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THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON
THE DIVORCE
OF
CATHERINE OF ARAGON
THE STORY AS TOLD BY THE IMPERIAL AMBASSADORS
RESIDENT AT THE COURT OF
HENRY VIII.
_IN USUM LAICORUM_
BY
J. A. FROUDE
_BEING A SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME TO THE
AUTHOR'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1891
[_All rights reserved_]
Copyright, 1891,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various
claimants--Catherine incapable of having further children--
Irregularity of her marriage with the King--Papal dispensations--
First mention of the divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles
V.--Policy of Wolsey--Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in
Italy--Appeal of the Pope--Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The
Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the Princess Mary called in
question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court--Alarms of
Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform
of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in
England---Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey 21
CHAPTER II.
Mission of Wolsey to Paris--Visits Bishop Fisher on the way--
Anxieties of the Emperor--Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII.--
Large offers to Wolsey--Address of the French Cardinals to the
Pope--Anne Boleyn chosen by Henry to succeed Catherine--Surprise
and displeasure of Wolsey--Fresh attempts of the Emperor to bribe
him--Wolsey forced to continue to advocate the divorce--Mission
of Dr. Knight to Rome--The Pope at Orvieto--The King applies for
a dispensation to make a second marriage--Language of the
dispensation demanded--Inferences drawn from it--Alleged intrigue
between the King and Mary Boleyn 41
CHAPTER III.
Anxiety of the Pope to satisfy the King--Fears of the Emperor--
Proposed alternatives--France and England declare war in the
Pope's defence--Campeggio to be sent to England--The King's
account of the Pope's conduct--The Pope's distress and alarm--The
secret decretal--Instructions to Campeggio 62
CHAPTER IV.
Anne Boleyn--Letters to her from the King--The Convent at
Wilton--The Divorce--The Pope's promises--Arrival of Campeggio
in England--Reception at the Bridewell Palace--Proposal to
Catherine to take the veil--Her refusal--Uncertainty of the
succession--A singular expedient--Alarms of Wolsey--The true
issue--Speech of the King in the City--Threats of the Emperor--
Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius--Alleged discovery of a brief
supplying them--Distress of Clement 70
CHAPTER V.
Demands of the Imperial Agent at Rome--The alleged Brief--Illness
of the Pope--Aspirations of Wolsey--The Pope recovers--Imperial
menaces--Clement between the anvil and the hammer--Appeal of
Henry to Francis--The trial of the cause to proceed--Instructions
to Campeggio--Opinion at Rome--Recall of Mendoza--Final interview
between Mendoza and the King 86
CHAPTER VI.
The Court at Blackfriars--The point at issue--The Pope's
competency as judge--Catherine appeals to Rome--Imperial pressure
upon Clement--The Emperor insists on the Pope's admission of the
appeal--Henry demands sentence--Interference of Bishop Fisher--
The Legates refuse to give judgment--The Court broken up--Peace
of Cambray 99
CHAPTER VII.
Call of Parliament--Wolsey to be called to account--Anxiety of
the Emperor to prevent a quarrel--Mission of Eustace Chapuys--
Long interview with the King--Alarm of Catherine--Growth of
Lutheranism--The English clergy--Lord Darcy's Articles against
Wolsey--Wolsey's fall--Departure of Campeggio--Letter of Henry to
the Pope--Action of Parliament--Intended reform of the Church--
Alienation of English feeling from the Papacy 110
CHAPTER VIII.
Hope of Wolsey to return to power--Anger of Anne Boleyn and the
Duke of Norfolk--Charles V. at Bologna--Issue of a prohibitory
brief--The Pope secretly on Henry's side--Collection of
opinions--Norfolk warns Chapuys--State of feeling in England--
Intrigues of Wolsey--His illness and death 131
CHAPTER IX.
Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power--The Royal
family of Spain--Address of the English Peers to the Pope--
Compromise proposed by the Duke of Norfolk--The English Agents at
Rome--Arrival of a new Nuncio in England--His interview with the
King--Chapuys advises the King's excommunication--Position of the
English clergy--Statute of Provisors--The clergy in a Praemunire--
Remonstrances of the Nuncio--Despair of Catherine--Her letter to
the Pope--Henry prepares for war--The introduction of briefs from
Rome forbidden--Warnings given to the Spanish Ambassador and the
Nuncio 141
CHAPTER X.
State of feeling in England--Clergy and laity--The Clergy in a
Praemunire--The Royal Supremacy--Hesitation at Rome--Submission of
the Clergy--The meaning of the new title--More and Fisher--Alarm
of the Emperor--Appeal of Catherine to him--Unpopularity of Anne
Boleyn--Threats of excommunication--Determination of Henry--
Deputation of Peers to Catherine--Catherine's reply--Intolerable
pretensions of the Emperor--Removal of Catherine from the Court 157
CHAPTER XI.
Proposals for the reunion of Christendom--Warning addressed to
the Pope--Address of the English nobles to Queen Catherine--
Advances of Clement to Henry--Embarrassments of the Pope and the
Emperor--Unwillingness of the Pope to decide against the King--
Business in Parliament--Reform of the English Church--Death of
Archbishop Warham--Bishop Fisher and Chapuys--Question of
annates--Papal Briefs--The Pope urged to excommunicate Henry--The
Pope refuses--Anger of Queen Catherine's Agent 175
CHAPTER XII.
Henry advised to marry without waiting for sentence--Meeting of
Henry and Francis--Anne Boleyn present at the interview--Value of
Anne to the French Court--Pressure on the Pope by the Agents of
the Emperor--Complaints of Catherine--Engagements of Francis--
Action of Clement--The King conditionally excommunicated--Demand
for final sentence--Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury--
Marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn--Supposed connivance of the
Pope--The Nuncio attends Parliament--The Act of Appeals--The
Emperor entreated to intervene--Chapuys and the King 192
CHAPTER XIII.
The King's claim--The obstinacy of Catherine--The Court at
Dunstable--Judgment given by Cranmer--Debate in the Spanish
Council of State--Objections to armed interference--The English
opposition--Warning given to Chapuys--Chapuys and the Privy
Council--Conversation with Cromwell--Coronation of Anne Boleyn--
Discussions at Rome--Bull supra Attentatis--Confusion of the
Catholic Powers--Libels against Henry--Personal history of
Cromwell--Birth of Elizabeth--The King's disappointment--Bishop
Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England--
Growth of Lutheranism 218
CHAPTER XIV.
Interview between the Pope and Francis at Marseilles--Proposed
compromise--The divorce case to be heard at Cambray--The Emperor
consents--Catherine refuses--The story of the Nun of Kent--Bishop
Fisher in the Tower--Imminent breach with the Papacy--Catherine
and the Princess Mary--Separation of the Princess from her
mother--Catherine at Kimbolton--Appeals to the Emperor--
Encouragement of Lutheranism--Last efforts at Rome--Final
sentence delivered by the Pope--The Pope's authority abolished in
England 243
CHAPTER XV.
