[Footnote 433: Sp. Cal., ii., 365; L. and P., ii., 1795.]

[Footnote 434: Sp. Cal., ii., 370.]

[Footnote 435: L. and P., iii., 1960.]

[Footnote 436: L. and P., iii., 1884.]

[Footnote 437: Ibid., iii., 1952, 1960.]

[Footnote 438: Sp. Cal., ii., 375. It is not quite clear how these votes were recorded, for there were not eighty-one cardinals.]

[Footnote 439: Ibid., ii., 371.]

Neither the expulsion of the French from Milan, nor the election of Charles's tutor as Pope, opened Wolsey's eyes to the danger of (p. 156) further increasing the Emperor's power.[440] He seems rather to have thrown himself into the not very chivalrous design of completing the ruin of the weaker side, and picking up what he could from the spoils. During the winter of 1521-22 he was busily preparing for war, while endeavouring to delay the actual breach till his plans were complete. Francis, convinced of England's hostile intentions, let Albany loose upon Scotland and refused to pay the pensions to Henry and Wolsey. They made these grievances the excuse for a war on which they had long been determined. In March Henry announced that he had taken upon himself the protection of the Netherlands during Charles's impending visit to Spain. Francis asserted that this was a plain declaration of war, and seized the English wine-ships at Bordeaux. But he was determined not to take the formal offensive, and, in May, Clarencieux herald proceeded to France to bid him defiance.[441] In the following month Charles passed through England on his way to the south, and fresh treaties were signed for the invasion of France, for the marriage of Mary and for the extirpation of heresy. At Windsor[442] Wolsey constituted his legatine court to bind the contracting parties by oaths enforced by ecclesiastical censures. He arrogated to himself a function usually reserved for the Pope, and undertook to arbitrate between Charles and Henry if disputes arose about the observance (p. 157) of their engagements. But he obviously found difficulty in raising either money or men; and one of the suggestions at Windsor was that a "dissembled peace" or a two years' truce should be made with France, to give England time for more preparations for war.

[Footnote 440: Francis "begged Henry to consider what would happen now that a Pope had been elected entirely at Charles's devotion" (L. and P., iii., 1994); but Adrian's attitude was at first independent (Sp. Cal., ii., 494, 504, 533). In July, 1522, however, he joined the league against Francis (ibid., ii., 574).]

[Footnote 441: L. and P., iii., 2140, 2224, 2290.]

[Footnote 442: Ibid., iii., 2322, 2333; Sp. Cal., ii., 430, 435, 561.]

Nothing came of this last nefarious suggestion. In July Surrey captured and burnt Morlaix;[443] but, as he wrote from on board the Mary Rose, Fitzwilliam's ships were without flesh or fish, and Surrey himself had only beer for twelve days. Want of victuals prevented further naval successes, and, in September, Surrey was sent into Artois, where the same lack of organisation was equally fatal. It did not, however, prevent him from burning farms and towns wherever he went; and his conduct evoked from the French commander a just rebuke of his "foul warfare".[444] Henry himself was responsible; for Wolsey wrote on his behalf urging the destruction of Dourlens and the adjacent towns.[445] If Henry really sought to make these territories his own, it was an odd method of winning the affections and developing the wealth of the subjects he hoped to acquire. Nothing was really accomplished except devastation in France. Even this useless warfare exhausted English energies, and left the Borders defenceless against one of the largest armies ever collected in Scotland. Wolsey and Henry were only saved, from what might have been a most serious invasion, by Dacre's dexterity and Albany's cowardice. Dacre, the warden of the marches, signed a truce without waiting for instructions, and before it expired the Scots army disbanded. Henry and Wolsey might reprimand Dacre for acting on his own responsibility, but they knew well (p. 158) enough that Dacre had done them magnificent service.[446]

[Footnote 443: L. and P., iii., 2362.]

[Footnote 444: Ibid., iii., 2541.]

[Footnote 445: Ibid., iii., 2551.]

[Footnote 446: L. and P., iii., 2537.]

The results of the war from the English point of view had as yet been contemptible, but great things were hoped for the following year. Bourbon, Constable of France, and the most powerful peer in the kingdom, intent on the betrayal of Francis, was negotiating with Henry and Charles the price of his treason.[447] The commons in France, worn to misery by the taxes of Francis and the ravages of his enemies, were eager for anything that might promise some alleviation of their lot. They would even, it appears, welcome a change of dynasty; everywhere, Henry was told, they cried "Vive le roi d'Angleterre!"[448] Never, said Wolsey, would there be a better opportunity for recovering the King's right to the French crown; and Henry exclaimed that he trusted to treat Francis as his father did Richard III. "I pray God," wrote Sir Thomas More to Wolsey, "if it be good for his grace and for this realm, that then it may prove so, and else in the stead thereof, I pray God send his grace an honourable and profitable peace."[449] He could scarcely go further in hinting his preference for peace to the fantastic design which now occupied the minds of his masters. Probably his opinion of the war was not far from that of old Bishop Fox, who declared: "I have determined, and, betwixt God and me, utterly renounced the meddling with worldly matters, specially concerning war or anything to it appertaining (whereof, for the many intolerable enormities that I have seen ensue by the said war in time past, I (p. 159) have no little remorse in my conscience), thinking that if I did continual penance for it all the days of my life, though I should live twenty years longer than I may do, I could not yet make sufficient recompense therefor. And now, my good lord, to be called to fortifications of towns and places of war, or to any matter concerning the war, being of the age of seventy years and above, and looking daily to die, the which if I did, being in any such meddling of the war, I think I should die in despair."[450] Protests like this and hints like More's were little likely to move the militant Cardinal, who hoped to see the final ruin of France in 1523. Bourbon was to raise the standard of revolt, Charles was to invade from Spain and Suffolk from Calais. In Italy French influence seemed irretrievably ruined. The Genoese revolution, planned before the war, was effected; and the persuasions of Pace and the threats of Charles at last detached Venice and Ferrara from the alliance of France.[451]

[Footnote 447: Sp. Cal., ii., 584; L. and P., iii., 2450, 2567, 2770, 2772, 2879, 3154. Bourbon had substantial grievances against Francis I. and his mother.]

[Footnote 448: Ibid., iii., 2770.]

[Footnote 449: Ibid., iii., 2555.]

[Footnote 450: Ellis, Orig. Letters, 2nd series, ii., 4; L. and P., iii., 2207.]

[Footnote 451: L. and P., iii., 3207, 3271, 3291; Sp. Cal., ii., 576, 594.]

The usual delays postponed Suffolk's invasion till late in the year. They were increased by the emptiness of Henry's treasury. His father's hoard had melted away, and it was absolutely necessary to obtain lavish supplies from Parliament. But Parliament proved ominously intractable. Thomas Cromwell, now rising to notice, in a temperate speech urged the folly of indulging in impracticable schemes of foreign conquest, while Scotland remained a thorn in England's side.[452] It was three months from the meeting of Parliament before the subsidies were granted, and nearly the end of August before (p. 160) Suffolk crossed to Calais with an army, "the largest which has passed out of this realm for a hundred years".[453] Henry and Suffolk wanted it to besiege Boulogne, which might have been some tangible result in English hands.[454] But the King was persuaded by Wolsey and his imperial allies to forgo this scheme, and to order Suffolk to march into the heart of France. Suffolk was not a great general, but he conducted the invasion with no little skill, and desired to conduct it with unwonted humanity. He wished to win the French by abstaining from pillage and proclaiming liberty, but Henry thought only the hope of plunder would keep the army together.[455] Waiting for the imperial contingent under De Buren, Suffolk did not leave Calais till 19th September. He advanced by Bray, Roye and Montdidier, capturing all the towns that offered resistance. Early in November, he reached the Oise at a point less than forty miles from the French capital.[456] But Bourbon's treason had been discovered; instead of joining Suffolk with a large force, he was a fugitive from his country. Charles contented himself with taking Fuentarabia,[457] and made no effort at invasion. The imperial contingent with Suffolk's army went home; winter set in with unexampled severity, and Vendome advanced.[458] The English were compelled to retire; their retreat was effected without loss, and by the middle of December the army was back at Calais. Suffolk is represented as being in disgrace for this retreat, and Wolsey as saving him from the effects of his failure.[459] But even Wolsey (p. 161) can hardly have thought that an army of twenty-five thousand men could maintain itself in the heart of France, throughout the winter, without support and with unguarded communications. The Duke's had been the most successful invasion of France since the days of Henry V. from a military point of view. That its results were negative is due to the policy by which it was directed.

