The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon Part 6

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 t.i.tle--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.

A struggle was now inevitable between the King and the Pope, and the result of it would depend on the sentiments of the English nation. Chapuys and the Nuncio believed the majority of the people to be loyally attached to the see of Rome. To the Pope as pope the King and Council were willing to submit; but a pope who was the va.s.sal and mouthpiece of another secular sovereign, they believed the country would support them in refusing to acknowledge. Was Chapuys right or was the King? The Parliament about to open would decide. In the clergy of England the Pope had a ready-made army completely at his devotion. In a.s.serting their independence of civil control the clerical order had been conscious that they could not stand alone, and had attached themselves with special devotion to their Spiritual Sovereign at Rome. They might complain of annates and first-fruits and other tributes which they were made to pay; but the Pope's support they knew to be essential to the maintenance of their professional privileges; and in any contest which might arise they were certain to be found on the side of the Holy See. The hero of the imagination of every English priest was Becket of Canterbury. In theory he regarded the secular prince as ruling only by delegation from the Supreme Pontiff, and as liable in case of contumacy to be deposed. In case of quarrel between the clergy and the State the enormous influence of the Church was pledged to the order and to its chief at Rome.

The spiritualty were already exasperated by the clipping of their claws in the last session. From the Bishop of Rochester, who represented clerical opinion in its most accentuated form, from great ladies, and from a party of the n.o.bles with whom, as Catherine's friends, he mainly a.s.sociated, Chapuys had heard unanimous censures of the King's conduct. These persons told him that the whole nation agreed with them, and certainly the opposition of a body so powerful as the clergy was by itself formidable.

Before it came to war, therefore, with the Pontiff, the King had prepared his measures to disarm the Pontiff's legionaries. To clip their claws was not enough. Their mouths had to be held with bit and bridle. Parliament, after repeated prorogations, was opened at last in January. Convocation, which was called simultaneously, was put formally in possession of a fact which had appeared on the first rumour of it incredible--that the whole body of the clergy lay under Praemunire for having recognised Cardinal Wolsey's legation and the Papal Bull by which it was inst.i.tuted. It was an intimation that the old English laws were awake again. The clergy were subjects of the Crown, not of the Pope, and to impress the fact upon their minds they learnt that legally their property was forfeited, that they would obtain their pardon only on paying a fine of a hundred thousand pounds, and on distinctly acknowledging the King as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Chapuys's correspondence explained the motives of the Government in extorting the confession; and justified the arbitrary use which was made of the Praemunire. The Pope was being urged to excommunicate the King and declare him deposed. The clergy, through whom the Pope would act, were to be forced to admit that they were subjects of the Crown and were bound to obey the laws of their country. It was in no idle vanity, no ambitious caprice that Henry VIII. demanded the t.i.tle which has been so much debated. It was as a practical a.s.sertion of the unity and independence of the realm. England was to have but one sovereign supreme within her own limits, with whom no foreign prince, secular or spiritual, had a right to interfere; and an acknowledgement of their obligation was demanded in ample form from the order which looked elsewhere for its superior. The black regiments were to be compelled to swear allegiance to the proper sovereign.

Clement's mind had always misgiven him that, if he pushed Henry too far, mischief would befall him. He had refused the last brief till it was extorted from him.[141] As if Mai had not been pressing and vehement enough, Catherine had now at Rome a special representative of her own, Dr.

Ortiz, a bitter Catholic theologian with the qualities which belong to that profession. Mai and Ortiz together, listening to no excuse, drove the Pope on from day to day, demanding sentence with its inevitable consequence. The Cardinals were alarmed. One of them told Mai that, in his opinion, the original dispensation really was void, that Julius had no faculty to dispense in such a case. The Pope suggested that the affair might be suspended for two years. It might then, perhaps, drop and be forgotten. He enquired whether, if the King consented to plead by proxy before him, the Emperor would agree to _any accommodation_. Should the case go on, it might last fifteen or twenty years. All the Cardinals, said Mai, nay, the Pope himself, would like to put off the affair entirely, to avoid trouble.[142] The Court of Rome had, in fact, discovered at last that matters were really serious, that Henry would not be played with, and that the quarrel must be peaceably settled. Mai and Ortiz were furious.