The Papal curse--Determined attitude of the Princess Mary--
Chapuys desires to be heard in Parliament--Interview with the
King--Permission refused--The Act of Succession--Catherine loses
the title of Queen--More and Fisher refuse to swear to the
statute--Prospects of rebellion in Ireland--The Emperor unwilling
to interfere--Perplexity of the Catholic party--Chapuys before
the Privy Council--Insists on Catherine's rights--Singular
defence of the Pope's action--Chapuys's intrigues--Defiant
attitude of Catherine--Fears for her life--Condition of Europe--
Prospect of war between France and the Empire--Unwillingness of
the Emperor to interfere in England--Disappointment of
Catherine--Visit of Chapuys to Kimbolton 260
CHAPTER XVI.
Prosecution of Lord Dacre--Failure of the Crown--Rebellion in
Ireland--Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Delight of the Catholic party--
Preparations for a rising in England--The Princess Mary--Lord
Hussey and Lord Darcy--Schemes for insurrection submitted to
Chapuys--General disaffection among the English Peers--Death of
Clement VII.--Election of Paul III.--Expectation at Rome that
Henry would now submit--The expectation disappointed--The Act of
Supremacy--The Italian conjuror--Reginald Pole--Violence and
insolence of Anne Boleyn--Spread of Lutheranism--Intended escape
of the Princess Mary out of England 283
CHAPTER XVII.
Prospects of civil war--England and Spain--Illness of the
Princess Mary--Plans for her escape--Spirit of Queen Catherine--
The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Negotiations for a new treaty
between Henry and Charles--Debate in the Spanish Council of
State--The rival alliances--Disappointment of the confederate
Peers--Advance of Lutheranism in England--Cromwell and Chapuys--
Catherine and Mary the obstacles to peace--Supposed designs on
Mary's life 301
CHAPTER XVIII.
Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor--
Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor--
The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. Butts--The clergy
and the Reformation--The Charterhouse monks--More and Fisher in
the Tower--The Emperor in Africa--The treaty--Rebellion in
Ireland--Absolution of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald for the murder of
the Archbishop of Dublin--Treason of Lord Hussey--Fresh debates
in the Spanish Council--Fisher created cardinal--Trial and
execution of Fisher and More--Effect in Europe 318
CHAPTER XIX.
Campaign of the Emperor in Africa--Uncertainties at Rome--Policy
of Francis--English preparations for war--Fresh appeals to the
Emperor--Delay in the issue of the censures--The Princess Mary--
Letter of Catherine to the Pope--Disaffection of the English
Catholics--Libels against Henry--Cromwell and Chapuys--Lord
Thomas Fitzgerald--Dangerous position of Henry--Death of the Duke
of Milan--Effect on European policy--Intended Bull of Paul III.--
Indecision of Charles--Prospect of war with France--Advice of
Charles to Catherine--Distrust of the Emperor at the Papal
Court--Warlike resolution of the Pope restrained by the Cardinals 347
CHAPTER XX.
Illness of Queen Catherine--Her physicians' report of her
health---Her last letter to the Emperor--She sends for Chapuys--
Interview between Chapuys and Henry--Chapuys at Kimbolton--Death
of Catherine--Examination of the body--Suspicion of poison--
Chapuys's opinion--Reception of the news at the Court--Message of
Anne Boleyn to the Princess Mary--Advice of Chapuys--Unpopularity
of Anne--Court rumours 371
CHAPTER XXI.
Funeral of Catherine--Miscarriage of Anne--The Princess Mary and
the Act of Supremacy--Her continued desire to escape--Effect of
Catherine's death on Spanish policy--Desire of the Emperor to
recover the English alliance--Chapuys and Cromwell--Conditions of
the treaty--Efforts of the Emperor to recover Henry to the
Church--Matrimonial schemes--Likelihood of a separation of the
King from Anne--Jane Seymour--Anne's conduct--The Imperial
treaty--Easter at Greenwich--Debate in Council--The French
Alliance or the Imperial--The alternative advantages--Letter of
the King to his Ambassador in Spain 389
CHAPTER XXII.
Easter at Greenwich--French and Imperial factions at the English
court--Influence of Anne Boleyn--Reports of Anne's conduct
submitted to the King--Flying rumours--Secret Commission of
Enquiry--Arrests of various persons--Sir Henry Norris and the
King--Anne before the Privy Council--Sent to the Tower--Her
behaviour and admissions--Evidence taken before the Commission--
Trials of Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton--Letter of
Weston--Trial of Anne and her brother--Executions--Speech of
Rochford on the scaffold--Anne sentenced to die--Makes a
confession to Cranmer--Declared to have not been the King's
lawful wife--Nature of the confession not known--Execution 412
CHAPTER XXIII.
Competition for Henry's hand--Solicitations from France and from
the Emperor--Overtures from the Pope--Jane Seymour--General
eagerness for the King's marriage--Conduct of Henry in the
interval before Anne's execution--Marriage with Jane Seymour--
Universal satisfaction--The Princess Mary--Proposal for a General
Council--Neutrality of England in the war between France and the
Empire 436
CHAPTER XXIV.
Expectation that Henry would return to the Roman Communion--Henry
persists in carrying out the Reformation--The Crown and the
clergy--Meeting of a new Parliament--Fresh repudiation of the
Pope's authority--Complications of the succession--Attitude of
the Princess Mary--Her reluctant submission--The King empowered
to name his successor by will--Indication of his policy--The
Pilgrimage of Grace--Cost of the Reformation--The martyrs,
Catholic and Protestant 450
INDEX 465
THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON.
INTRODUCTION.
The mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men who play
leading parts on the world's stage gather about them the admiration of
friends and the animosity of disappointed rivals or political enemies. The
atmosphere becomes charged with legends of what they have said or
done--some inventions, some distortions of facts, but rarely or never
accurate. Their outward acts, being public, cannot be absolutely
misstated; their motives, being known only to themselves, are an open
field for imagination; and as the disposition is to believe evil rather
than good, the portraits drawn may vary indefinitely, according to the
sympathies of the describer, but are seldom too favourable. The more
distinguished a man is the more he is talked about. Stories are current
about him in his own lifetime, guaranteed apparently by the highest
authorities; related, insisted upon; time, place, and circumstance
accurately given--most of them mere malicious lies; yet, if written down,
to reappear in memoirs a hundred years hence, they are likely to pass for
authentic, or at least probable. Even where there is no malice,
imagination will still be active. People believe or disbelieve, repeat or
suppress, according to their own inclinations; and death, which ends the
feuds of unimportant persons, lets loose the tongues over the characters
of the great. Kings are especially sufferers; when alive they hear only
flattery; when they are gone men revenge themselves by drawing hideous
portraits of them, and the more distinguished they may have been the more
minutely their weaknesses are dwelt upon. "C'est un plaisir indicible,"
says Voltaire, "de donner des decrets contre des souverains morts quand on
ne peut en lancer contre eux de leur vivant de peur de perdre ses
oreilles." The dead sovereigns go their way. Their real work for good or
evil lives after them; but they themselves are where the opinions
expressed about their character affect them no more. To Caesar or Napoleon
it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their conduct. It
is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts which as
they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts which
are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be duly
honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be correctly
appreciated. To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy is
impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult.
Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the
time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests
rise. The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct.
The student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks
he understands--in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or
sensuality; and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction,
resents or ridicules attempts to look for other motives. So long as his
moral judgment is generally correct, he inflicts no injury, and he suffers
none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects of abhorrence; he learns to
detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus, though the character
described by the great Roman historian may have been a mere creation of
the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of the Prince of
Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip of Protestant
tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of Catholic Europe
which it would be now useless to disturb. The tendency of history is to
fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or not, and to
interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than it aspires
to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of history for
the crimes which they are alleged to have committed. It may be sometimes
shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers had
deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for
some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for
acts which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself.
Preoccupied with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which
he had learnt to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true,
is of no real moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions
of the difference between right and wrong. The whitewashing of the
villains of tradition is, therefore, justly regarded as waste of labour.
If successful, it is of imperfect value; if unsuccessful, it is a misuse
of industry which deserves to be censured. Time is too precious to be
squandered over paradoxes. The dead are gone; the censure of mankind has
written their epitaphs, and so they may be left. Their true award will be
decided elsewhere.
This is the common sense verdict. When the work of a man is done and
ended; when, except indirectly and invisibly, he affects the living world
no more, the book is closed, the sentence is passed, and there he may be
allowed to rest. The case is altered, however, when the dead still live in
their actions, when their principles and the effects of their conduct are
still vigorous and operative, and the movements which they initiated
continue to be fought over. It sometimes happens that mighty revolutions
can be traced to the will and resolution of a single man, and that the
conflict continues when he is gone. The personal character of such a man
becomes then of intrinsic importance as an argument for attack or defence.
The changes introduced by Henry VIII. are still denounced or defended with
renewed violence; the ashes of a conflict which seemed to have been
decided are again blown into a flame; and what manner of man Henry was,
and what the statesmen and churchmen were who stood by him and assisted
him in reshaping the English constitution, becomes a practical question of
our own time. By their fruits ye shall know them. A good tree cannot bear
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Roman
Catholics argue from the act to the man, and from the man back to the act.
The Reformation, they say, was a rebellion against an authority appointed
by God for the rule of the world; it was a wicked act in itself; the
author or the authors of it were presumably, therefore, themselves wicked;
and the worst interpretation of their conduct is antecedently probable,
because a revolt against the Church of Christ could only have originated
in depraved hearts. Or again, inverting the argument, they say with
sufficient plausibility that the sins and crimes of the King are
acknowledged facts of history; that from so bad a man no good thing could
ever rise; that Henry was a visible servant of the devil, and therefore
the Reformation, of which he was the instrument, was the devil's work. If
the picture drawn of him by his Catholic contemporaries is correct, the
inference is irresistible. That picture, however, was drawn by those whose
faith he wounded and whose interests he touched, and therefore might be
regarded with suspicion. Religious animosity is fertile in calumny,
because it assumes beforehand that every charge is likely to be true in
proportion to its enormity, and Catholic writers were credulous of evil
when laid to the charge of so dangerous an adversary. But the Catholics
have not been Henry's only accusers; all sorts and sects have combined in
the general condemnation. The Anglican High Churchman is as bitter against
him as Reginald Pole himself. He admits and maintains the separation from
Rome which Henry accomplished for him; but he abhors as heartily as Pole
or Lingard the internal principles of the Reformation. He resents the
control of the clergy by the civil power. He demands the restoration of
the spiritual privileges which Henry and his parliaments took away from
them. He aspires to the recovery of ecclesiastical independence. He
therefore with equal triumph points to the blots in Henry's character, and
deepens their shade with every accusation, proved or unproved, which he
can find in contemporary records. With him, too, that a charge was alleged
at the time is evidence sufficient to entitle him to accept it as a fact.
Again, Protestant writers have been no less unsparing from an imprudent
eagerness to detach their cause from a disreputable ally. In Elizabeth's
time it was a point of honour and loyalty to believe in the innocence of
her mother. If Anne Boleyn was condemned on forged or false evidence to
make way for Jane Seymour, what appears so clearly to us must have been
far clearer to Henry and his Council; of all abominable crimes committed
by tyrannical princes there was never one more base or cowardly than
Anne's execution; and in insisting on Anne's guiltlessness they have
condemned the King, his ministers, and his parliaments. Having discovered
him to have murdered his wife, they have found him also to have been a
persecutor of the truth. The Reformation in England was at its outset
political rather than doctrinal. The avarice and tyranny of the Church
officials had galled the limbs of the laity. Their first steps were to
break the chains which fretted them, and to put a final end to the
temporal power of the clergy. Spiritual liberty came later, and came
slowly from the constitution of the English mind. Superstition had been
familiarised by custom, protected by natural reverence, and shielded from
inquiry by the peculiar horror attaching to unbelief. The nation had been
taught from immemorial time that to doubt on the mysteries of faith was
the worst crime which man could commit; and while they were willing to
discover that on their human side the clergy were but brother mortals of
questionable character, they drew a distinction between the Church as a
national institution and the doctrines which it taught. An old creed could
not yield at once. The King did much; he protected individual Lutherans to
the edge of rashness. He gave the nation the English Bible. He made
Latimer a bishop. He took away completely and for ever the power of the
prelates to punish what they called heresy _ex officio_ and on their own
authority; but the zeal of the ultra-Protestants broke loose when the
restraint was taken off; the sense of the country was offended by the
irreverence with which objects and opinions were treated which they
regarded as holy, and Parliament, which had put a bit in the mouth of the
ecclesiastical courts, was driven to a substitute in the Bill of the Six
Articles. The advanced section in popular movements is usually unwise. The
characteristic excellence of the English Reformation is, that throughout
its course it was restrained by the law, and the Six Articles Bill,
tempered as it was in the execution, was a permissible, and perhaps
useful, measure in restraint of intemperance. It was the same in Germany.