[Footnote 452: Merriman, Cromwell's Letters, i., 30-44; L. and P., iii., 2958, 3024; Hall, Chronicle, pp. 656, 657.]

[Footnote 453: L. and P., iii., 3281.]

[Footnote 454: Ibid., iii., 2360, 3319.]

[Footnote 455: Ibid., iii., 3346.]

[Footnote 456: Ibid., iii., 3452, 3485, 3505, 3516.]

[Footnote 457: Ibid., iii., 2798, 2869.]

[Footnote 458: Ibid., iii., 3559, 3580, 3601.]

[Footnote 459: Brewer's Introd. to L. and P., vol. iv., p. ii., etc.]

Meanwhile there was another papal election. Adrian, one of the most honest and unpopular of Popes, died on 14th September, 1523, and by order of the cardinals there was inscribed on his tomb: Hic jacet Adrianus Sextus cui nihil in vita infelicius contigit quam quod imperaret. With equal malice and keener wit the Romans erected to his physician, Macerata, a statue with the title Liberatori Patriae.[460] Wolsey was again a candidate. He told Henry he would rather continue in his service than be ten Popes.[461] That did not prevent him instructing Pace and Clerk to further his claims. They were to represent to the cardinals Wolsey's "great experience in the causes of Christendom, his favour with the Emperor, the King, and other princes, his anxiety for Christendom, his liberality, the great promotions to be vacated by his election, his frank, pleasant and courteous inclinations, his freedom from all ties of family or party, and the hopes of a great expedition against the infidel".[462] Charles was, as usual, profuse in his promise of aid. He actually wrote a letter in Wolsey's favour; but he took the precaution to detain the bearer (p. 162) in Spain till the election was over.[463] He had already instructed his minister at Rome to procure the election of Cardinal de Medici. That ambassador mocked at Wolsey's hopes; "as if God," he wrote, "would perform a miracle every day".[464] The Holy Spirit, by which the cardinals always professed to be moved, was not likely to inspire the election of another absentee after their experience of Adrian. Wolsey had not the remotest chance, and his name does not occur in a single scrutiny. After the longest conclave on record, the imperial influence prevailed; on 18th November De Medici was proclaimed Pope, and he chose as his title Clement VII.[465]

[Footnote 460: Ibid., iii., 3464.]

[Footnote 461: Ibid., iii., 3372.]

[Footnote 462: Ibid., 3389.]

[Footnote 463: Sp. Cal., ii., 615.]

[Footnote 464: Ibid., ii., 604, 606.]

[Footnote 465: L. and P., iii., 3547, 3592; Sp. Cal., ii., 610. He thought of retaining his name Julius, but was told that Popes who followed that practice always had short pontificates.]

Suffolk's invasion was the last of England's active participation in the war. Exhausted by her efforts, discontented with the Emperor's failure to render assistance in the joint enterprise, or perceiving at last that she had little to gain, and much to lose, from the overgrown power of Charles, England, in 1524, abstained from action, and even began to make overtures to Francis. Wolsey repaid Charles's inactivity of the previous year by standing idly by, while the imperial forces with Bourbon's contingent invaded Provence and laid siege to Marseilles. But Francis still held command of the sea; the spirit of his people rose with the danger; Marseilles made a stubborn and successful defence; and, by October, the invading army was in headlong retreat towards Italy.[466] Had Francis been content with defending his kingdom, all might have been well; but ambition lured him on (p. 163) to destruction. He thought he had passed the worst of the trouble, and that the prize of Milan might yet be his. So, before the imperialists were well out of France, he crossed the Alps and sat down to besiege Pavia. It was brilliantly defended by Antonio de Leyva. In November Francis's ruin was thought to be certain; astrologers predicted his death or imprisonment.[467] Slowly and surely Pescara, the most consummate general of his age, was pressing north with imperial troops to succour Pavia. Francis would not raise the siege. On 24th February, 1525, he was attacked in front by Pescara and in the rear by De Leyva. "The victory is complete," wrote the Abbot of Najera to Charles from the field of battle, "the King of France is made prisoner.... The whole French army is annihilated.... To-day is feast of the Apostle St. Mathias, on which, five and twenty years ago, your Majesty is said to have been born. Five and twenty thousand times thanks and praise to God for His mercy! Your Majesty is, from this day, in a position to prescribe laws to Christians and Turks, according to your pleasure."[468]

[Footnote 466: Sp. Cal., ii., 686; L. and P., iv., 751, 753, 773, 774, 776.]

[Footnote 467: Sp. Cal., ii., 692-94, 711.]

[Footnote 468: Ibid., ii., 722; cf. Hall's Chron., p. 693, which professes to give the "very words" of Francis I.'s much misquoted letter to his mother (L. and P., iv., 1120-24).]

Such was the result of Wolsey's policy since 1521, Francis a prisoner, Charles a dictator, and Henry vainly hoping that he might be allowed some share in the victor's spoils. But what claim had he? By the most extraordinary misfortune or fatuity, England had not merely helped Charles to a threatening supremacy, but had retired from the (p. 164) struggle just in time to deprive herself of all claim to benefit by her mistaken policy. She had looked on while Bourbon invaded France, fearing to aid lest Charles would reap all the fruits of success. She had sent no force across the channel to threaten Francis's rear. Not a single French soldier had been diverted from attacking Charles in Italy through England's interference. One hundred thousand crowns had been promised the imperial troops, but the money was not paid; and secret negotiations had been going on with France. In spite of all, Charles had won, and he was naturally not disposed to divide the spoils. England's policy since 1521 had been disastrous to herself, to Wolsey, to the Papacy, and even to Christendom. For the falling out of Christian princes seemed to the Turk to afford an excellent opportunity for the faithful to come by his own. After an heroic defence by the knights of St. John, Rhodes, the bulwark of Christendom, had surrendered to Selim. Belgrade, the strongest citadel in Eastern Europe, followed. In August, 1526, the King and the flower of Hungarian nobility perished at the battle of Mohacz; and the internecine strife of Christians seemed doomed to be sated only by their common subjugation to the Turk.