They insisted on immediate action. Delay, they said, would be injurious to the Queen. Their orders were to urge the Pope to proceed and pa.s.s sentence, whether the parties appeared or not. They hinted that very soon there would be no more trouble from England; they had been told, and they believed, that, with the clergy on Catherine's side, a Papal decree would end the whole business.

Their confidence was shaken and their activity rudely arrested by the news of the Praemunire and the demand for the submission of the English clergy.

Too well the meaning of it was understood. On Chapuys and the Nuncio it fell like a thunderbolt. They held an anxious consultation, and they agreed on the least wise measure which they could possibly have adopted.

The Nuncio, as representing the majesty of the Holy See, determined to go himself to Convocation, and exhort the Bishops to uphold the Church and resist the King and the House of Commons. He actually went, and was much astonished at the reception which he met with. The right reverend body was so "scandalised" at his intrusion that they entreated him to withdraw, without giving him time to declare his errand. They told him that, if he had anything to say, "he must address himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was not then present." The Nuncio had to withdraw precipitately. In his vexation he had not even the prudence to depart quietly, but insisted on thrusting on the Bishop of London the words which he had meant to speak.[143]

The Bishops and clergy themselves were compelled to submit to the inevitable. The law under which they suffered had marked an epoch of successful resistance to Papal usurpation. The revival of it was to mark another and a greater. They struggled long enough and violently enough to deprive their resistance of dignity, and then, "swearing they would never consent," consented. They agreed to pay the hundred thousand pounds as the price of their pardon. They agreed, in accepting it, to acknowledge the King as Supreme Head of the English Church, and, to ease their conscience, they were allowed to introduce as a qualifying phrase, _quantum per legem Christi licet_. But the law of Christ would avail them little for their special privileges. It would have to be interpreted by the rejection of another form which they had desired to subst.i.tute and were not allowed.

For "_legem Christi_" they had desired to read "_legem Ecclesiae_." The supposed claims of the Church were precisely what they were to be compelled to disavow.

It was done. The enchantment was gone from them. They had become as other men, shorn Samsons and no longer dangerous. The Pope might say what he pleased. The clergy were now the King's servants, and not the Pope's, and must either support the Crown or become confessed traitors. Thus when the Brief arrived, the Nuncio was allowed to present it. The King took it with a smile and pa.s.sed it on to the Privy Council, talked to him good-humouredly of indifferent matters, and had never been more polite. In a light way he told the Nuncio that he knew of his attempt to persuade the Bishops to agree to nothing to the Pope's prejudice; but his anxiety was unnecessary; no injury would be done to the Pope, unless the Pope brought it upon himself. The King's graciousness was but too intelligible. To Catherine and Chapuys and all their friends the meaning of it was that Henry had made himself "Pope" in England. The Queen foresaw her own fate as too sure to follow. She feared "that, since the King was not ashamed of doing such monstrous things, and there being no one who could or dared contradict him, he might, one of these days, undertake some further outrage against her own person."[144]

The blame of the defeat was thrown on the unfortunate Clement. The Pope's timidity and dissimulation, wrote Chapuys, had produced the effect which he had all along foretold. It had prejudiced the Queen's interests and his own authority. Her cause was making no progress. The Pope had promised Mai that if the King disobeyed his first brief and allowed Anne Boleyn to remain at court he would excommunicate him, and now all that he had done had been to issue another conditional brief less strong than the first, and the Lady was left defiant and with as much authority as ever. The Queen had begun to think that the Pope had no desire to settle the matter, and, as Norfolk observed to Chapuys, was glad that the Princes should be at discord, for fear they might combine to reform the clergy. If the Pope had directly ordered the King to separate from the Lady Anne, the King would never have claimed the supremacy[145] which had caused such universal consternation. The Chancellor [Sir Thomas More] was so horrified at it, Chapuys said, that he would quit office as soon as possible. The Bishop of Rochester was sick with grief. He opposed as much as he could; but they threatened to fling him and his friends into the river, so he had to yield at last, and had taken to his bed in despair. The Bishops, it was thought, would now do anything against the Queen which they were ordered, especially seeing how cold and indifferent the Pope seemed about her fate.