Anabaptists continued to be burnt in Saxony and Hesse long after Luther's
revolt; Calvin thought the stake a fitting penalty for doubts upon the
Trinity. John Knox, in Scotland, approved of witch-burning and sending
mass-priests to the gallows. Henry could not disregard the pronounced
feeling of the majority of the English people. He was himself but one of
them, and changed slowly as they changed. Yet Protestant tradition has
assumed that the bloody whip with six strings was an act of arbitrary
ferocity. It considers that the King could, and ought to, have advanced at
once into an understanding of the principle of toleration--toleration of
the new opinions, and a more severe repression of the old. The Puritans
and Evangelicals forgot that he had given them the English Testament. They
forgot that by setting his foot upon the bishops he had opened the pulpits
to themselves, and they classed him among the persecutors, or else joined
in the shallow laughs of the ultramontane Catholics at what they pleased
to call his inconsistency.
Thus from all sides a catena of invective has been wrapped about Henry's
character. The sensible part of the country held its tongue. The speakers
and writers were the passionate and fanatical of both persuasions, and by
them the materials were supplied for the Henry VIII. who has been brought
down to us by history, while the candid and philosophic thinkers of the
last and present centuries have accepted the traditional figure. In their
desire to be impartial they have held the balance equal between Catholics
and Protestants, inclining slightly to the Catholic side, from a wish to
conciliate a respectable body who had been unjustly maligned and
oppressed; while they have lavished invectives upon the early Reformers
violent enough to have satisfied even Pole himself, whose rhetoric has
formed the base of their declamation.
Liberal philosophy would have had a bad time of it in England, perhaps in
all Europe, if there had been no Henry VIII. to take the Pope by the
throat. But one service writers like Macaulay have undoubtedly
accomplished. They have shown that it is entirely impossible to separate
the King from his ministers--to condemn Henry and to spare Cranmer.
Protestant writers, from Burnet to Southey, have tried to save the
reforming bishops and statesmen at Henry's expense. Cranmer, and Latimer,
and Ridley have been described as saints, though their master was a
villain. But the cold impartiality of Macaulay has pointed out
unanswerably that in all Henry's most questionable acts his own ministers
and his prelates were active participants--that his Privy Council, his
parliaments, his judges on the bench, the juries empanelled to try the
victims of his tyranny, were equally his accomplices; some actively
assisting; the rest, if these acts were really criminal, permitting
themselves to be bribed or terrified into acquiescence. The leading men of
all descriptions, the nation itself, through the guilt of its
representatives, were all stained in the same detestable colours. It may
be said, indeed, that they were worse than the King himself. For the King
at least may be pleaded the coarse temptations of a brutal nature; but
what palliation can be urged for the peers and judges who sacrificed Anne
Boleyn, or More, or Fisher, according to the received hypothesis? Not even
the excuse of personal fear of an all-powerful despot. For Henry had no
Janissaries or Praetorians to defend his person or execute his orders. He
had but his hundred yeomen of the guard, not more numerous than the
ordinary followers of a second-rate noble. The Catholic leaders, who were
infuriated at his attacks upon the Church, and would if they could have
introduced foreign armies to dethrone him, insisted on his weakness as an
encouragement to an easy enterprise. Beyond those few yeomen they urged
that he had no protection save in the attachment of the subjects whom he
was alienating. What strange influence was such a king able to exercise
that he could overawe the lords and gentry of England, the learned
professions, the municipal authorities? How was it that he was able to
compel them to be the voluntary instruments of his cruelty? Strangest of
all, he seems to have needed no protection, but rather to have been
personally popular, even among those who disapproved his public policy.
The air was charged with threats of insurrection, but no conspiracy was
ever formed to kill him, like those which so often menaced the life of his
daughter. When the North was in arms in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and a
question rose among the leaders whether in the event of victory the King
was to be deposed, it was found that anyone who proposed to remove him
would be torn in pieces by the people.
Granting that Henry VIII. was, as Dickens said of him, "a spot of blood
and grease" on the page of English history, the contemporary generation of
Englishmen must have been fit subjects of such a sovereign. Every country,
says Carlyle, gets as good a government as it deserves. The England of the
Cromwells and the Cranmers, the Howards and the Fitzwilliams, the
Wriothesleys and the Pagets, seems to have been made of baser materials
than any land of which mankind has preserved a record. Roman Catholics may
fairly plead that out of such a race no spiritual reform is likely to have
arisen which could benefit any human soul. Of all the arguments which can
be alleged for the return of England to the ancient fold, this is surely
the most powerful.
Yet England shows no intention of returning. History may say what it
pleases, yet England remains tenacious of the liberties which were then
won for us, and unconscious of the disgrace attaching to them;
unconscious, also, that the version of the story which it accepts contains
anything which requires explanation. The legislation of Henry VIII., his
Privy Council, and his parliaments is the Magna Charta of the modern
world. The Act of Appeals and the Act of Supremacy asserted the national
independence, and repudiated the interference of foreign bishop, prince,
or potentate within the limits of the English empire. The clergy had held
for many centuries an _imperium in imperio_. Subject themselves to no law
but their own, they had asserted an irresponsible jurisdiction over the
souls and bodies of the people. The Act for the submission of these
persons reduced them to the common condition of subjects under the control
of the law. Popes were no longer allowed to dispense with ordinary
obligations. Clerical privileges were abolished. The spiritual courts,
with their intolerable varieties of iniquity, were swept away, or coerced
within rational limits. The religious houses were suppressed, their
enormous wealth was applied for the defence of the realm, and the worse
than Augean dunghill of abuses was cleared out with resolute hand. These
great results were accomplished in the face of papal curses, in defiance
of superstitious terrors, so despicable when bravely confronted, so
terrible while the spectre of supernatural power was still unexorcised; in
the face, too, of earthly perils which might make stout hearts shake, of
an infuriated priesthood stirring the people into rebellion, of an
exasperated Catholic Europe threatening fire and sword in the name of the
Pope. These were distinguished achievements, not likely to have been done
at all by an infamous prince and infamous ministers; yet done so well that
their work is incorporated in the constitution almost in the form in which
they left it; and this mighty revolution, the greatest and most
far-reaching in modern times, was accomplished without a civil war, by
firmness of hand, by the action of Parliament, and a resolute enforcement
of the law. Nor has the effect of Henry's legislation been confined to
England. Every great country, Catholic or Protestant, has practically
adopted its chief provisions. Popes no longer pretend a power of deposing
princes, absolving subjects from their allegiance, or selling
dispensations for offences against the law of the land. Appeals are no
longer carried from the national courts to the court of the Rota. The
papal treasury is no longer supplied by the plunder of the national
clergy, collected by resident papal officials. Bishops and convocations
have ceased to legislate above and independent of the secular authority,
and clerks who commit crimes bear the same penalties as the profane. The
high quality of the Reformation statutes is guaranteed by their endurance;
and it is hard to suppose that the politicians who conceived and carried
them out were men of base conditions. The question is not of the character
of the King. If nothing was at issue but the merits or demerits of a
single sovereign, he might be left where he lies. The question is of the
characters of the reforming leaders, who, jointly with the King, were the
authors of this tremendous and beneficent revolution. Henry in all that he
did acted with these men and through them. Is it possible to believe that
qualities so opposite as the popular theory requires existed in the same
persons? Is it possible, for instance, that Cranmer, who composed or
translated the prayers in the English Liturgy, was the miserable wretch
which Macaulay or Lingard describes? The era of Elizabeth was the
outspring of the movement which Henry VIII. commenced, and it was the
grandest period in English history. Is it credible that so invigorating a
stream flowed from a polluted fountain?
