Henry VIII Part 18

[Footnote 568: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 193, 276, 300; _L.

and P._, iv., 3312.]

In ignorance of all this, Wolsey urged Henry to send Ghinucci, the Bishop of Worcester, and others to Rome with certain demands, among which was a request for Clement's a.s.sent to the abortive proposal for a council in France.[569] But now a divergence became apparent between the policy of Wolsey and that of his king. Both were working for a divorce, but Wolsey wanted Henry to marry as his second wife Renee, the daughter of Louis XII., and thus bind more closely the two kings, upon whose union the Cardinal's personal and political schemes were now exclusively based. Henry, however, had determined that his (p. 203) second wife was to be Anne Boleyn, and of this determination Wolsey was as yet uninformed. The Cardinal had good reason to dread that lady's ascendancy over Henry's mind; for she was the hope and the tool of the anti-clerical party, which had hitherto been kept in check by Wolsey's supremacy. The Duke of Norfolk was her uncle, and he was hostile to Wolsey for both private and public reasons; her father, Viscount Rochford, her cousins, Sir William Fitzwilliam and Sir Francis Brian, and many more distant connections, were anxious at the first opportunity to lead an attack on the Church and Cardinal. Before the divorce case began Wolsey's position had grown precarious; taxes at home and failure abroad had turned the loyalty of the people to sullen discontent, and Wolsey was mainly responsible. "Disaffection to the King," wrote Mendoza in March, 1527, "and hatred of the Legate are visible everywhere.... The King would soon be obliged to change his councillors, were only a leader to present himself and head the malcontents;" and in May he reported a general rumour to the effect that Henry intended to relieve the Legate of his share in the administration.[570] The Cardinal had incurred the dislike of nearly every section of the community; the King was his sole support and the King was beginning to waver. In May there were high words between Wolsey and Norfolk in Henry's presence;[571] in July King and Cardinal were quarrelling over ecclesiastical patronage at Calais,[572] and, long before the failure of the divorce suit, there were other (p. 204) indications that Henry and his minister had ceased to work together in harmony.

[Footnote 569: _Ibid._, iv., 3400.]

[Footnote 570: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 109, 190, 192, 193; _cf._ iv., 3951, Du Bellay to Montmorenci, "those who desire to catch him tripping are very glad the people cry out 'Murder'".]

[Footnote 571: _L. and P._, iv., 1411.]

[Footnote 572: _Ibid._, iv., 3304.]

It is, indeed, quite a mistake to represent Wolsey's failure to obtain a sentence in Henry's favour as the sole or main cause of his fall.

Had he succeeded, he might have deferred for a time his otherwise unavoidable ruin, but it was his last and only chance. He was driven to playing a desperate game, in which the dice were loaded against him. If his plan failed, he told Clement over and over again, it would mean for him irretrievable ruin, and in his fall he would drag down the Church. If it succeeded, he would be hardly more secure, for success meant the predominance of Anne Boleyn and of her anti-ecclesiastical kin. Under the circ.u.mstances, it is possible to attach too much weight to the opinion of the French and Spanish amba.s.sadors, and of Charles V. himself, that Wolsey suggested the divorce as the means of breaking for ever the alliance between England and the House of Burgundy, and subst.i.tuting for it a union with France.[573] The divorce fitted in so well with Wolsey's French policy, that the suspicion was natural; but the same observers also recorded the impression that Wolsey was secretly opposing the divorce from fear of the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn.[574] That suspicion had been brought to Henry's mind as early as June, 1527. It was probably due to the facts that Wolsey was not blinded by pa.s.sion, as Henry was, to the difficulties in the way, and that it was he who persuaded Henry to have recourse to the Pope in the first instance,[575] when the King desired to follow Suffolk's precedent, obtain a sentence (p. 205) in England, marry again, and trust to the Pope to confirm his proceedings.

[Footnote 573: _L. and P._, iv., 4112, 4865, 5512.]

[Footnote 574: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 432, 790; _Ven.

Cal._, 1529, 212.]

[Footnote 575: "He showed me," writes Campeggio, "that in order to maintain and increase here the authority of the Holy See and the Pope he had done his utmost to persuade the King to apply for a legate... although many of these prelates declared it was possible to do without one" (iv., 4857; _cf._ iv., 5072, 5177).]