* * * * *

Henry and Wolsey began to pay the price of their policy at home as well as abroad. War was no less costly for being ineffective, and it necessitated demands on the purses of Englishmen, to which they had long been unused. In the autumn of 1522 Wolsey was compelled to have recourse to a loan from both spiritualty and temporalty.[469] It seems to have met with a response which, compared with later receptions, (p. 165) may be described as almost cheerful. But the loan did not go far, and before another six months had elapsed it was found necessary to summon Parliament to make further provision.[470] The Speaker was Sir Thomas More, who did all he could to secure a favourable reception of Wolsey's demands. An unwonted spirit of independence animated the members; the debates were long and stormy; and the Cardinal felt called upon to go down to the House of Commons, and hector it in such fashion that even More was compelled to plead its privileges. Eventually, some money was reluctantly granted; but it too was soon swallowed up, and in 1525 Wolsey devised fresh expedients. He was afraid to summon Parliament again, so he proposed what he called an Amicable Grant. It was necessary, he said, for Henry to invade France in person; if he went, he must go as a prince; and he could not go as a prince without lavish supplies. So he required what was practically a graduated income-tax. The Londoners resisted till they were told that resistance might cost them their heads. In Suffolk and elsewhere open insurrection broke out. It was then proposed to withdraw the fixed ratio, and allow each individual to pay what he chose as a benevolence. A common councillor of London promptly retorted that benevolences were illegal by statute of Richard III. Wolsey cared little for the constitution, and was astonished that any one should quote the laws of a wicked usurper; but the common councillor was a sound constitutionalist, if Wolsey was not. "An it please your grace," he replied, "although King Richard did evil, yet in his time were (p. 166) many good acts made, not by him only, but by the consent of the body of the whole realm, which is Parliament."[471] There was no answer; the demand was withdrawn. Never had Henry suffered such a rebuff, and he never suffered the like again. Nor was this all; the whole of London, Wolsey is reported to have said, were traitors to Henry.[472] Informations of "treasonable words"—that ominous phrase—became frequent.[473] Here, indeed, was a contrast to the exuberant loyalty of the early years of Henry's reign. The change may not have been entirely due to Wolsey, but he had been minister, with a power which few have equalled, during the whole period in which it was effected, and Henry may well have begun to think that it was time for his removal.

[Footnote 469: L. and P., iii., 2483.]

[Footnote 470: L. and P., iii., 2956, 2958, 3249.]

[Footnote 471: Hall, Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 698.]

[Footnote 472: L. and P., iii., 3076.]

[Footnote 473: Ibid., iii., 3082.]

Whether Wolsey was now anxious to repair his blunder by siding with Francis against Charles, or to snatch some profit from the Emperor's victory by completing the ruin of France, the refusal of Englishmen to find more money for the war left him no option but peace. In April, 1525, Tunstall and Sir Richard Wingfield were sent to Spain with proposals for the exclusion of Francis and his children from the French throne and the dismemberment of his kingdom.[474] It is doubtful if Wolsey himself desired the fulfilment of so preposterous and iniquitous a scheme. It is certain that Charles was in no mood to abet it. He had no wish to extract profit for England out of the abasement of Francis, to see Henry King of France, or lord of any French provinces. He had no intention of even performing his part (p. 167) of the Treaty of Windsor. He had pledged himself to marry the Princess Mary, and the splendour of that match may have contributed to Henry's desire for an alliance with Charles. But another matrimonial project offered the Emperor more substantial advantages. Ever since 1517 his Spanish subjects had been pressing him to marry the daughter of Emmanuel, King of Portugal. The Portuguese royal family had claims to the throne of Castile which would be quieted by Charles's marriage with a Portuguese princess. Her dowry of a million crowns was, also, an argument not to be lightly disregarded in Charles's financial embarrassments; and in March, 1526, the Emperor's wedding with Isabella of Portugal was solemnised.

[Footnote 474: Ibid., iv., 1212, 1249, 1255, 1264, 1296; Stowe MS., 147, ff. 67, 86 (Brit. Mus.).]

Wolsey, on his part, was secretly negotiating with Louise of Savoy during her son's imprisonment in Spain. In August, 1525, a treaty of amity was signed, by which England gave up all its claims to French territory in return for the promise of large sums of money to Henry and his minister.[475] The impracticability of enforcing Henry's pretensions to the French crown or to French provinces, which had been urged as excuses for squandering English blood and treasure, was admitted, even when the French King was in prison and his kingdom defenceless. But what good could the treaty do Henry or Francis? Charles had complete control over his captive, and could dictate his own terms. Neither the English nor the French King was in a position to continue the war; and the English alliance with France could abate no iota of the concessions which Charles extorted from Francis (p. 168) in January, 1526, by the Treaty of Madrid.[476] Francis surrendered Burgundy; gave up his claims to Milan, Genoa and Naples; abandoned his allies, the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guelders and Robert de la Marck; engaged to marry Charles's sister Eleanor, the widowed Queen of Portugal; and handed over his two sons to the Emperor as hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty. But he had no intention of keeping his promises. No sooner was he free than he protested that the treaty had been extracted by force, and that his oath to keep it was not binding. The Estates of France readily refused their assent, and the Pope was, as usual, willing, for political reasons, to absolve Francis from his oath. For the time being, consideration for the safety of his sons and the hope of obtaining their release prevented him from openly breaking with Charles, or listening to the proposals for a marriage with the Princess Mary, held out as a bait by Wolsey.[477] The Cardinal's object was merely to injure the Emperor as much as he could without involving England in war; and by negotiations for Mary's marriage, first with Francis, and then with his second son, the Duke of Orleans, he was endeavouring to draw England and France into a closer alliance. For similar reasons he was extending his patronage to the Holy League, formed by Clement VII. between the princes of Italy to liberate that distressful country from the grip of the Spanish forces.

[Footnote 475: L. and P., iv., 1525, 1531, 1600, 1633.]

[Footnote 476: L. and P., iv., 1891.]

[Footnote 477: Ibid., iv., 2039, 2148, 2320, 2325.]

The policy of Clement, of Venice, and of other Italian States had been characterised by as much blindness as that of England. Almost without exception they had united, in 1523, to expel the French from Italy. The result was to destroy the balance of power south of the Alps, (p. 169) and to deliver themselves over to a bondage more galling than that from which they sought to escape. Clement himself had been elected Pope by imperial influence, and the Duke of Sessa, Charles's representative in Rome, described him as entirely the Emperor's creature.[478] He was, wrote Sessa, "very reserved, irresolute, and decides few things himself. He loves money and prefers persons who know where to find it to any other kind of men. He likes to give himself the appearance of being independent, but the result shows that he is generally governed by others."[479] Clement, however, after his election, tried to assume an attitude more becoming the head of Christendom than slavish dependence on Charles. His love for the Emperor, he told Charles, had not diminished, but his hatred for others had disappeared;[480] and throughout 1524 he was seeking to promote concord between Christian princes. His methods were unfortunate; the failure of the imperial invasion of Provence and Francis's passage of the Alps, convinced the Pope that Charles's star was waning, and that of France was in the ascendant. "The Pope," wrote Sessa to Charles V., "is at the disposal of the conqueror."[481] So, on 19th January, 1525, a Holy League between Clement and Francis was publicly proclaimed at Rome, and joined by most of the Italian States.[482] It was almost the eve of Pavia.

[Footnote 478: Sp. Cal., ii., 610.]

[Footnote 479: Ibid., ii., 619.]

[Footnote 480: Ibid., ii., 707.]

[Footnote 481: Ibid., ii., 699, 30th Nov., 1524.]

[Footnote 482: Ibid., ii., 702-11.]

Charles received the news of that victory with astonishing humility. But he was not likely to forget that at the critical moment he had been deserted by most of his Italian allies; and it was with fear and trembling that the Venetian ambassador besought him to use his (p. 170) victory with moderation.[483] Their conduct could hardly lead them to expect much from the Emperor's clemency. Distrust of his intentions induced the Holy League to carry on desultory war with the imperial troops; but mutual jealousies, the absence of effective aid from England or France, and vacillation caused by the feeling that after all it might be safer to accept the best terms they could obtain, prevented the war from being waged with any effect. In September, 1526, Hugo de Moncada, the imperial commander, concerted with Clement's bitter foes, the Colonnas, a means of overawing the Pope. A truce was concluded, wrote Moncada, "that the Pope, having laid down his arms, may be taken unawares".[484] On the 19th he marched on Rome. Clement, taken unawares, fled to the castle of St. Angelo; his palace was sacked, St. Peter's rifled, and the host profaned. "Never," says Casale, "was so much cruelty and sacrilege."[485]

[Footnote 483: Ven. Cal., iii, 413.]

[Footnote 484: Sp. Cal., ii., 898.]

[Footnote 485: L. and P., iv., 2510.]