Before accepting a conclusion so disgraceful--before consigning the men
who achieved so great a victory, and risked and lost their lives in the
battle, to final execration--it is at least permissible to pause. The
difficulty can only be made light of by impatience, by prejudice, or by
want of thought. To me at any rate, who wished to discover what the real
history of the Reformation had been, it seemed so considerable, that,
dismissing the polemical invectives of later writers, I turned to the
accounts of their conduct, which had been left behind by the authors of it
themselves. Among the fortunate anomalies of the situation, Henry departed
from previous custom in holding annual parliaments. At every step which
he took, either in the rearrangement of the realm or in his own domestic
confusions, he took the Lords and Commons into his council, and ventured
nothing without their consent. The preambles of the principal statutes
contain a narrative clear and precise of the motives of everything that he
did--a narrative which at least may have been a true one, which was not
put forward as a defence, but was a mere explanation of acts which on the
surface seemed violent and arbitrary. If the explanation is correct, it
shows us a time of complications and difficulties, which, on the whole,
were successfully encountered. It shows us severe measures severely
executed, but directed to public and necessary purpose, involving no
sycophancy or baseness, no mean subservience to capricious tyranny, but
such as were the natural safeguards during a dangerous convulsion, or
remedies of accidents incidental to hereditary monarchy. The story told is
clear and distinct; pitiless, but not dishonourable. Between the lines can
be read the storm of popular passions, the beating of the national heart
when it was stirred to its inmost depths. We see established institutions
rooted out, idols overthrown, and injured worshippers exasperated to fury;
the air, as was inevitable at such a crisis, full of flying rumours, some
lies, some half lies with fragments of truth attaching to them, bred of
malice or dizzy brains, the materials out of which the popular tradition
has been built. It was no insular revolution. The stake played for was the
liberty of mankind. All Europe was watching England, for England was the
hinge on which the fate of the Reformation turned. Could it be crushed in
England, the Catholics were assured of universal victory, and therefore
tongues and pens were busy everywhere throughout Christendom, Catholic
imagination representing Henry as an incarnate Satan, for which, it must
be admitted, his domestic misadventures gave them tempting opportunities.
So thick fell the showers of calumny, that, bold as he was, he at times
himself winced under it. He complained to Charles V. of the libels
circulated about him in France and Flanders. Charles, too, had suffered in
the same way. He answered, humorously, that "if kings gave occasion to be
spoken about they would be spoken about; kings were not kings of tongues."
Henry VIII. was an easy mark for slander; but if all slanders are to pass
as true which are flung at public men whose policy provides them with an
army of calumniators, the reputation of the best of them is but a spotted
rag. The clergy were the vocal part of Europe. They had the pulpits; they
had the writing of the books and pamphlets. They had cause to hate Henry,
and they hated him with an intensity of passion which could not have been
more savage had he been the devil himself. But there are men whose enmity
is a compliment. They libelled Luther almost as freely as they libelled
the English king. I myself, after reading and weighing all that I could
find forty years ago in prints or manuscripts, concluded that the real
facts of Henry's conduct were to be found in the Statute Book and nowhere
else; that the preambles of the Acts of Parliament did actually represent
the sincere opinion about him of the educated laymen of England, who had
better opportunities of knowing the truth than we can have, and that a
modern Englishman may be allowed to follow their authority without the
imputation of paradox or folly.
With this impression, and with the Statute Book for a guide, I wrote the
opening portion of my "History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the
Defeat of the Armada." The published criticisms upon my work were
generally unfavourable. Catholic writers inherited the traditions and the
temper of their forefathers, and believed the catena of their own
historians. Protestants could not believe in a defence of the author of
the Six Articles Bill. Secular reviewers were easily witty at the "model
husband" whom they supposed me to be imposing upon them, and resented the
interference with a version of the story authenticated by great names
among my predecessors. The public, however, took an interest in what I had
to say. The book was read, and continues to be read; at the close of my
life, therefore, I have to go once more over the ground; and as I am still
substantially alone in maintaining an opinion considered heretical by
orthodox historians, I have to decide in what condition I am to leave my
work behind me. In the thirty-five years which have elapsed since those
early volumes appeared large additions have been made to the materials for
the history of the period. The vast collection of manuscripts in the
English Record Office, which then were only partially accessible, have
been sorted, catalogued, and calendared by the industry of my friends Mr.
Brewer and Mr. Gairdner. Private collections in great English houses have
been examined and reported on by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.
Foreign archives at Paris, Simancas, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Brussels
have been searched to some extent by myself, but in a far larger degree by
able scholars specially appointed for the purpose. In the despatches, thus
made accessible, of the foreign ambassadors resident at Henry's court we
have the invaluable, if not impartial, comments of trained and responsible
politicians who related from day to day the events which were passing
under their eyes. Being Catholics, and representatives of Catholic
powers, they were bitterly hostile to the Reformation--hostile alike on
political grounds and religious--and therefore inclined to believe and
report the worst that could be said both of it and of its authors. But
they wrote before the traditions had become stereotyped; their accounts
are fresh and original; and, being men of the world, and writing in
confidence to their own masters, they were as veracious as their
prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too, they render another
service of infinite importance. Being in close communication with the
disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged with them secretly in
promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V. reveal with extraordinary
clearness the dangers with which the Government had to deal. They make it
perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with its stern and peremptory
demands, was no more than a legitimate and necessary defence against
organised treason.
It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to what I had
already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a flower
or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are resolved
into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The effect of
these despatches is precisely the same--we see with the eyes, we hear with
the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they describe.
Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their
origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with
the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or
malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in
modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal
witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader
must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are
false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be
equally certain that lies were told as freely then as now. He will
probably allow his sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what
fits in with his creed or his theory. He will share the general
disposition to believe evil, especially about kings and great men. The
exaggerated homage paid to princes, when they are alive, has to be
compensated by suspecting the worst of them as soon as they are gone. But
the perusal of all these documents leaves the broad aspect of the story,
in my opinion, precisely where it was. It is made more interesting by the
greater fulness of particulars; it is made more vivid by the clear view
which they afford of individual persons who before were no more than
names. But I think now, as I thought forty years ago, that through the
confusions and contradictions of a stormy and angry time, the statute-book
remains the safest guide to follow. If there be any difference, it is that
actions which till explained appeared gratuitously cruel, like the
execution of Bishop Fisher, are seen beyond dispute to have been
reasonable and just. Bishop Fisher is proved by the words of the Spanish
Ambassador himself to have invited and pressed the introduction of a
foreign Catholic army into England in the Pope's interest.
