes the part, it would
seem obvious that a dispensation covering the actual marriage _ipso
facto_ covered the pre-contract. Yet the apologist would have it that
the Cardinal was satisfied to rest the _whole_ case for nullifying the
marriage on the position that the dispensation was technically invalid
because it did not specifically refer to “public honesty” as well as to
affinity. Such was the contemptible quibble by which the “master-mind
of his age” was prepared to procure a pronouncement that Katharine was
no wife--so that the Papacy might escape an awkward dilemma.
It is at least intelligible to maintain that circumstances may arise
under which, for the public safety, flagrant injustice towards an
individual may be and ought to be committed. That is undoubtedly the
feeling at the bottom of Mr. Froude’s argument. Possibly also it was
at the back of Father Taunton’s mind; but he does not put it forward.
If the doctrine itself be admitted, a loyal son of the Roman Church
is perhaps entitled to hold that it was right to sacrifice Katharine
in order to avoid raising a question extremely inconvenient to the
Papacy. Perhaps also that view is the excuse least derogatory to Wolsey
which can be offered. A review, however, of the entire context of the
documents which Father Taunton cites in part points rather to the
conclusion that the Cardinal did mean to argue that--dispensation or
no dispensation--affinity was an absolute bar; and intended to fall
back on the quibble only as a last desperate resort if the contraction
of affinity were disproved; that he at least wished to find the moral
ground for nullity maintained, but, if that should prove impossible,
was prepared to surrender the extreme Papal claim.
The view of the whole business resulting from a consideration of all
the facts so far as they can be certainly ascertained is entirely
consistent with the rest of the Cardinal’s career. Ambition made him
desire power; like other men of great intellect and strong will, he
knew himself fitted to hold it; like many other statesmen, and with
a good deal more reason than some, he imagined himself the only safe
guide for the State; and he knew that if he once fell there would
be for him no recovery. About 1526, when for a dozen years he had
been the greatest figure in the eyes of the Western world, he found
himself presented with a dilemma. He must execute the king’s will in a
particular matter--or fall.
The king’s will would at least serve the State well in one respect if
it issued in providing a male heir to the throne. Also, if the marriage
were really contrary to the moral law and outside the dispensing power,
it would be in the interest of public morals that the fact should be
declared. So far, no one could possibly be blamed for maintaining the
king’s case. That was the line subsequently taken by Cranmer. But
for Wolsey the situation was much more difficult than for Cranmer,
because for Wolsey it was a _sine qua non_ that the Pope’s official
authority should be maintained. He could not, therefore, adopt any
course which ignored that authority even so far as by not requiring its
open sanction: much less could he, like Cranmer, defy it. Whether, for
the sake of preserving that authority the more rigidly, he intended
to ignore the one moral defence for the desired measure and content
himself with pleading a legal quibble, is a question that can be
argued; but it is quite clear that he was prepared to do so in the last
resort. In short, if the only way to avoid his own downfall was by
sacrificing an innocent victim, the innocence of the victim should not
save her. He would have preferred, no doubt, that the sacrifice should
not be made, but, under the circumstances, he did not hesitate. His
moral plane was too conventionally low for the alternative course. More
or Fisher would have acted otherwise. But the successful statesman who
is ready to commit political suicide rather than actively participate
in an unrighteous deed which he cannot prevent, is not often to be
met with. And Wolsey had the further excuse that he hoped to save
the Church, as he conceived it, from the disastrous results which he
foresaw if the matter fell into other hands.
VI
WOLSEY AND THE REFORMATION
From the attitude of Wolsey to the Papacy in the matter of the divorce,
we are naturally led to a consideration of his whole position in
matters ecclesiastical and religious.
The great revolution which we call the Reformation had two main
aspects. Employing the term “the Church” as representing not the whole
body of professing Christians but the clerical organisation: the
Reformation in the first place changed everywhere, though in varying
degrees, the relation of the secular governments to the Church within
their borders; in the second place it changed the relations of the
various geographical sections of the Church to the whole Catholic body
of which they were members. Thus the State in England assumed a new
attitude to the Church in England, and the Church in England as well as
the State was placed in a new relation to the Roman pontificate. These
changes were essentially political.
In its second aspect, the Reformation was a religious revolution; a
revision of ethical standards; a revival of that ardour of sentiment
and of conviction whereof martyrs are born; a spiritual movement,
accompanied by a doctrinal upheaval. That portion of Christendom which
adhered to the Roman pontificate, confining its doctrinal modifications
within the limits set by the Council of Trent, arrogated to itself
the title of Catholic. The rest arrogated to themselves the title
of the Reformed Churches, accepting the general label of Protestants
originally appropriate only to the Lutheran section. Like all political
labels, all three of these terms were incorrect, “Protestant” being
improperly extended, while the “Reformed” Churches might be Catholic,
and the “Catholic” Church was itself reformed. Perhaps it would be of
advantage rather to treat the doctrinal Reformation as a third aspect,
and to distinguish the great actors by the parts they played in the
political, the religious, and the doctrinal Reformations respectively,
whether in restraining or in promoting change. Thus, religion did not
enter into the programme of Henry VIII.; as to doctrine he certainly
was not a reformer; politically, he emerged as a revolutionary. Men
like More and Colet were ardent reformers of religion; in theology and
on the political side, they were conservative. Luther, Calvin and Knox
were of the advanced party in each case. But it must be definitely laid
down that of the three aspects of the Reformation the most vital was
the religious, not the political or the theological; and the men who,
whether Catholic or Protestant, were the religious leaders, are on a
higher plane of greatness than the rest; it is amongst them that we
must look for the “master-minds” of the age.
Now it does not appear that in any single one of these three aspects
Wolsey as a matter of fact influenced the great movement, already
fairly under weigh, in any appreciable degree. Had he, instead of
Clement, occupied the Papal throne, the political power of the Papacy
would indubitably have been for the time greatly advanced. Had his own
power in England survived the divorce business, the secular onslaught
on the ecclesiastical body conducted by Cromwell would not have taken
place. It is conceivable that under modified circumstances he might
have evolved a _modus vivendi_ for Church and State more favourable
to the Church than that which emerged from the thirty tempestuous
years which followed his death. But in fact the whole manner of the
Cardinal’s life, his immersion in secular politics, the magnificence
of his household, his many benefices, his vast accumulation of wealth,
the arrogance of his demeanour, typified and flaunted before the public
eye precisely those shortcomings of the clergy at large on which the
anti-clerical spirit of the laity was battening. The Cardinal might
have strengthened the Church’s power of resistance; he certainly was
in no small degree the cause of the animosity of her assailants. In
the eyes of the whole world, he was essentially a man of the world,
worldly; and in worldliness, far more than in the temptations of the
Flesh or the Devil, the best of the reformers found the Church’s
besetting sin.
No political skill, no state-craft, no loyalty to his order, could
have gone to the root of the matter by removing the moral grounds of
hostility to the ecclesiastical organisation. A moral enthusiasm of
which--to put it mildly--no hint whatever is to be found in the great
minister, was absolutely essential for any man who was either to
renovate the prestige of the clergy so that the people should follow
them or so to inspire the people that the clergy should follow the
popular movement. In England there arose no prophet, but for that
much-needed _rôle_ Wolsey was about as little fitted as any imaginable
leader.