The Nuncio had questioned the King about the nature of his new Papacy. The King told him that if the Pope showed him proper respect he might retain his lawful authority, "otherwise he knew what he would himself do."[146]

The last words were explained in another letter in which Chapuys said that the Lady Anne was supporting the Lutherans. They had been treated to prison and stake while More had held the seals. On More's retirement they were now to have an easier time of it. Between them and the King there was the link of a common enemy in the Pope, and the King was showing a disposition to protect them. The revival of the Praemunire created embarra.s.sments of many kinds. The Pope had officials of his own in England and Ireland, whom he appointed himself, and could not realise the extent of the change which he had brought on. It is amusing to find him in the midst of the storm peacefully soliciting Henry for help against the Turks, and the Nuncio paying friendly visits to the palace. Henry told him that he had made a final appeal to Rome and was waiting to see the result.

The Pope might excommunicate him if he pleased; he cared nothing for his excommunication; the Emperor might, no doubt, hurt him; but he was not sure that the Emperor desired to hurt him, or, if it came to that, he could defend himself and the realm. Norfolk was equally decided. They knew, he said, that the Queen and the Emperor were pressing the Pope for sentence, but it was time lost. If the Pope issued ten thousand excommunications, no notice would be taken of them. The Archbishop and not the Pope was the lawful judge in English causes. Chapuys expressed a hope that a day would come when the King would listen to his true friends again, etc. "You will see before long," replied the Duke, "that the Emperor will repent of not having consented to the divorce."[147]

In fact, the Emperor had begun to repent already, or, if not to repent, yet to be perplexed with the addition which his action had brought upon him to his many burdens. The Praemunire and the successful establishment of the authority of the Crown over the clergy had startled all Europe. The King and Parliament, it had been universally supposed, would yield before a threat of excommunication. When it appeared that they were as careless of the Pope's curses as Luther and the Elector of Saxony, the affair wore another aspect. Even the Imperialist Cardinals in the Consistory came round to the Pope's own view and wished to let the cause rest for two or three years. Mai feared that such a course might lead to _Novedades_ or revolution, but admitted that much might be said for it, especially considering the difficulties in Germany. He ceased to press the Pope for immediate sentence, and Dr. Ortiz, Catherine's pa.s.sionate agent, complained that he found the Emperor's Amba.s.sador growing cold and less eager to support his own arguments.[148] Catherine, seeing her clerical friends prostrated, could but renew her entreaties to her own relations.

Her position was growing daily weaker. The nation, seeing the Pope confining himself to weak threats and unable or unwilling to declare her marriage valid, was rapidly concluding that on the main question the King was right, and that to throw the realm into a convulsion for an uncertainty was not tolerable. No appeal had as yet been made to Parliament, but "the King of France," Catherine wrote to Charles, "has asked the Pope to delay sentence. If this be allowed, the means now employed by these people to gain the consent of the nation to his second marriage are such that they will obtain what they desire and accomplish my ruin at the next session. If the delay be not already granted, I entreat your Highness not to consent to it. Insist that the Pope shall give judgment before next October, when Parliament will meet again. Forgive my importunity. I cannot rest till justice is done to me. For the love of Heaven let it be done before the time I name. I myself, if it must be so, shall go to Parliament and declare before its members the justice of my case."[149]