Thus I find nothing to withdraw in what I then wrote, and little to alter
save in correcting some small errors of trivial moment; but, on the other
hand, I find much to add; and the question rises in what way I had better
do it, with fair consideration for those who have bought the book as it
stands. To take the work to pieces and introduce the new material into
the text or the notes will impose a necessity of buying a new copy, or of
being left with an inferior one, on the many friends who least deserve to
be so treated. I have concluded, therefore, on writing an additional
volume, where such parts of the story as have had important light thrown
upon them can be told over again in ampler form. The body of the history I
leave as it stands. It contains what I believe to be a true account of the
time, of the immediate causes which brought about the changes of the
sixteenth century, and of the characters and principles of the actors in
them. I have only to fill up certain deficiencies and throw light into
places hitherto left dark. For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality.
I believe the Reformation to have been the greatest incident in English
history; the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the
Anglo-Saxon race over the globe, and imprinted the English genius and
character on the constitution of mankind. I am unwilling to believe more
evil than I can help of my countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a
work, and in a book written with such convictions the mythical element
cannot be wholly wanting. Even things which immediately surround us,
things which we see and touch, we do not perceive as they are; we perceive
only our own sensations, and our sensations are a combined result of
certain objects and of the faculties which apprehend them. Something of
ourselves must always be intermixed before knowledge can reach us; in
every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon
us, there is still a subjective element. It is so in physical science. It
is so in art. It is so in our speculations on our own nature. It is so in
religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. The curved and rectilineal
figures on which we reason are our own creation, and have no existence
exterior to the reasoning mind. Most of all is it so in history, where we
have no direct perceptions to help us, but are dependent on the narratives
of others whose beliefs were necessarily influenced by their personal
dispositions. The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against
his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence. In
judging of the truth of particular statements, the conclusion which he
will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly upon what he
conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice, where witnesses
can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree be
eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been
often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but
rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and
we are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the
Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to
the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse,
or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who
regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For
myself, I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I
possess. I have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing
which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently
proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or
prejudice. But whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to
follow the rule that incidents must not be lightly accepted as authentic
which are inconsistent with the universal laws of human nature, and that
to disprove a calumny it is sufficient to show that there is no valid
witness for it.
Finally, I do not allow myself to be tempted into controversy with
particular writers whose views disagree with my own. To contradict in
detail every hostile version of Henry VIII.'s or his ministers' conduct
would be as tedious as it would be irritating and unprofitable. My censors
have been so many that a reply to them all is impossible, and so
distinguished that a selection would be invidious. Those who wish for
invectives against the King, or Cranmer, or Cromwell, can find them
everywhere, from school manuals to the grave works of elaborate
historians. For me, it is enough to tell the story as it presents itself
to my own mind, and to leave what appears to me to be the truth to speak
for itself.
The English nation throughout their long history have borne an honourable
reputation. Luther quotes a saying of Maximilian that there were three
real sovereigns in Europe--the Emperor, the King of France, and the King
of England. The Emperor was a king of kings. If he gave an order to the
princes of the Reich, they obeyed or disobeyed as they pleased. The King
of France was a king of asses. He ordered about his people at his will,
and they obeyed like asses. The King of England was king of a loyal nation
who obeyed him with heart and mind as loyal and faithful subjects. This
was the character borne in the world by the fathers of the generation whom
popular historians represent as having dishonoured themselves by
subserviency to a bloodthirsty tyrant. It is at least possible that
popular historians have been mistaken, and that the subjects of Henry
VIII. were neither much better nor much worse than those who preceded or
came after them.
CHAPTER I.
Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various claimants--
Catherine incapable of having further children--Irregularity of her
marriage with the King--Papal dispensations--First mention of the
divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles V.--Policy of Wolsey--
Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in Italy--Appeal of the Pope--
Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the
Princess Mary called in question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court--
Alarms of Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform
of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in England--
Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey.
In the year 1526 the political prospects of England became seriously
clouded. A disputed succession had led in the previous century to a
desperate civil war. In that year it became known in private circles that
if Henry VIII. was to die the realm would again be left without a certain
heir, and that the strife of the Roses might be renewed on an even more
distracting scale. The sons who had been born to Queen Catherine had died
in childbirth or had died immediately after it. The passionate hope of the
country that she might still produce a male child who would survive had
been constantly disappointed, and now could be entertained no longer. She
was eight years older than her husband. She had "certain diseases" which
made it impossible that she should be again pregnant, and Henry had for
two years ceased to cohabit with her. He had two children still
living--the Princess Mary, Catherine's daughter, then a girl of eleven,
and an illegitimate son born in 1519, the mother being a daughter of Sir
John Blount, and married afterwards to Sir Gilbert Talboys. By
presumptive law the Princess was the next heir; but no woman had ever sat
on the throne of England alone and in her own right, and it was doubtful
whether the nation would submit to a female sovereign. The boy, though
excluded by his birth from the prospect of the crown, was yet brought up
with exceptional care, called a prince by his tutors, and probably
regarded by his father as a possible successor should his sister go the
way of her brothers. In 1525, after the King had deliberately withdrawn
from Catherine, he was created Duke of Richmond--a title of peculiar
significance, since it had been borne by his grandfather, Henry VII.--and
he was granted precedence over the rest of the peerage. Illegitimacy was a
serious, but, it might be thought, was not an absolute, bar. The Conqueror
had been himself a bastard. The Church, by its habits of granting
dispensations for irregular marriages or of dissolving them on pleas of
affinity or consanguinity or other pretext, had confused the distinction
between legitimate and illegitimate. A Church Court had illegitimatised
the children of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Grey, on the ground of one of
Edward's previous connections; yet no one regarded the princes murdered in
the Tower as having been illegitimate in reality; and to prevent disputes
and for an adequate object, the Duke of Richmond, had he grown to manhood,
might, in the absence of other claims, have been recognised by Parliament.