It is not, however, impossible to trace Wolsey's real designs behind these conflicting reports. He knew that Henry was determined to have a divorce and that this was one of those occasions upon which "he would be obeyed, whosoever spoke to the contrary". As minister he must therefore either resign--a difficult thing in the sixteenth century--or carry out the King's policy. For his own part he had no objection to the divorce in itself; he was no more touched by the pathos of Catherine's fate than was her nephew Charles V., he wished to see the succession strengthened, he thought that he might restore his tottering influence by obtaining gratification for the King, and he was straining every nerve to weaken Charles V., either because the Emperor's power was really too great, or out of revenge for his betrayal over the papal election. But he was strenuously hostile to Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn for two excellent reasons: firstly she and her kin belonged to the anti-ecclesiastical party which Wolsey had dreaded since 1515, and secondly he desired Henry to marry the French Princess Renee in order to strengthen his anti-imperial policy.

Further, he was anxious that the divorce problem should be solved by means of the Papacy, because its solution by merely national action would create a breach between England and Rome, would ruin Wolsey's chances of election as Pope, would threaten his ecclesiastical supremacy in England, which was merely a legatine authority (p. 206) dependent on the Pope,[576] and would throw Clement into the arms of Charles V., whereas Wolsey desired him to be an effective member of the anti-imperial alliance. Thus Wolsey was prepared to go part of the way with Henry VIII., but he clearly saw the point at which their paths would diverge; and his efforts on Henry's behalf were hampered by his endeavours to keep the King on the track which he had marked out.

[Footnote 576: Wolsey "certainly proves himself very zealous for the preservation of the authority of the See Apostolic in this kingdom _because all his grandeur is connected with it_" (Campeggio to Sanga, 28th Oct., 1528, _L. and P._, iv., 4881).]

Henry's suspicions, and his knowledge that Wolsey would be hostile to his marriage with Anne Boleyn, induced him to act for the time independently of the Cardinal; and, while Wolsey was in France hinting at a marriage between Henry and Renee, the King himself was secretly endeavouring to remove the obstacles to his union with Anne Boleyn.

Instead of adopting Wolsey's suggestion that Ghinucci should be sent to Rome as an Italian versed in the ways of the Papal Curia, he despatched his secretary, Dr. William Knight, with two extraordinary commissions, the second of which he thought would not be revealed "for any craft the Cardinal or any other can find".[577] The first was to obtain from the Pope a dispensation to marry a second wife, without being divorced from Catherine, the issue from both marriages to be legitimate. This "licence to commit bigamy" has naturally been the subject of much righteous indignation. But marriage-laws were lax (p. 207) in those days, when Popes could play fast and loose with them for political purposes; and, besides the "great reasons and precedents, especially in the Old Testament," to which Henry referred,[578] he might have produced a precedent more pertinent, more recent, and better calculated to appeal to Clement VII. In 1521 Charles V.'s Spanish council drew up a memorial on the subject of his marriage, in which they pointed out that his ancestor, Henry IV. of Castile, had, in 1437, married Dona Blanca, by whom he had no children; and that the Pope thereupon granted him a dispensation to marry a second wife on condition that, if within a fixed time he had no issue by her, he should return to his first.[579] A licence for bigamy, modelled after this precedent, would have suited Henry admirably, but apparently he was unaware of this useful example, and was induced to countermand Knight's commission before it had been communicated to Clement. The demand would not, however, have shocked the Pope so much as his modern defenders, for on 18th September, 1530, Casale writes to Henry: "A few days since the Pope secretly proposed to me that your Majesty might be allowed two wives. I told him I could not undertake to make any such proposition, because I did not know whether it would satisfy your Majesty's conscience. I made this answer because I know that the Imperialists have this in view, and are urging it; but why, I know not."[580] Ghinucci and Benet were equally cautious, and thought the Pope's suggestion was only a ruse; whether a ruse or not, it is (p. 208) a curious ill.u.s.tration of the moral influence Popes were then likely to exert on their flock.

[Footnote 577: Henry VIII. to Knight in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS., 318, f. 3, printed in the _Academy_, xv., 239, and _Engl. Hist. Rev._, xi., 685.]