The hara.s.sed Pope was obstinately cautious, and occasionally even turned upon his persecutors. Mai now urged him to call a General Council and settle all questions. The word "council" rang painfully in Papal ears. Why did not the Emperor make war upon the Lutherans? he pettishly asked. Mai told him the Lutherans were rich and stubborn and strong, and it would be an endless work. Why not then, said Clement, begin with the Swiss, who were not so strong? Mai answered that it could not be. The heretics everywhere made common cause, and the Emperor could not fight them all single-handed. The Pope sighed, and said he feared there would be little help from France and England.[150]

In England events moved steadily on, without hesitation, yet without precipitation. The Bishops were not yet agreed on the divorce. At the close of the session (March, 1531) Sir Thomas More read in the Upper House the opinions which had been collected from the Universities at home and abroad, and a debate ensued upon them.... London and Lincoln were on the King's side. St. Asaph and Bath were of opinion that Parliament had no right to interfere. Norfolk cut the argument short by saying that the doc.u.ments had been introduced merely to be read. There was no proposal before the House. More said briefly that the King knew what his opinion was, and that he need not repeat it. The judgments were sent down to the House of Commons, where Chapuys persuaded himself that they were heard with more displeasure than approval. The session ended, and Parliament was prorogued till the following autumn. The Emperor himself wrote to More. The letter was forwarded through Chapuys, who wished to deliver it in person. More declined his visit and declined the letter. If it was placed in his hand, he said, he must communicate it to the King.

Parliament having risen, there was again a breathing time.[151]

So far as the persons of the two ladies were concerned who were the central figures in the quarrel, there was little difference of opinion in England. The Duke of Norfolk, who represented the feelings of the great body of the nation, thought that the interests of the succession made the divorce a necessity. The realm could not be left exposed to the risk of another civil war. He was jealous of the honour and liberties of the country, and ill liked to see a question which touched them so nearly left to the pleasure of the Emperor. But Norfolk as much admired Catherine as he disliked his niece, and there were probably few English statesmen who did not regret that a public cause should have been tainted by a love-affair. All the leading men regretted that the King had fastened his choice upon a person neither liked nor respected. Anne's antecedents were unfavourable. Her elevation had turned her brain; she had made herself detested for her insolence and dreaded for her intrigues. Catherine, on the other hand, was a princess of royal birth and stainless honour. The Duke observed to the Marquis of Exeter that it was a wonder to see her courage--nothing seemed to frighten her; "the Devil and no other," he said, "must have originated so wretched a business." The same view of the matter was growing at Rome in the Pope and among the Cardinals. The Bishop of Tarbes, who represented Francis at the Papal Court, warned Clement that the loss of England might be the loss of France also. If the King of England, he said, was driven to desperation, the miserable divorce suit would be the ruin of the world; Francis would and must stand by him if the Pope proceeded to excommunication. His impatience with his marriage might be unreasonable, but was no adequate ground for the convulsion of Catholic Christendom. Clement was at heart of the same opinion. The course which he wished to follow was to delay indefinitely. A formal suspension would not be needed. They had only to go on slowly. The King would then most likely marry, and the cause would drop. Andrea de Burgo, Ferdinand's amba.s.sador, said that the Emperor was strong enough to settle the matter by himself.

"Not so strong as you think," Clement observed. "Between the Turks and the Lutherans the Emperor may have trouble enough of his own."[152]

The Pope's unwillingness was well understood in England. He made another faint effort to save Catherine; he ordered the Nuncio to announce to Henry that the brief must be obeyed, or "justice would have its course."

Believing that the message would be resented, the Nuncio hesitated to deliver it, but, encouraged by Chapuys, at last demanded audience and informed Henry in the Pope's name what he was to expect if he persisted.