But the Duke was still a child, and might die as Henry's other sons had
died; and other claims there were which, in the face of the bar sinister,
could not fail to be asserted. James V. of Scotland was next in blood,
being the son of Henry's eldest sister, Margaret. There were the Greys,
inheriting from the second sister, Mary. Outside the royal house there
were the still popular representatives of the White Rose, the Marquis of
Exeter, who was Edward IV.'s grandson; the Countess of Salisbury, daughter
of Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence, and sister of the murdered Earl
of Warwick; and Henry's life was the only obstacle between the collision
of these opposing pretensions. James, it was quite certain, would not be
allowed to succeed without a struggle. National rivalry forbade it. Yet it
was no less certain that he would try, and would probably be backed by
France. There was but one escape from convulsions which might easily be
the ruin of the realm. The King was in the flower of his age, and might
naturally look for a Prince of Wales to come after him if he was married
to a woman capable of bearing one. It is neither unnatural nor, under the
circumstances, a matter to be censured if he and others began to reflect
upon the peculiar character of his connection with Catherine of Aragon. It
is not sufficiently remembered that the marriage of a widow with her
husband's brother was then, as it is now, forbidden by the laws of all
civilised countries. Such a marriage at the present day would be held
_ipso facto_ invalid and not a marriage at all. An irregular power was
then held to rest with the successors of St. Peter to dispense, under
certain conditions, with the inhibitory rules. The popes are now
understood to have never rightly possessed such an authority, and
therefore, according to modern law and sentiment, Henry and Catherine
never were husband and wife at all. At the time it was uncertain whether
the dispensing power extended so far as to sanction such a union, and when
the discussion rose upon it the Roman canonists were themselves divided.
Those who maintained the widest view of the papal faculty yet agreed that
such a dispensation could only be granted for urgent cause, such as to
prevent foreign wars or internal seditions, and no such cause was alleged
to have existed when Ferdinand and Henry VII. arranged the marriage
between their children. The dispensation had been granted by Pope Julius
with reluctance, had been acted upon after considerable hesitation, and
was of doubtful validity, since the necessary conditions were absent. The
marriages of kings were determined with little reference to the personal
affection of the parties. Between Henry and Catherine there was probably
as much and as little personal attachment as there usually is in such
cases. He respected and perhaps admired her character; but she was not
beautiful, she was not attractive, while she was as proud and intractable
as her mother Isabella. Their union had been settled by the two fathers to
cement the alliance between England and Spain. Such connections rest on a
different foundation from those which are voluntarily entered into between
private persons. What is made up for political reasons may pardonably be
dissolved when other reasons of a similar kind require it; and when it
became clear that Catherine could never bear another child, that the
penalty threatened in the Levitical law against marriages of this precise
kind had been literally enforced in the death of the male offspring, and
that civil war was imminent in consequence upon the King's death, Henry
may have doubted in good faith whether she had ever been his wife at
all--whether, in fact, the marriage was not of the character which
everyone would now allow to attach to similar unions. Had there been a
Prince of Wales, the question would never have arisen, and Henry, like
other kings, would have borne his fate. But there was no prince, and the
question had risen, and there was no reason why it should not. There was
no trace at the outset of an attachment to another woman. If there had
been, there would be little to condemn; but Anne Boleyn, when it was first
mooted, was no more to the King than any other lady of the court. He
required a wife who could produce a son to secure the succession. The
powers which had allowed an irregular marriage could equally dissolve it,
and the King felt that he had a right to demand a familiar concession
which other sovereigns had often applied for in one form or another, and
rarely in vain.
Thus as early as 1526 certainly, and probably as much as a year before,
Cardinal Wolsey had been feeling his way at Rome for a separation between
Henry and Catherine. On September 7 in that year the Bishop of Bath, who
was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal of the arrival
there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent had spoken to
the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that there would
be difficulties about it.[1] The "blessed divorce"--_benedictum divorcium_
the Bishop calls it--had been already under consideration at Rome. The
difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the time
obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably
referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the
Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released
at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had
reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages
for the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half
German, remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of
Italy; and Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury
which the world believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines
of the New World, seemed advancing to universal empire.
France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary enemy of
England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of
Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established
alliance. She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as a
link in the confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times
were changing. Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through
English influence; but Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger
to Europe than France had been. The Italian princes were too weak to
resist the conqueror of Pavia. Italy once conquered, the Papacy would
become a dependency of the empire, and, with Charles's German subjects in
open revolt against it, the Church would lose its authority, and the
organisation of the Catholic world would fall into hopeless decrepitude.
So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of English ministers. He
believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the best defence of order
and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a change of partners.
England held the balance between the great rival powers. If the English
alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the Emperor could
be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised. Wolsey was
utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an unnatural one. Charles, busy
with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with suspicious
forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were
disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by
plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and
ravished nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been
as little spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was
another inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's
master meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to
Clement as perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded,
and desperate condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution
was possible. To the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering
to its fall, and Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might
precipitate the catastrophe. To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal
offence to the Spanish nation by agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of
Aragon was to ask him to sign his death-warrant. No wonder, therefore,
that he found difficulties. Yet it was to France and England that Clement
had to look for help in his extremities. The divorce perhaps had as yet
been no more than a suggestion, a part of a policy which was still in its
infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more convenient season. Meantime
he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally
he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See
in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he
said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been
devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of
Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The
Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last,
but they would open them too late. So piteous was the entreaty that Henry
when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears.[2] Clement had not been
idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to oppose Bourbon;
he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend himself. He was
called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war with the most
Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless the Western
powers interfered the end would come.
If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with France. The
change of policy was ill understood, and was not popular among Henry's
subjects. The divorce as yet had not been spoken of. No breath of such a
purpose had gone abroad. But English sentiment was imperial, and could
endure with equanimity even the afflictions of a pope. The King was more
papal than his people; he allowed Wolsey to guide him, and negotiations
were set on foot at once for a special treaty with France, one of the
conditions of which was to be the marriage of the Princess Mary--allotted
like a card in a game--either to Francis or to one of his sons; another
condition being that the English crown should be settled upon her should
Henry die without a legitimate son. Sir John Russell was simultaneously
despatched to Rome with money to help the Pope in paying his troops and
garrisoning the city. The ducats and the "kind words" which accompanied
them "created incredible joy," encouraged his Holiness to reject unjust
conditions which had been offered, and restored him, if for the moment
only, "from death to life."[3] If Russell described correctly what he saw
in passing through Italy, Clement had good cause for anxiety. "The
Swabians and Spaniards," he wrote, "had committed horrible atrocities.
They had burnt houses to the value of two hundred million ducats, with all
the churches, images, and priests that fell into their hands. They had
compelled the priests and monks to violate the nuns. Even where they were
received without opposition they had burned the place; they had not spared
the boys, and they had carried off the girls; and whenever they found the
Sacrament of the Church they had thrown it into a river or into the vilest
place they could find. If God did not punish such cruelty and wickedness,
men would infer that He did not trouble Himself about the affairs of this
world."[4]
The news from Italy gave a fresh impulse to Wolsey's policy and the
Anglo-French Alliance, which was pushed forward in spite of popular
disapproval. The Emperor, unable to pay, and therefore unable to control,
his troops, became himself alarmed. He found himself pressed into a course
which was stimulating the German revolt against the Papacy, and he
professed himself anxious to end the war. Inigo de Mendoza, the Bishop of
Burgos, was despatched to Paris to negotiate for a general pacification.