It was soon thrown into the shade by an outrage at which the whole world stood aghast. Charles's object was merely to render the Pope his obedient slave; neither God nor man, said Moncada, could resist with impunity the Emperor's victorious arms.[486] But he had little control over his own irresistible forces. With no enemy to check them, with no pay to content them, the imperial troops were ravaging, pillaging, sacking cities and churches throughout Northern Italy without let or hindrance. At length a sudden frenzy seized them to march upon (p. 171) Rome. Moncada had shown them the way, and on 6th May, 1527, the Holy City was taken by storm. Bourbon was killed at the first assault; and the richest city in Christendom was given over to a motley, leaderless horde of German, Spanish and Italian soldiery. The Pope again fled to the castle of St. Angelo; and for weeks Rome endured an orgy of sacrilege, blasphemy, robbery, murder and lust, the horrors of which no brush could depict nor tongue recite. "All the churches and the monasteries," says a cardinal who was present, "both of friars and nuns, were sacked. Many friars were beheaded, even priests at the altar; many old nuns beaten with sticks; many young ones violated, robbed and made prisoners; all the vestments, chalices, silver, were taken from the churches.... Cardinals, bishops, friars, priests, old nuns, infants, pages and servants—the very poorest—were tormented with unheard-of cruelties—the son in the presence of his father, the babe in the sight of its mother. All the registers and documents of the Camera Apostolica were sacked, torn in pieces, and partly burnt."[487] "Having entered," writes an imperialist to Charles, "our men sacked the whole Borgo and killed almost every one they found... All the monasteries were rifled, and the ladies who had taken refuge in them carried off. Every person was compelled by torture to pay a ransom.... The ornaments of all the churches were pillaged and the relics and other things thrown into the sinks and cesspools. Even the holy places were sacked. The Church of St. Peter and the papal palace, from the basement to the top, were turned into stables for horses.... Every one considers that it has taken place by the just judgment (p. 172) of God, because the Court of Rome was so ill-ruled.... We are expecting to hear from your Majesty how the city is to be governed and whether the Holy See is to be retained or not. Some are of opinion it should not continue in Rome, lest the French King should make a patriarch in his kingdom, and deny obedience to the said See, and the King of England find all other Christian princes do the same."[488]

[Footnote 486: Buonaparte's Narrative, ed. Buchon, p. 190, ed. Milanesi, p. 279; cf. Gregorovius, Gesch. der Stadt Rom., viii., 568 n., and Alberini's Diary, ed. Drano 1901 (extracts are printed in Creighton, Papacy, ed. 1901, vi., 419-37).]

[Footnote 487: Cardinal Como in Il Sacco di Roma, ed. C. Milanesi, 1867, p. 471.]

[Footnote 488: Il Sacco di Roma, ed. Milanesi, pp. 499, 517.]

So low was brought the proud city of the Seven Hills, the holy place, watered with the blood of the martyrs and hallowed by the steps of the saints, the goal of the earthly pilgrim, the seat of the throne of the Vicar of God. No Jew saw the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not with keener anguish than the devout sons of the Church heard of the desecration of Rome. If a Roman Catholic and an imperialist could term it the just judgment of God, heretics and schismatics, preparing to burst the bonds of Rome and "deny obedience to the said See," saw in it the fulfilment of the woes pronounced by St. John the Divine on the Rome of Nero, and by Daniel the Prophet on Belshazzar's Babylon. Babylon the great was fallen, and become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit; her ruler was weighed in the balances and found wanting; his kingdom was divided and given to kings and peoples who came, like the Medes and the Persians, from the hardier realms of the North.



CHAPTER VII. (p. 173)

THE ORIGIN OF THE DIVORCE.[489]

[Footnote 489: It is impossible to avoid the term "divorce," although neither from Henry VIII.'s nor from the Pope's point of view was there any such thing (see the present writer's Cranmer, p. 24 n.).]

Matrimonial discords have, from the days of Helen of Troy, been the fruitful source of public calamities; and one of the most decisive events in English history, the breach with the Church of Rome, found its occasion in the divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Its origin has been traced to various circumstances. On one hand, it is attributed to Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, on the other, to doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage, raised by the Bishop of Tarbes in 1527, while negotiating a matrimonial alliance between the Princess Mary and Francis I. These are the two most popular theories, and both are demonstrably false.[490] Doubts of the legality of Henry's marriage had existed long before the Bishop of Tarbes paid his visit to England, and even before Anne Boleyn was born. They were urged, not only on the eve of the completion of the marriage, but when it was first suggested. In 1503, when Henry VII. applied to Julius II. for a dispensation to enable his second son to marry his brother's (p. 174) widow, the Pope replied that "the dispensation was a great matter; nor did he well know, prima facie, if it were competent for the Pope to dispense in such a case".[491] He granted the dispensation, but the doubts were not entirely removed. Catherine's confessor instilled them into her mind, and was recalled by Ferdinand on that account. The Spanish King himself felt it necessary to dispel certain "scruples of conscience" Henry might entertain as to the "sin" of marrying his brother's widow.[492] Warham and Fox debated the matter, and Warham apparently opposed the marriage.[493] A general council had pronounced against the Pope's dispensing power;[494] and, though the Popes had, in effect, established their superiority over general councils, those who still maintained the contrary view can hardly have failed to doubt the legality of Henry's marriage.

[Footnote 490: See, besides the original authorities cited in this chapter, Busch, Der Ursprung der Ehescheidung Koenig Heinrichs VIII. (Hist. Taschenbuch, Leipzig, VI., viii., 271-327).]

[Footnote 491: L. and P., iv., 5773; Pocock, Records of the Reformation, i., 1.]

[Footnote 492: Sp. Cal., vol. ii., Pref., p. xiv., No. 8.]

[Footnote 493: L. and P., iv., 5774 [6].]

[Footnote 494: Ibid., iv., 5376.]

So good a papalist as the young King, however, would hardly allow theoretical doubts of the general powers of the Pope to outweigh the practical advantages of a marriage in his own particular case; and it is safe to assume that his confidence in its validity would have remained unshaken, but for extraneous circumstances of a definite and urgent nature. On the 31st of January, 1510, seven months after his marriage with Catherine, she gave birth to her first child; it was a daughter, and was still-born.[495] On the 27th of May following (p. 175) she told her father that the event was considered in England to be of evil omen, but that Henry took it cheerfully, and she thanked God for having given her such a husband. "The King," wrote Catherine's confessor, "adores her, and her highness him." Less than eight months later, on the 1st of January, 1511, she was delivered of her first-born son.[496] A tourney was held to celebrate the joyous event, and the heralds received a handsome largess at the christening. The child was named Henry, styled Prince of Wales, and given a serjeant-at-arms on the 14th, and a clerk of the signet on the 19th of February. Three days later he was dead; he was buried at the cost of some ten thousand pounds in Westminster Abbey. The rejoicings were turned to grief, which, aggravated by successive disappointments, bore with cumulative force on the mind of the King and his people. In September, 1513, the Venetian ambassador announced the birth of another son,[497] who was either still-born, or died immediately afterwards. In June, 1514, there is again a reference to the christening of the "King's new son,"[498] but he, too, was no sooner christened than dead.

[Footnote 495: D.N.B., ix., 292, gives this date. Catherine herself, writing on 27th May, 1510, says that "some days before she had been delivered of a still-born daughter" (Sp. Cal., ii., 43). On 1st November, 1509, Henry informed Ferdinand that Catherine was pregnant, and the child had quickened (ibid., ii., 23).]

[Footnote 496: Ven. Cal., ii., 95-96; L. and P., vol. i., 1491, 1495, 1513, Pref., p. lxxiii.; ii., 4692.]

[Footnote 497: Ven. Cal., ii., 329.]

[Footnote 498: L. and P., i., 5192.]