[Footnote 578: _L. and P._, iv., 4977.]

[Footnote 579: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 379.]

[Footnote 580: _L. and P._, iv., 6627, 6705, App.

261.]

The second commission, with which Knight was entrusted, was hardly less strange than the first. By his illicit relations with Mary Boleyn, Henry had already contracted affinity in the first degree with her sister Anne, in fact precisely the same affinity (except that it was illicit) as that which Catherine was alleged to have contracted with him before their marriage. The inconsistency of Henry's conduct, in seeking to remove by the same method from his second marriage the disability which was held to invalidate his first, helps us to define the precise position which Henry took up and the nature of his peculiar conscience. Obviously he did not at this stage deny the Pope's dispensing power; for he was invoking its aid to enable him to marry Anne Boleyn. He a.s.serted, and he denied, no principle whatever, though it must be remembered that his own dispensation was an almost, if not quite, unprecedented stretch of papal power. To dispense with the "divine" law against marrying the brother's wife, and to dispense with the merely canonical obstacle to his marriage with Anne arising out of his relations with Mary Boleyn, were very different matters; and in this light the breach between England and Rome might be represented as caused by a novel extension of papal claims. Henry, however, was a casuist concerned exclusively with his own case. He maintained merely that the particular dispensation, granted for his marriage with Catherine, was null and void. As a concession to others, he condescended to give a number of reasons, none of them affecting any principle, but only the legal technicalities of the case--the causes for which the dispensation was granted, such as his own (p. 209) desire, and the political necessity for the marriage were fict.i.tious; he had himself protested against the marriage, and so forth. For himself, his own conviction was ample sanction; he knew he was living in sin with Catherine because his children had all died but one, and that was a manifest token of the wrath of Providence. The capacity for convincing himself of his own righteousness is the most effective weapon in the egotist's armoury, and Henry's egotism touched the sublime. His conscience was clear, whatever other people might think of the maze of apparent inconsistencies in which he was involved. In 1528 he was in some fear of death from the plague; fear of death is fatal to the peace of a guilty conscience, and it might well have made Henry pause in his pursuit after the divorce and Anne Boleyn. But Henry never wavered; he went on in serene a.s.surance, writing his love letters to Anne, as a conscientiously unmarried man might do, making his will,[581] "confessing every day and receiving his Maker at every feast,"[582] paying great attention to the morals of monasteries, and to charges of malversation against Wolsey, and severely lecturing his sister Margaret on the sinfulness of her life.[583] He hopes she will turn "to G.o.d's word, the vively doctrine of Jesu Christ, the only ground of salvation--1 COR. 3, etc."; he reminds her of "the divine ordinance of inseparable matrimony first inst.i.tuted in Paradise," and urges her to avoid "the inevitable d.a.m.nation threatened against (p. 210) advoutrers". Henry's conscience was convenient and skilful. He believed in the "ordinance of inseparable matrimony," so, when he wished to divorce a wife, his conscience warned him that he had never really been married to her. Hence his nullity suits with Catherine of Aragon, with Anne Boleyn and with Anne of Cleves. Moreover, if he had never been married to Catherine, his relations with Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Blount were obviously not adultery, and he was free to denounce that sin in Margaret with a clear conscience.

[Footnote 581: _L. and P._, iv., 4404.]

[Footnote 582: _Ibid._, iv., 4542.]

[Footnote 583: _Ibid._, iv., 4131. Wolsey writes the letter, but he is only giving Henry's "message". The letter is undated, but it refers to the "shameless sentence sent from Rome," _i.e._, sentence of divorce which is dated 11th March, 1527.]