Henry shortly answered that the Pope was losing his time. He already knew what the Nuncio had come to tell him, but, once for all, he would never accept the Pope as his judge in an affair concerning himself and the English nation. "The Pope may excommunicate me," he said. "I care not a fig for his excommunication. Let him do as he wills at Rome. I will do here as I will.... I take the Pope to be a worthy man on the whole, but ever since the last war he has been so afraid of the Emperor that he dares not act against his wishes."[153]

The most obvious resource was to adopt the suggestion already made that the case should be transferred to Cambray, or to some other spot not open to objection, where it could be heard with impartiality. Clement himself was weary of the struggle, and eager to escape from it by any reasonable means. If Catherine would agree, Charles was unlikely to hesitate; but, though weary and worn out with disappointments, she was a resolute woman, and as long as she persisted the Emperor was determined not to desert her.

With small hope of success, but as an experiment which it was thought desirable to try, a deputation of Peers and Bishops were commissioned to see Catherine, to ask her to withdraw her demand for an immediate sentence, and consent that the cause should be tried in a neutral place; while the Pope, through his Legate in Spain, made a similar proposition to Charles. The Queen heard that they were coming, and prepared for them by causing several "ma.s.ses of the Holy Ghost" to be said, that she might be enlightened how to answer. The delegates arrived shortly after the ma.s.ses were completed, the two Dukes, Lord Exeter, Earls, Barons, Bishops, and canon lawyers, thirty of them in all. Norfolk spoke for the rest. He said that the King had been treated with contempt and vituperation by the Pope on her account; he had been cited to appear personally at Rome--a measure never before enforced by any pope against an English king. He could not go; he could not leave his kingdom--nor could the dispute be settled by the Pope's insistence on it. A fitter place and fitter judges must be chosen by the mutual consent of the parties, or she would be the cause of trouble and scandal to them and their posterity. The Duke entreated her to consider the consequences of refusal--to remember the many good services which the King had rendered to her father and to the Emperor, and to allow the const.i.tution of some other court before which the King could plead.

In itself the demand was reasonable. It was impossible for a king of England to plead before the Pope, in the power, as he was, of the Emperor, who was himself a party interested in the dispute. A neutral place might have been easily found. Neutral judges might be less easily procurable; but none could be less fit than his Holiness. The Queen, however, replied stoutly as ever that her cause should be judged by the Pope and by no one else; not that she expected any favour at his hands; so far the Pope had shown himself so partial to the King that more could not be asked of him; she, and not the King, had cause to complain of his Holiness; but the Pope held the place and had the power of G.o.d upon earth, and was the image of eternal truth. To him, and only to him, she remitted her case. If trouble came, it would be the work of others, not of her. She allowed that in past times the King had a.s.sisted her relations. The Emperor had not denied it, and was the King's true friend. With a scornful allusion to the Supremum Caput, she said, the King might be Lord and Master in temporal matters, but the Pope was the true Sovereign and Vicar of G.o.d in matters spiritual, of which matrimony was one.[154]

The Spanish Legate had succeeded no better with Charles, who returned a peremptory refusal; but so little confidence had the Emperor in the true Sovereign and Vicar of G.o.d that he insisted not merely that the Pope _should try the case but should try it in his own presence, lest the Queen's interests should suffer injury_. The request itself indicated a disposition on the Pope's part to evade his duty. Charles gave him to understand, in language sufficiently peremptory, that he intended that duty to be done.[155]

In this direction there was no hope. Catherine had been even more emphatic with the deputation. After her reply to Norfolk, the bishops and lawyers took up the word. She always denied that she had been Prince Arthur's actual wife. She herself on all occasions courted the subject, and was not afraid of indelicacy. The Church doctors responded. They said she had slept with Prince Arthur, and the presumptions were against her. She bade them go plead their presumptions at Rome, where they would have others than a woman to answer them. She was astonished, she said, to see so many great people gathered against a lone lady without friends or counsel.

Among the great persons before her she had still some staunch friends.