Domestic griefs were now embittered by political resentments. Ferdinand valued his daughter mainly as a political emissary; he had formally accredited her as his ambassador at Henry's Court, and she naturally used her influence to maintain the political union between her father and her husband. The arrangement had serious drawbacks; when relations between sovereigns grew strained, their ambassadors could be (p. 176) recalled, but Catherine had to stay. In 1514 Henry was boiling over with indignation at his double betrayal by the Catholic king; and it is not surprising that he vented some of his rage on the wife who was Ferdinand's representative. He reproached her, writes Peter Martyr from Ferdinand's Court, with her father's ill-faith, and taunted her with his own conquests. To this brutality Martyr attributes the premature birth of Catherine's fourth son towards the end of 1514.[499] Henry, in fact, was preparing to cast off, not merely the Spanish alliance, but his Spanish wife. He was negotiating for a joint attack on Castile with Louis XII. and threatening the divorce of Catherine.[500] "It is said," writes a Venetian from Rome in August, 1514, "that the King of England means to repudiate his present wife, the daughter of the King of Spain and his brother's widow, because he is unable to have children by her, and intends to marry a daughter of the French Duke of Bourbon.... He intends to annul his own marriage, and will obtain what he wants from the Pope as France did from Pope Julius II."[501]

[Footnote 499: L. and P., i., 5718.]

[Footnote 500: See above p. 76.]

[Footnote 501: Ven. Cal., ii., 479. The Pope was really Alexander VI.]

But the death of Louis XII. (January, 1515) and the consequent loosening of the Anglo-French alliance made Henry and Ferdinand again political allies; while, as the year wore on, Catherine was known to be once more pregnant, and Henry's hopes of issue revived. This time they were not disappointed; the Princess Mary was born on the 18th of February, 1516.[502] Ferdinand had died on the 23rd of January, but the news was kept from Catherine, lest it might add to the risks (p. 177) of her confinement.[503] The young princess seemed likely to live, and Henry was delighted. When Giustinian, amid his congratulations, said he would have been better pleased had it been a son, the King replied: "We are both young; if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God the sons will follow".[504] All thoughts of a divorce passed away for the time, but the desired sons did not arrive. In August, 1517, Catherine was reported to be again expecting issue, but nothing more is heard of the matter, and it is probable that about this time the Queen had various miscarriages. In July, 1518, Henry wrote to Wolsey from Woodstock that Catherine was once more pregnant, and that he could not move the Court to London, as it was one of the Queen's "dangerous times".[505] His precautions were unavailing, and, on the 10th of November, his child arrived still-born. Giustinian notes the great vexation with which the people heard the news, and expresses the opinion that, had it occurred a month or two earlier, the Princess Mary would not have been betrothed to the French dauphin, "as the one fear of England was lest it should pass into subjection to France through that marriage".[506]

[Footnote 502: L. and P., ii., 1505, 1573.]

[Footnote 503: L. and P., ii., 1563, 1610.]

[Footnote 504: Ven. Cal., ii., 691.]

[Footnote 505: Cotton MS., Vespasian, F, iii., fol. 34, b; cf. L. and P., ii., 4074, 4288.]

[Footnote 506: Ven. Cal., ii., 1103.]

The child was the last born of Catherine. For some years Henry went on hoping against every probability that he might still have male issue by his Queen; and in 1519 he undertook to lead a crusade against the Turk in person if he should have an heir.[507] But physicians summoned from Spain were no more successful than their English colleagues. (p. 178) By 1525 the last ray of hope had flickered out. Catherine was then forty years old; and Henry at the age of thirty-four, in the full vigour of youthful manhood, seemed doomed by the irony of fate and by his union with Catherine to leave a disputed inheritance. Never did England's interests more imperatively demand a secure and peaceful succession. Never before had there been such mortality among the children of an English king; never before had an English king married his brother's widow. So striking a coincidence could be only explained by the relation of cause and effect. Men who saw the judgment of God in the sack of Rome, might surely discern in the fatality that attended the children of Henry VIII. a fulfilment of the doom of childlessness pronounced in the Book of the Law against him who should marry his brother's wife. "God," wrote the French ambassador in 1528, "has long ago Himself passed sentence on it;"[508] and there is no reason to doubt Henry's assertion, that he had come to regard the death of his children as a Divine judgment, and that he was impelled to question his marriage by the dictates of conscience. The "scruples of conscience," which Henry VII. had urged as an excuse for delaying the marriage, were merely a cloak for political reasons; but scruples of conscience are dangerous playthings, and the pretence of Henry VII. became, through the death of his children, a terrible reality to Henry VIII.

[Footnote 507: L. and P., iii., 432.]

[Footnote 508: Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 1st Nov., 1528, L. and P., iv., 4899.]

Queen Catherine, too, had scruples of conscience about the marriage, though of a different sort. When she first heard of Henry's intention to seek a divorce, she is reported to have said that "she had (p. 179) not offended, but it was a judgment of God, for that her former marriage was made in blood"; the price of it had been the head of the innocent Earl of Warwick, demanded by Ferdinand of Aragon.[509] Nor was she alone in this feeling. "He had heard," witnessed Buckingham's chancellor in 1521, "the Duke grudge that the Earl of Warwick was put to death, and say that God would punish it, by not suffering the King's issue to prosper, as appeared by the death of his sons; and that his daughters prosper not, and that he had no issue male."[510]

[Footnote 509: Sp. Cal., i., 249; L. and P. of Richard III. and Henry VII., vol. i., pp. xxxiii., 113; Hall, Chron., p. 491; Bacon, Henry VII., ed. 1870, p. 376; Transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc., N.S., xviii., 187.]

[Footnote 510: L. and P., iii., 1284.]

Conscience, however, often moves men in directions indicated by other than conscientious motives, and, of the other motives which influenced Henry's mind, some were respectable and some the reverse. The most legitimate was his desire to provide for the succession to the throne. It was obvious to him and his council that, if he died with no children but Mary, England ran the risk of being plunged into an anarchy worse than that of the civil wars. "By English law," wrote Falier, the Venetian ambassador, in 1531, "females are excluded from the throne;"[511] that was not true, but it was undoubtedly a widespread impression, based upon the past history of England. No Queen-Regnant had asserted a right to the English throne but one, and that one precedent provided the most effective argument for avoiding a repetition of the experiment. Matilda was never crowned, though she had the same claim to the throne as Mary, and her attempt to (p. 180) enforce her title involved England in nineteen years of anarchy and civil war. Stephen stood to Matilda in precisely the same relation as James V. of Scotland stood to the Princess Mary; and in 1532, as soon as he came of age, James was urged to style himself "Prince of England" and Duke of York, in manifest derogation of Mary's title.[512] At that time Charles V. was discussing alternative plans for deposing Henry VIII. One was to set up James V., the other to marry Mary to some great English noble and proclaim them King and Queen;[513] Mary by herself was thought to have no chance of success. John of Gaunt had maintained in Parliament that the succession descended only through males;[514] the Lancastrian case was that Henry IV., the son of Edward III.'s fourth son, had a better title to the throne than Philippa, the daughter of the third; an Act limiting the succession to the male line was passed in 1406;[515] and Henry VII. himself only reigned through a tacit denial of the right of women to sit on the English throne.

[Footnote 511: Ven. Cal., iv., 300.]

[Footnote 512: L. and P., v., 609, 817.]

[Footnote 513: Ibid., vi., 446.]

[Footnote 514: Chronicon Angliae, Rolls Ser., p. 92, s.a., 1376; D.N.B., xxix., 421. This became the orthodox Lancastrian theory (cf. Fortescue, Governance of England, ed. Plummer, pp. 352-55).]

[Footnote 515: Stubbs, Const. Hist., iii., 58. This Act was, however, repealed before the end of the same year.]