Dr. Knight had comparatively little difficulty in obtaining the dispensation for Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn; but it was only to be effective after sentence had been given decreeing the nullity of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon; and, as Wolsey saw, that was the real crux of the question.[584] Knight had scarcely turned his steps homeward, when he was met by a courier with fresh instructions from Wolsey to obtain a further concession from Clement; the Pope was to empower the Cardinal himself, or some other safe person, to examine the original dispensation, and, if it were found invalid, to annul Henry's marriage with Catherine. So Knight returned to the Papal Court; and then began that struggle between English and Spanish (p. 211) influence at Rome which ended in the victory of Charles V. and the repudiation by England of the Roman jurisdiction. Never did two parties enter upon a contest with a clearer perception of the issues involved, or carry it on with their eyes more open to the magnitude of the results. Wolsey himself, Gardiner, Foxe, Casale, and every English envoy employed in the case, warned and threatened Clement that, if he refused Henry's demands, he would involve Wolsey and the Papal cause in England in a common ruin. "He alleged," says Campeggio of Wolsey, "that if the King's desire were not complied with... there would follow the speedy and total ruin of the kingdom, of his Lordship and of the Church's influence in this kingdom."[585] "I cannot reflect upon it," wrote Wolsey himself, "and close my eyes, for I see ruin, infamy and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the See Apostolic if this course is persisted in. You see in what dangerous times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt remedies which are injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement confessed that, though the Pope was supposed to carry the papal laws locked up in his breast, Providence had not vouchsafed him the key wherewith to unlock them; and Gardiner roughly asked in retort whether in that case the papal laws should not be committed to the flames.[587] He told how the Lutherans were instigating Henry to do away with the temporal (p. 212) possessions of the Church.[588] But Clement could only bewail his misfortune, and protest that, if heresies and schisms arose, it was not his fault. He could not afford to offend the all-powerful Emperor; the sack of Rome and Charles's intimation conveyed in plain and set terms that it was the judgment of G.o.d[589] had cowed Clement for the rest of his life, and made him resolve never again to incur the Emperor's enmity.

[Footnote 584: For these intricate negotiations see Stephan Ehses, _Romische Dok.u.mente zur Geschichte der Ehescheidung Heinrichs VIII. von England_, 1893; these doc.u.ments had all, I think, been previously printed by Laemmer or Theiner, but only from imperfect copies often incorrectly deciphered.

Ehses has printed the originals with the utmost care, and thrown much new light on the subject. The story of the divorce is retold in this new light by Dr. Gairdner in the _English Historical Review_, vols. xi. and xii.; the doc.u.ments in _L. and P._ must be corrected from these sources.]

[Footnote 585: _L. and P._, iv., 4881.]

[Footnote 586: _Ibid._, iv., 4897.]

[Footnote 587: _Ibid._, iv., 4167; _cf._ iv., 5156, and Ehses, _Romische Dok.u.mente_, No. 20, where Cardinal Pucci gives a somewhat different account of the interviews.]

[Footnote 588: _L. and P._, iv., 5038, 5417, 5476.]

[Footnote 589: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 309.]

From the point of view of justice, the Pope had an excellent case; even the Lutherans, who denied his dispensing power, denounced the divorce. _Quod non fieri debuit_, was their just and common-sense point, _factum valet_. But the Pope's case had been hopelessly weakened by the evil practice of his predecessors and of himself.

Alexander VI. had divorced Louis XII. from his Queen for no other reasons than that Louis XII. wanted to unite Brittany with France by marrying its d.u.c.h.ess, and that Alexander, the Borgia Pope, required Louis' a.s.sistance in promoting the interests of the iniquitous Borgia family.[590] The injustice to Catherine was no greater than that to Louis' Queen. Henry's sister Margaret, and both the husbands of his other sister, Mary, had procured divorces from Popes, and why not Henry himself? Clement was ready enough to grant Margaret's divorce;[591] he was willing to give a dispensation for a marriage between the Princess Mary and her half-brother, the Duke of (p. 213) Richmond; the more insuperable the obstacle, the more its removal enhanced his power. It was all very well to dispense with canons and divine laws, but to annul papal dispensations--was that not to cheapen his own wares? Why, wrote Henry to Clement, could he not dispense with human laws, if he was able to dispense with divine at pleasure?[592]

Obviously because divine authority could take care of itself, but papal prerogatives needed a careful shepherd. Even this principle, such as it was, was not consistently followed, for he had annulled a dispensation in Suffolk's case. Clement's real anxiety was to avoid responsibility.