Anne Boleyn was detested by them all; and those who, like Norfolk, wished her, for her own sake, to be less uncompromising could not refuse to admire the gallant spirit of Isabella's daughter. But, alas! the refusal to allow the cause to be heard in a free city, before an impartial tribunal, was equivalent to a consciousness that, unless by a court under the Emperor's control, an unfavourable judgment was to be looked for. They could not, any one of them, allow their Sovereign to plead where an Imperial Minister could threaten the lives of uncompliant Cardinals. But, unless every knightly feeling had been dead in them, they could not have refused their sympathy. Had the Pope spoken plainly from the first, most of the Peers would perhaps have stood by the lady before them with voice and sword. But the Pope had allowed that the King was in the right. He had drawn back only under compulsion, and even at that moment was only prevented by fear from deciding on the King's side. Glad as they might have been had the question never been raised, they could not submit their Prince to the indignity of a condemnation by a coerced tribunal--a tribunal which was to be trusted to proceed only, as it now appeared, in the Emperor's own presence.

They carried the answer back to their master. "I feared it would be so,"

he said, "knowing as I do the heart and temper of the Queen. We must now provide in some other way."

Norfolk, who wished well to the Queen, regretted that she had taken a course so little likely to profit her. "The Emperor's action," he said, "in causing the King to be cited to Rome was outrageous and unprecedented.

The cause ought to be tried in England, and the Queen had been unwise in rejecting the advice of the Peers."[156]

The Emperor on reflection reconsidered his own first refusal to allow the cause to be transferred; to insist on the trial being conducted before himself was really intolerable, and he drew a more moderate reply; but he still persisted that the Pope alone should hear the case, and decide it in the Queen's favour. "The affair," he said, "was of such a nature as to admit of no solution save the declaring that a marriage contracted with the authority and license of the Holy See was valid and indissoluble. As the patron and defender of the Apostolic See he was more in duty bound than any other Prince to remove and defend all small offences and disputes." In fact he still advanced a claim of sovereign jurisdiction which it was impossible for England to allow.[157]

Catherine was well aware that the Pope had been a party to the request for the removal of her cause, and bitterly she railed at him. Charles sent her a copy of his own answer. It rea.s.sured her, if she had doubted; she saw that, let Clement struggle how he would, she could be confident that her nephew would compel him to decide for her. The Pope, she announced, was responsible for all that had happened by refusing to do her justice. This last move showed that he was as little disposed to apply the remedy[158]

as he had been. If the cause was removed from Rome, the judges, whoever they might be, would declare that black was white.[159]

Up to this time Catherine had continued at the Court with her own apartments, and with the Princess Mary as her companion. She had refused the only available means of a peaceful arrangement, and was standing out, avowedly resting on the Emperor's protection. She was not reticent. She spoke out freely of her wrongs and her expectations. To separate mother and daughter would have been a needless aggravation had the suit been between private individuals. But Mary was a public person with her own rights on the succession. It was found necessary to remove Catherine from London and to place the Princess out of reach of her influence. Moor Park, which had been a country-house of Wolsey's, was a.s.signed for the Queen's residence, while Mary was sent to the palace at Richmond. Catherine was too proud to resist when resistance would be useless, but she said she would prefer the Tower.[160] The Nuncio remonstrated. He advised the King "to recall her to the Court and shut a hundred thousand tongues." The King replied, "nearly in tears," that he had sent her away because she used such high words and was always threatening him with the Emperor.[161] Of Mary, Henry was personally fond. He met her one day in Richmond Park, spoke affectionately to her, and regretted that he saw her so seldom. She cannot be where the Lady is, said Chapuys, "because the Lady has declared that she will not have it, nor hear of her." She would not even allow the King to speak to Mary without being watched on the occasion just mentioned. She sent two of her people to report what pa.s.sed between them.[162]

CHAPTER XI.

Proposals for the reunion of Christendom--Warning addressed to the Pope-- Address of the English n.o.bles to Queen Catherine--Advances of Clement to Henry--Embarra.s.sments 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.