From Paris he was to proceed to London to assure Henry of the Emperor's
inalienable friendship, and above all things to gain over Wolsey by the
means which experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart.
The great Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was
several years in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the
arrears should be immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be
secured to him on the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make
him a further grant of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish
bishoprics. No means was to be spared to divert the hostility of so
dangerous an enemy.[5]
Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large schemes which
he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions Francis I. was
as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were brightening.
Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by creating six
new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition of these
sacred offices.[6] A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its
head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's
defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were
refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the
marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret
projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with
Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with
Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and
probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in
Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's
marriage with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the
discussion of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired
whether it was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate.
Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the "Foreign and Domestic
Calendar of State Papers," doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the
kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the
best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during
subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris,
and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly
appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in
the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various
repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that the
Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was made of his name,
and impossible equally to suppose that he would have allowed his name to
be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was unquestionably the first person
to bring the question publicly forward. It is likely enough, however, that
his introduction of so startling a topic had been privately arranged
between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the further steps which were
immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this time been finally
resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration of the balance
of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever were alleged
for similar separations. The Pope's hesitation, it might be assumed, would
now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon England and
France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse than they
were.
The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken
entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under
consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had
reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by
the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred
to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she
was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of
Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained
that she was kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting
herself to the utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to
arrest Wolsey's policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the
divorce she had not heard a word. It was to come upon her like a
thunderstroke.[7]
Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out of place of the
two persons who were to play the principal parts on the stage, as they
were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador in
England. Of Catherine his account is brief.
"The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and very
religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved by
the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five years
old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and one
daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives."
On the King, Falieri is more elaborate.
"In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise
and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the
superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is;
his head bald like Caesar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English
custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well,
tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent
well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with
the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated
also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his
childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and
writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is
kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he
is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two
masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable,
giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and
cripples."[8]
Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous
pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws
had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European
world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of
decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If
the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English
courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had
he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the
Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have
been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of
itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the
difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first
entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.
On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he
called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham
sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having
stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage,
enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of
his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King
assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced and
considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon lawyers
must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled bishops.
The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged Bishop of
Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly that the
marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient.
These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy which had hitherto
been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and her friends learnt
now for the first time the measure which was in contemplation. Mendoza,
writing on the day following the York Place meeting to the Emperor,
informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable authority, that
Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to divorce the
Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself to speak
of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been invited to
sign a declaration that, being his brother's widow, she could not be the
wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take part
against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal
Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken
against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet
had been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might
be kept as private as possible.[9]
That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify Henry at Charles's
expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the German Emperor
were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and England were the
only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week before the
meeting of Wolsey's court he had experienced in the most terrible form
what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that same
month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm. The
city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through the
streets on mules' backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns were
abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may have
been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy
persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days
were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently
conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo,
looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have
appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the
final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider
it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been
animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic
Christendom. Charles himself is not likely to have intended the
humiliation of the Holy See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings,
and Wolsey's policy was not without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles's
Minister at Genoa, and Lope de Soria's opinions, freely uttered, may have
been shared by many a Catholic besides himself. On the 25th of May, a
fortnight after the storm, he wrote to his master the following noticeable
letter:--
"The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God, who permits
his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other Christian
princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust wars
which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom, the
faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated.... Should the Emperor think that
the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope's temporal
power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I cannot but
remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious action,
to reform the Church; so that the Pope's authority be confined exclusively
to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to Caesar,
since by right what is God's belongs to God, and what is Caesar's to Caesar.
I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the
Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that
time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a
remedy to that evil."[10]
Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who could
recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes and
Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles
himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria's words might have been
dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment
placed himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would
have been different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this
might be what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything
most objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical
administration of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles
was the surest method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was
an incident in the situation, but not the least important. Catherine
represented the Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to
make the breach with her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon
himself to assure the King that after the last outrage the Pope would
agree to anything that France and England demanded of him, and would trust
to his allies to bear him harmless. That the divorce was a thing
reasonable in itself to ask for, and certain to be conceded by any pope
who was free to act on his own judgment, was assumed as a matter of
course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the English agent at Rome, was instructed to
obtain access to Clement in St. Angelo, to convey to him the indignation
felt in England at his treatment, and then to insist on the illegality of
the King's relations with Catherine, on the King's own scruples of
conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects that there should be a male
heir to the crown. The "urgent cause" such as was necessary to be produced
when exceptional actions were required of the popes was the imminence or
even certainty of civil war if no such heir was born.
Catherine meanwhile had again communicated with Mendoza. She had spoken to
her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was impossible, had told
her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a separation was
necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears and
reproaches.[11] The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a
matter where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her
gently, till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in
the matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis,
and consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence
of the Pope's imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself
helpless, might become a puppet in the Emperor's hands. Under such
circumstances he could not be trusted by other countries with the
spiritual authority attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed
for some interim arrangement by which France and England were to
constitute themselves into a separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its
head as Archbishop of Rouen. Mendoza says that this proposal had been
actually made to Wolsey by the French Ambassador.[12] In Spain it was even
believed to be contemplated as a permanent modification of the
ecclesiastical system. The Imperial Councillors at Valladolid told the
Venetian Minister that the Cardinal intended to separate the Churches of
England and France from that of Rome, saying that as the Pope was a
prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that even if the Emperor released
him, he still would not be free unless his fortresses and territory now in
the Emperor's hands were restored to him.[13] Wolsey had reason for
anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the Emperor insisting
that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey's Legatine powers.
In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it soon became
known throughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The nation
generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their hereditary
friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen, but did not
touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an injured
wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he should
not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to a
project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the
most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand
men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join
them.[14] He saw Wolsey--he reasoned with him, and when he found reason
ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give.
Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He
spoke of the Papacy: "how the chair was now in the Emperor's hands, and
the Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation."
The glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been
Wolsey's highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had
served the Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still
trusted that the Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church.
Mendoza's answer was not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that
both the spiritual and temporal powers were now centred in his master, and
he advised Wolsey, if he desired an arrangement, to extend his journey
from France, go on to Spain, and see the Emperor in person. It was
precisely this _centering_ which those who had charge of English liberties
had a right to resent. Divorce or no divorce, they could not allow a power
possessed of so much authority in the rest of Christendom to be the
servant of a single prince. The divorce was but an illustration of the
situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza contemplated would reduce England
and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the Empire.