The objection to female sovereigns was grounded not so much on male disbelief in their personal qualifications, as upon the inevitable consequence of matrimonial and dynastic problems.[516] If the Princess Mary succeeded, was she to marry? If not, her death would leave (p. 181) the kingdom no better provided with heirs than before; and in her weak state of health, her death seemed no distant prospect. If, on the other hand, she married, her husband must be either a subject or a foreign prince. To marry a subject would at once create discords like those from which the Wars of the Roses had sprung; to marry a foreign prince was to threaten Englishmen, then more jealous than ever of foreign influence, with the fear of alien domination. They had before their eyes numerous instances in which matrimonial alliances had involved the union of states so heterogeneous as Spain and the Netherlands; and they had no mind to see England absorbed in some continental empire. In the matrimonial schemes arranged for the princess, it was generally stipulated that she should, in default of male heirs, succeed to the throne of England; her succession was obviously a matter of doubt, and it is quite certain that her marriage in France or in Spain would have proved a bar in the way of her succession to the English throne, or at least have given rise to conflicting claims.

[Footnote 516: Professor Maitland has spoken of the "Byzantinism" of Henry's reign, and possibly the objection to female sovereigns was strengthened by the prevalent respect for Roman imperial and Byzantine custom (cf. Hodgkin, Charles the Great, p. 180).]

These rival pretensions began to be heard as soon as it became evident that Henry VIII. would have no male heirs by Catherine of Aragon. In 1519, a year after the birth of the Queen's last child, Giustinian reported to the Venetian signiory on the various nobles who had hopes of the crown. The Duke of Norfolk had expectations in right of his wife, a daughter of Edward IV., and the Duke of Suffolk in right of his Duchess, the sister of Henry VIII. But the Duke of Buckingham was the most formidable: "It was thought that, were the King to die without male heirs, that Duke might easily obtain the crown".[517] (p. 182) His claims had been canvassed in 1503, when the issue of Henry VII. seemed likely to fail,[518] and now that the issue of Henry VIII. was in even worse plight, Buckingham's claims to the crown became again a matter of comment. His hopes of the crown cost him his head; he had always been discontented with Tudor rule, especially under Wolsey; he allowed himself to be encouraged with hopes of succeeding the King, and possibly spoke of asserting his claim in case of Henry's death. This was to touch Henry on his tenderest spot, and, in 1521, the Duke was tried by his peers, found guilty of high treason, and sent to the block.[519] In this, as in all the great trials of Henry's reign, and indeed in most state trials of all ages, considerations of justice were subordinated to the real or supposed dictates of political expediency. Buckingham was executed, not because he was a criminal, but because he was, or might become, dangerous; his crime was not treason, but descent from Edward III. Henry VIII., like Henry VII., showed his grasp of the truth that nothing makes a government so secure as the absence of all alternatives.

[Footnote 517: Ven. Cal., ii., 1287. Buckingham's end was undoubtedly hastened by Wolsey's jealousy; before the end of 1518 the Cardinal had been instilling into Henry's ear suspicions of Buckingham (L. and P., iii., 1; cf. ibid., ii., 3973, 4057). Brewer regards the hostility of Wolsey to Buckingham as one of Polydore Vergil's "calumnies" (ibid., vol. iii., Introd., p. lxvi.).]

[Footnote 518: L. and P. of Richard III. and Henry VII., i., 233.]

[Footnote 519: See detailed accounts in L. and P., iii., 1284, 1356. Shakespeare's account in "Henry VIII." is remarkably accurate, except in matters of date.]

Buckingham's execution is one of the symptoms that, as early as 1521, the failure of his issue had made Henry nervous and susceptible about the succession. Even in 1519, when Charles V.'s minister, (p. 183) Chievres, was proposing to marry his niece to the Earl of Devonshire, a grandson of Edward IV., Henry was suspicious, and Wolsey inquired whether Chievres was "looking to any chance of the Earl's succession to the throne of England."[520] If further proof were needed that Henry's anxiety about the succession was not, as has been represented, a mere afterthought intended to justify his divorce from Catherine, it might be found in the extraordinary measures taken with regard to his one and only illegitimate son. The boy was born in 1519. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, sister of Erasmus's friend, Lord Mountjoy; and she is noticed as taking part in the Court revels during the early years of Henry's reign.[521] Outwardly, at any rate, Henry's Court was long a model of decorum; there was no parade of vice as in the days of Charles II., and the existence of this royal bastard was so effectually concealed that no reference to him occurs in the correspondence of the time until 1525, when it was thought expedient to give him a position of public importance. The necessity of providing some male successor to Henry was considered so urgent that, two years before the divorce is said to have occurred to him, he and his council were meditating a scheme for entailing the succession on the King's illegitimate son. In 1525 the child was created Duke of Richmond and Somerset. These titles were significant; Earl of Richmond had been Henry VII.'s title before he came to the throne; Duke of Somerset had been that of his grandfather and of his youngest son. Shortly afterwards the boy was made Lord (p. 184) High Admiral of England, Lord Warden of the Marches, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,[522] the two latter being offices which Henry VIII. himself had held in his early youth. In January, 1527, the Spanish ambassador reported that there was a scheme on foot to make the Duke King of Ireland;[523] it was obviously a design to prepare the way for his succession to the kingdom of England. The English envoys in Spain were directed to tell the Emperor that Henry proposed to demand some noble princess of near blood to the Emperor as a wife for the Duke of Richmond. The Duke, they were to say, "is near of the King's blood and of excellent qualities, and is already furnished to keep the state of a great prince, and yet may be easily, by the King's means, exalted to higher things".[524] The lady suggested was Charles's niece, a daughter of the Queen of Portugal; she was already promised to the Dauphin of France, but the envoys remarked that, if that match were broken off, she might find "another dauphin" in the Duke of Richmond. Another plan for settling the succession was that the Duke should, by papal dispensation, marry his half-sister Mary! Cardinal Campeggio saw no moral objection to this. "At first I myself," he writes on his arrival in England in October, 1528, "had thought of this as a means of establishing the succession, but I do not believe that this design would suffice to satisfy the King's desires."[525] The Pope was equally willing to facilitate the scheme, on (p. 185) condition that Henry abandoned his divorce from Catherine.[526] Possibly Henry saw more objections than Pope or Cardinal to a marriage between brother and sister. At all events Mary was soon betrothed to the French prince, and the Emperor recorded his impression that the French marriage was designed to remove the Princess from the Duke of Richmond's path to the throne.[527]

[Footnote 520: L. and P., iii., 386.]

[Footnote 521: Ibid., ii., p. 1461.]

[Footnote 522: See G.E. C[okayne]'s and Doyle's Peerages, s.v. "Richmond".]

[Footnote 523: Sp. Cal., iii., 109; L. and P., iv., 2988, 3028, 3140.]

[Footnote 524: L. and P., iv., 3051. In ibid., iv., 3135, Richmond is styled "The Prince".]

[Footnote 525: Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana, p. 29; L. and P., iv., 4881. It was claimed that the Pope's dispensing power was unlimited, extending even to marriages between brothers and sisters (ibid., v., 468). Campeggio told Du Bellay in 1528 that the Pope's power was "infinite" (ibid., iv., 4942).]

[Footnote 526: L. and P., iv., 5072.]

[Footnote 527: Sp. Cal., iii., 482.]