The unity of Christendom was not to be broken in pieces without an effort to preserve it. Charles V. was attempting impossibilities in his own dominions, labouring for terms on which the Lutheran States might return to the Church. He had brought the Pope to consent to the "communion in both kinds," and to the "marriage of priests"--a vast concession, which had been extorted by Micer Mai in the intervals of the discussions on the divorce. Efforts which fail are forgotten, but they represent endeavours at least honourable. Catherine was absorbed in her own grievances. Charles gave them as much attention as he could spare, but had other things to think of. As long as he could prevent Clement from taking any fatal step, he supposed that he had done enough. He had at least done all that he could, and he had evidently allowed Chapuys to persuade him that Henry's course would be arrested at the last extremity by his own subjects. He left Mai to watch the Pope, and Ortiz to urge for sentence; but when the pressure of his own hand relaxed his agents could effect but little. The English Parliament was to open again in January. The King's Commissioners at Rome informed the Consistory that if it was decided finally to try the cause at Rome they were to take their leave, and the King would thenceforward regard the Pope as his public enemy.[163] The threat "produced a great impression." The Pope had no wish to be Henry's enemy in order to please the Emperor. Mai and Ortiz told him that the English menaces were but words; he had but to speak and England would submit. The Pope did not believe it, and became again "lax and procrastinating."[164]

The English n.o.bles made a last effort to move Catherine. Lord Suss.e.x, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Lee, Archbishop of York, who had been her warm supporter, waited on her at Moor Park to urge her, if she would not allow the case to be tried at Cambray, to permit it to be settled by a commission of bishops and lawyers. The Pope confessedly was not free to give his own opinion, and English causes could not be ruled by the Emperor. If Catherine had consented, it is by no means certain that Anne Boleyn would have been any more heard of. A love which had waited for five years could not have been unconquerable; and it was possible and even probable in the existing state of opinion that some other arrangement might have been made for the succession. The difficulty rose from Catherine's determination to force the King before a tribunal where the national pride would not permit him to plead. The independence of England was threatened, and those who might have been her friends were disarmed of their power to help her. Unfortunately for herself, perhaps fortunately for the English race which was yet to be born, she remained still inflexible. "The King's plea of conscience," she said, "was not honest. He was acting on pa.s.sion, pure and simple; and English judges would say black was white." Suss.e.x and Fitzwilliam knelt to entreat her to reconsider her answer. She too knelt and prayed them for G.o.d's honour and glory to persuade the King to return to her, as she was his lawful wife. All present were in tears, but there was no remedy. Chapuys said that the coldness and indifference with which the affair was treated at Rome was paralysing her defenders. The question could not stand in debate for ever, and, unless the Pope acted promptly and resolutely, he feared that some strong act was not far distant.[165]

She was destroying her own chance. She persisted in relying on a defence which was itself fatal to her.

"G.o.d knows what I suffer from these people," she wrote to the Emperor, "enough to kill ten men, much more a shattered woman who has done no harm.

I can do nothing but appeal to G.o.d and your Majesty, on whom alone my remedy depends. For the love of G.o.d procure a final sentence from his Holiness as soon as possible. The utmost diligence is required. May G.o.d forgive him for the many delays which he has granted and which alone are the cause of my extremity. I am the King's lawful wife, and while I live I will say no other. The Pope's tardiness makes many on my side waver, and those who would say the truth dare not. Speak out yourself, that my friends may not think I am abandoned by all the world."[166]

Well might Catherine despair of Clement. While she was expecting him to excommunicate her husband, he was instructing his Nuncio to treat that husband as his most trusted friend. He invited Henry to a.s.sist in the Turkish war; he consulted him about the protection of Savoy from the Swiss Protestants; he apologised to him for the language which he was obliged to use on the great matter. Henry, contemptuous and cool, "not showing the pa.s.sion which he had shown at other times," replied that the Pope must be jesting in inviting him, far off as he was, to go to war with the Turk. If Christendom was in danger he would bear his part with the other Princes.