More than once he urged Henry to settle the matter himself,[593] as Suffolk had done, obtain a sentence from the courts in England, and marry his second wife. The case could then only come before him as a suit against the validity of the second marriage, and the accomplished fact was always a powerful argument. Moreover, all this would take time, and delay was as dear to Clement as irresponsibility. But Henry was determined to have such a sentence as would preclude all doubts of the legitimacy of his children by the second marriage, and was as anxious to shift the responsibility to Clement's shoulders as the Pope was to avoid it. Clement next urged Catherine to go into a nunnery, for that would only entail injustice on herself, and would involve the Church and its head in no temporal perils.[594] When Catherine (p. 214) refused, he wished her in the grave, and lamented that he seemed doomed through her to lose the spiritualties of his Church, as he had lost its temporalties through her nephew, Charles V.[595]

[Footnote 590: _L. and P._, iv., 5152, where Henry's amba.s.sadors quote this precedent to the Pope. _Cf. ibid._, v., 45, for other precedents.]

[Footnote 591: The sentence was actually p.r.o.nounced by the Cardinal of Ancona, and the date was 11th March, 1527, just before Henry commenced proceedings against Catherine. Henry called it a "shameless sentence"; but it may nevertheless have suggested to his mind the possibility of obtaining one like it.]

[Footnote 592: _L. and P._, iv., 5966.]

[Footnote 593: _Ibid._, iv., 3802, 6290.]

[Footnote 594: _Ibid._, iv., 5072. "It would greatly please the Pope," writes his secretary Sanga, "if the Queen could be induced to enter some religion, because, although this course would be portentous and unusual, he could more readily entertain the idea, _as it would involve the injury of only one person_."]

[Footnote 595: _L. and P._, iv., 5518.]

It was thus with the utmost reluctance that he granted the commission brought by Knight. It was a draft, drawn up by Wolsey, apparently declaring the law on the matter and empowering Wolsey, if the facts were found to be such as were alleged, to p.r.o.nounce the nullity of Catherine's marriage.[596] Wolsey desired that it should be granted in the form in which he had drawn it up. But the Pope's advisers declared that such a commission would disgrace Henry, Wolsey and Clement himself. The draft was therefore amended so as to be un.o.bjectionable, or, in other words, useless for practical purposes; and, with this commission, Knight returned to England, rejoicing in the confidence of complete success. But, as soon as Wolsey had seen it, he p.r.o.nounced the commission "as good as none at all".[597] The discovery did not improve his or Henry's opinion of the Pope's good faith; but, dissembling their resentment, they despatched, in February, 1528, Stephen Gardiner and Edward Foxe to obtain fresh and more effective powers. Eventually, on 8th June a commission was issued to Wolsey and Campeggio to try the case and p.r.o.nounce sentence;[598] even if one was unwilling, the other might act by himself; and all appeals from their jurisdiction (p. 215) were forbidden. This was not a decretal commission; it did not bind the Pope or prevent him from revoking the case. Such a commission was, however, granted on condition that it should be shown to no one but the King and Wolsey, and that it should not be used in the procedure.

The Pope also gave a written promise, in spite of a protest lodged on Catherine's behalf by the Spanish amba.s.sador, Muxetula,[599] that he would not revoke, or do anything to invalidate, the commission, but would confirm the cardinals' decision.[600] If, Clement had said in the previous December, Lautrec, the French commander in Italy, came nearer Rome, he might excuse himself to the Emperor as having acted under pressure.[601] He would send the commission as soon as Lautrec arrived. Lautrec had now arrived; he had marched down through Italy; he had captured Melfi; the Spanish commander, Moncada, had been killed; Naples was thought to be on the eve of surrender.[602] The Spanish dominion in Italy was waning, the Emperor's thunderbolts were less terrifying, and the justice of the cause of his aunt less apparent.

[Footnote 596: It was called a "decretal commission," and it was a legislative as well as an administrative act; the Pope being an absolute monarch, his decrees were the laws of the Church; the difficulties of Clement VII. and indeed the whole divorce question could never have arisen had the Church been a const.i.tutional monarchy.]

[Footnote 597: _L. and P._, iv., 3913.]

[Footnote 598: _Ibid._, iv., 4345.]

[Footnote 599: _Engl. Hist. Rev._, xii., 110-14.]

[Footnote 600: Ehses, _Romische Dok._, No. 23; _Engl. Hist. Rev._, xii., 8.]

[Footnote 601: _L. and P._, iv., 3682, 3750.]

[Footnote 602: _Ibid._, iv., 3934, 3949, 4224.]