The conception of this violent expedient is mainly of interest as illustrating the supreme importance attached to the question of providing for a male successor to Henry. He wanted an heir to the throne, and he wanted a fresh wife for that reason. A mistress would not satisfy him, because his children by a mistress would hardly succeed without dispute to the throne, not because he laboured under any moral scruples on the point. He had already had two mistresses, Elizabeth Blount, the mother of the Duke of Richmond, and Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn. Possibly, even probably, there were other lapses from conjugal fidelity, for, in 1533, the Duke of Norfolk told Chapuys that Henry was always inclined to amours;[528] but none are capable of definite proof, and if Henry had other illegitimate children besides the Duke of Richmond it is difficult to understand why their existence should have been so effectually concealed when such publicity was given their brother. The King is said to have had ten mistresses in 1528, but the statement is based on a misrepresentation of the only document adduced in its support.[529] It is a list of New Year's (p. 186) presents,[530] which runs "To thirty-three noble ladies" such and such gifts, then "to ten mistresses" other gifts; it is doubtful if the word then bore its modern sinister signification; in this particular instance it merely means "gentlewomen," and differentiates them from the noble ladies. Henry's morals, indeed, compare not unfavourably with those of other sovereigns. His standard was neither higher nor lower than that of Charles V., who was at this time negotiating a marriage between his natural daughter and the Pope's nephew; it was not lower than those of James II., of William III., or of the first two Georges; it was infinitely higher than the standard of Francis I., of Charles II., or even of Henry of Navarre and Louis XIV.

[Footnote 528: L. and P., vi., 241.]

[Footnote 529: E.L. Taunton, Wolsey, 1902, p. 173, where the words are erroneously given as "To the King's ten mistresses"; "the King's" is an interpolation.]

[Footnote 530: L. and P., iv., 3748.]

The gross immorality so freely imputed to Henry seems to have as little foundation as the theory that his sole object in seeking the divorce from Catherine and separation from Rome was the gratification of his passion for Anne Boleyn. If that had been the case, there would be no adequate explanation of the persistence with which he pursued the divorce. He was "studying the matter so diligently," Campeggio says, "that I believe in this case he knows more than a great theologian and jurist"; he was so convinced of the justice of his cause "that an angel descending from heaven would be unable to persuade him otherwise".[531] He sent embassy after embassy to Rome; he risked the enmity of Catholic Europe; he defied the authority of the vicar of Christ; and lavished vast sums to obtain verdicts in his favour from most of the universities in Christendom. It is not (p. 187) credible that all this energy was expended merely to satisfy a sensual passion, which could be satisfied without a murmur from Pope or Emperor, if he was content with Anne Boleyn as a mistress, and is believed to have been already satisfied in 1529, four years before the divorce was obtained.[532] So, too, the actual sentence of divorce in 1533 was precipitated not by Henry's passion for Anne, but by the desire that her child should be legitimate. She was pregnant before Henry was married to her or divorced from Catherine. But, though the representation of Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn as the sole fons et origo of the divorce is far from convincing, that passion introduced various complications into the question; it was not merely an additional incentive to Henry's desires; it also brought Wolsey and Henry into conflict; and the unpopularity of the divorce was increased by the feeling that Henry was losing caste by seeking to marry a lady of the rank and character of Anne Boleyn.

[Footnote 531: Ibid., iv., 4858.]

[Footnote 532: No conclusive evidence on this point is possible; the French ambassador, Clement VII. and others believed that Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn had been cohabiting since 1529. On the other hand, if such was the case, it is singular that no child should have been born before 1533; for after that date Anne seems to have had a miscarriage nearly every year. Ortiz, indeed, reports from Rome that she had a miscarriage in 1531 (L. and P., v., 594), but the evidence is not good.]

* * * * *

The Boleyns were wealthy merchants of London, of which one of them had been Lord-Mayor, but Anne's mother was of noble blood, being daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Ormonde,[533] and it is a curious fact that all of Henry's wives could trace their descent from Edward I.[534] Anne's age is uncertain, but she is generally believed to have (p. 188) been born in 1507.[535] Attempts have been made to date her influence over the King by the royal favours bestowed on her father, Sir Thomas, afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, but, as these favours flowed in a fairly regular stream from the beginning of the reign, as Sir Thomas's services were at least a colourable excuse for them, and as his other daughter Mary was Henry's mistress before he fell in love with Anne, these grants are not a very substantial ground upon which to build. Of Anne herself little is known except that, about 1519, she was sent as maid of honour to the French Queen, Claude; five years before, her sister Mary had accompanied Mary Tudor in a similar capacity on her marriage with Louis XII.[536] In 1522, when war with France was on the eve of breaking out, Anne was recalled to the English Court,[537] where she took part in revels and love-intrigues. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, although a married man, sued for her favours;[538] Henry, Lord Percy made her more honest proposals, but was compelled to desist by the King himself, who (p. 189) had arranged for her marriage with Piers Butler, son of the Earl of Ormond, as a means to end the feud between the Butler and the Boleyn families.

[Footnote 533: See Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, 2 vols., 1884, and articles on the Boleyn family in D.N.B., vol. v.]

[Footnote 534: See George Fisher, Key to the History of England, Table xvii.; Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1829.]

[Footnote 535: Henry would then be fifteen, yet a fable was invented and often repeated that Henry VIII. was Anne Boleyn's father. Nicholas Sanders, whose De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani became the basis of Roman Catholic histories of the English Reformation, gave currency to the story; and some modern writers prefer Sanders' veracity to Foxe's.]

[Footnote 536: The error that it was Anne who accompanied Mary Tudor in 1514 was exposed by Brewer more than forty years ago, but it still lingers and was repeated with innumerable others in the Catalogue of the New Gallery Portrait Exhibition of 1902.]

[Footnote 537: L. and P., iii., 1994.]

[Footnote 538: In Harpsfield's Pretended Divorce there is a very improbable story that Wyatt told Henry VIII. his relations with Anne were far from innocent and warned the King against marrying a woman of Anne's character.]

None of these projects advanced any farther, possibly because they conflicted with the relations developing between Anne and the King himself. As Wyatt complained in a sonnet,[539]

There is written her fair neck round about Noli me tangere; for Caesar's I am And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

But, for any definite documentary evidence to the contrary, it might be urged that Henry's passion for Anne was subsequent to the commencement of his proceedings for a divorce from Catherine. Those proceedings began at least as early as March, 1527, while the first allusion to the connection between the King and Anne Boleyn occurs in the instructions to Dr. William Knight, sent in the following autumn to procure a dispensation for her marriage with Henry.[540] The King's famous love-letters, the earliest of which are conjecturally assigned to July, 1527,[541] are without date and with but slight internal indications of the time at which they were written; they may be earlier than 1527, they may be as late as the following winter. It is unlikely that Henry would have sought for the Pope's dispensation to marry (p. 190) Anne until he was assured of her consent, of which in some of the letters he appears to be doubtful; on the other hand, it is difficult to see how a lady of the Court could refuse an offer of marriage made by her sovereign. Her reluctance was to fill a less honourable position, into which Henry was not so wicked as to think of forcing her. "I trust," he writes in one of his letters, "your absence is not wilful on your part; for if so, I can but lament my ill-fortune, and by degrees abate my great folly."[542] His love for Anne Boleyn was certainly his "great folly," the one overmastering passion of his life. There is, however, nothing very extraordinary in the letters themselves; in one he says he has for more than a year been "wounded with the dart of love," and is uncertain whether Anne returns his affection. In others he bewails her briefest absence as though it were an eternity; desires her father to hasten his return to Court; is torn with anxiety lest Anne should take the plague, comforts her with the assurance that few women have had it, and sends her a hart killed by his own hand, making the inevitable play on the word. Later on, he alludes to the progress of the divorce case; excuses the shortness of a letter on the ground that he has spent four hours over the book he was writing in his own defence[543] and has a pain in his head. The series ends with an announcement that he has been fitting up apartments for her, and with congratulations to himself and to her that the "well-wishing" Legate, Campeggio, who has been sent from Rome to (p. 191) try the case, has told him he was not so "imperial" in his sympathies as had been alleged.

[Footnote 539: Wyatt, Works, ed. G.F. Nott, 1816, p. 143.]

[Footnote 540: L. and P., iv., 3422.]