As to Savoy, the Duke had disregarded the wishes of France and must take the consequences. For the rest, the message which he had sent through his Amba.s.sador at Rome was no more than the truth. "If," said he to the Nuncio, "I ask a thing which I think right, the answer is 'The law forbids.' If the Emperor ask a thing, law and rules are changed to please him. The Pope has greatly wronged me. I have no particular animosity against him. After all, he does not bear me much ill will. The fear of the Emperor makes him do things which he would not otherwise do. Proceedings may be taken against me at Rome. I care not. If sentence is given against me, I know what to do."[167]

The Pope never meant to give sentence if he could help it. Every day brought Parliament nearer and he drove Mai distracted with his evasions.

"I have said all that I could to his Holiness and the Cardinals without offending them," he reported to Charles. "Your Majesty may believe me when I say that these devils are to a man against us. Some take side openly, being of the French or English faction; others will be easily corrupted, for every day I hear the English Amba.s.sador receives bills for thousands of ducats, which are said to go in bribery."[168]

Promises were given in plenty, but no action followed, and Ortiz had the same story to tell Catherine. "Your Amba.s.sador at Rome," she wrote to her nephew, "thinks the Pope as cold and indifferent as when the suit began. I am amazed at his Holiness. How can he allow a suit so scandalous to remain so long undecided? His conduct cuts me to the soul. You know who has caused all this mischief. Were the King once free from the snare in which he has been caught he would confess that G.o.d had restored his reason. His misleaders goad him on like a bull in the arena. Pity that a man so good and virtuous should be thus deceived. G.o.d enlighten his mind!"[169]

To the Emperor himself, perhaps, the problem was growing more difficult than he expected. He himself at last pressed for sentence, but sentence was nothing unless followed by excommunication if it was disobeyed, and the Pope did not choose to use his thunder if there was to be no thunderbolt to accompany it. The Cardinal Legate in Spain a.s.sured him that the Emperor would employ all his force in the execution of the censures.

The Pope said that he prized that promise as "a word from Heaven." But though Charles might think the English King was doing what was wrong and unjust, was it so wrong and so unjust that fire and sword were to be let loose through Christendom? Chapuys and Catherine were convinced that there would be no need of such fierce remedies. They might be right, but how if they were not right? How if England supported the King? The Emperor could not be certain that even his own subjects would approve of a war for such an object. Three years later, when the moment for action had arrived, if action was to be taken at all, it will be seen that the Spanish Council of State took precisely this view of the matter, and saw no reason for breaking the peace of Europe for what, after all, was but "a family quarrel." The Pope was cautious. He knew better than his pa.s.sionate advisers how matters really stood. "The Pope may promise," Mai said, "but as long as the world remains in its troubled state, these people will be glad of any excuse to prolong the settlement." January came, when the English Parliament was to meet, and the note was still the same. "The Pope says," wrote Mai, "that we must not press the English too hard. I have exhausted all that I could say without a rupture. I told him he was discrediting the Queen's case and your Majesty's authority. I made him understand that I should be obliged to apply elsewhere for the justice that was denied me at Rome. He owns that I am right, but Consistory follows Consistory and more delays are allowed. We can but press on as we have always done, and urge your Majesty's displeasure."[170]

If a sentence could not be had, Ortiz insisted on the issue of another minatory brief. Anne Boleyn must be sent from the court. The King must be made to confess his errors. The Pope a.s.sented; said loudly that he would do justice; though England and France should revolt from the Holy See in consequence, a brief should go, and, if it was disobeyed, he would proceed to excommunicate: "the Kings of England and France were so bound together that if he lost one he lost both, but he would venture notwithstanding."

But like the Cardinals who condemned Giordano Bruno, Clement was more afraid of pa.s.sing judgment than Henry of hearing it pa.s.sed. The brief was written and was sent, but it contained nothing but mild expostulation.[171] All the distractions of the world were laid at the door of the well-meaning, uncertain, wavering Clement. La Pommeraye, the French Amba.s.sador in London, said (Chapuys vouches for the words) that "nothing could have been so easy as to bring all Christian Princes to agree had not that devil of a Pope embroiled and sown dissension through Christendom."[172]