[Footnote 541: Ibid., iv., 3218-20, 3325-26, 3990, 4383, 4403, 4410, 4477, 4537, 4539, 4597, 4648, 4742, 4894. They have also been printed by Hearne at the end of his edition of Robert of Avesbury, in the Pamphleteer, vol. xxi., and in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. The originals in Henry's hand are in the Vatican Library; one of them was reproduced in facsimile for the illustrated edition of this book.]

[Footnote 542: L. and P., iv., 3326.]

[Footnote 543: In 1531 he was said to have written "many books" on the divorce question (ibid., v., 251).]

The secret of her fascination over Henry was a puzzle to observers. "Madame Anne," wrote a Venetian, "is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the King's great appetite, and her eyes, which are black and beautiful".[544] She had probably learnt in France the art of using her beautiful eyes to the best advantage; her hair, which was long and black, she wore loose, and on her way to her coronation Cranmer describes her as "sitting in her hair".[545] Possibly this was one of the French customs, which somewhat scandalised the staider ladies of the English Court. She is said to have had a slight defect on one of her nails, which she endeavoured to conceal behind her other fingers.[546] Of her mental accomplishments there is not much evidence; she naturally, after some years' residence at the Court of France, spoke French, though she wrote it in an orthography that was quite her own. Her devotion to the Gospel is the one great virtue with which Foxe and other Elizabethans strove to invest the mother of the Good Queen Bess. But it had no nobler foundation than the facts that Anne's position drove her into hostility to the Roman jurisdiction, and that her family shared the envy of church goods, common to the nobility and the gentry of the time.[547] Her place in English history is due (p. 192) solely to the circumstance that she appealed to the less refined part of Henry's nature; she was pre-eminent neither in beauty nor in intellect, and her virtue was not of a character to command or deserve the respect of her own or subsequent ages.

[Footnote 544: Ven. Cal., iv., 365.]

[Footnote 545: Cranmer, Works (Parker Soc.), ii., 245; cf. Ven. Cal., iv., 351, 418.]

[Footnote 546: L. and P., iv., Introd., p. ccxxxvii.]

[Footnote 547: There is not much historical truth in Gray's phrase about "the Gospel light which dawned from Bullen's eyes"; but Brewer goes too far in minimising the "Lutheran" proclivities of the Boleyns. In 1531 Chapuys described Anne and her father as being "more Lutheran than Luther himself" (L. and P., v., 148), in 1532 as "true apostles of the new sect" (ibid., v., 850), and in 1533 as "perfect Lutherans" (ibid., vi., 142).]

It is otherwise with her rival, Queen Catherine, the third of the principal characters involved in the divorce. If Henry's motives were not so entirely bad as they have often been represented, neither they nor Anne Boleyn's can stand a moment's comparison with the unsullied purity of Catherine's life or the lofty courage with which she defended the cause she believed to be right. There is no more pathetic figure in English history, nor one condemned to a crueller fate. No breath of scandal touched her fair name, or impugned her devotion to Henry. If she had the misfortune to be identified with a particular policy, the alliance with the House of Burgundy, the fault was not hers; she had been married to Henry in consideration of the advantages which that alliance was supposed to confer; and, if she used her influence to further Spanish interest, it was a natural feeling as near akin to virtue as to vice, and Carroz at least complained, in 1514, that she had completely identified herself with her husband and her husband's subjects.[548] If her miscarriages and the death of her children (p. 193) were a grief to Henry, the pain and the sorrow were hers in far greater measure; if they had made her old and deformed, as Francis brutally described her in 1519,[549] the fact must have been far more bitter to her than it was unpleasant to Henry. There may have been some hardship to Henry in the circumstance that, for political motives, he had been induced by his council to marry a wife who was six years his senior; but to Catherine herself a divorce was the height of injustice. The question was in fact one of justice against a real or supposed political necessity, and in such cases justice commonly goes to the wall. In politics, men seek to colour with justice actions based upon considerations of expediency. They first convince themselves, and then they endeavour with less success to persuade mankind.

[Footnote 548: Sp. Cal., ii., 201.]

[Footnote 549: Ven. Cal., ii., 1230.]

So Henry VIII. convinced himself that the dispensation granted by Julius II. was null and void, that he had never been married to Catherine, and that to continue to live with his brother's wife was sin. "The King," he instructed his ambassador to tell Charles V. in 1533, "taketh himself to be in the right, not because so many say it, but because he, being learned, knoweth the matter to be right.... The justice of our cause is so rooted in our breast that nothing can remove it, and even the canons say that a man should rather endure all the censures of the Church than offend his conscience."[550] No man was less tolerant of heresy than Henry, but no man set greater (p. 194) store on his own private judgment. To that extent he was a Protestant; "though," he instructed Paget in 1534 to tell the Lutheran princes, "the law of every man's conscience be but a private court, yet it is the highest and supreme court for judgment or justice". God and his conscience, he told Chapuys in 1533, were on very good terms.[551] On another occasion he wrote to Charles Ubi Spiritus Domini, ibi libertas,[552] with the obvious implication that he possessed the spirit of the Lord, and therefore he might do as he liked. To him, as to St. Paul, all things were lawful; and Henry's appeals to the Pope, to learned divines, to universities at home and abroad, were not for his own satisfaction, but were merely concessions to the profane herd, unskilled in royal learning and unblessed with a kingly conscience. Against that conviction, so firmly rooted in the royal breast, appeals to pity were vain, and attempts to shake it were perilous. It was his conscience that made Henry so dangerous. Men are tolerant of differences about things indifferent, but conscience makes bigots of us all; theological hatreds are proverbially bitter, and religious wars are cruel. Conscience made Sir Thomas More persecute, and glory in the persecution of heretics,[553] and conscience earned Mary her epithet "Bloody". They were moved by conscientious belief in the Catholic faith, Henry by conscientious belief in himself; and conscientious scruples are none the less exigent for being reached by crooked paths.

[Footnote 550: L. and P., vi., 775. Hoc volo, sic jubeo; stet pro ratione voluntas. Luther quoted this line a propos of Henry; see his preface to Robert Barnes' Bekenntniss des Glaubens, Wittemberg, 1540.]

[Footnote 551: L. and P., vi., 351; vii., 148.]

[Footnote 552: Ibid., iv., 6111.]

[Footnote 553: It has been denied that More either persecuted or gloried in the persecution of heretics; but he admits himself that he recommended corporal punishment in two cases and "it is clear that he underestimated his activity" (D.N.B., xxxviii., 436, and instances and authorities there cited).]



CHAPTER VIII. (p. 195)

THE POPE'S DILEMMA.

In February, 1527, in pursuance of the alliance with France, which Wolsey, recognising too late the fatal effects of the union with Charles, was seeking to make the basis of English policy, a French embassy arrived in England to conclude a marriage between Francis I. and the Princess Mary. At its head was Gabriel de Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes; and in the course of his negotiations he is alleged to have first suggested those doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage, which ended in the divorce. The allegation was made by Wolsey three months later, and from that time down to our own day it has done duty with Henry's apologists as a sufficient vindication of his conduct. It is now denounced as an impudent fiction, mainly on the ground that no hint of these doubts occurs in the extant records of the negotiations. But unfortunately we have only one or two letters relating to this diplomatic mission.[554] There exists, indeed, a detailed (p. 196) narrative, drawn up some time afterwards by Claude Dodieu, the French secretary; but the silence, on so confidential a matter, of a third party who was not present when the doubts were presumably suggested, proves little or nothing. Du Bellay, in 1528, reported to the French Government Henry's public assertion that Tarbes had mentioned these doubts;[555] the statement was not repudiated; Tarbes himself believed in the validity of Henry's case and was frequently employed in efforts to win from the Pope an assent to Henry's divorce. It is rather a strong assumption to suppose in the entire absence of positive evidence that Henry and Wolsey were deliberately lying. There is nothing impossible in the supposition that some such doubts were expressed; indeed, Francis I. had every reason to encourage doubts of Henry's marriage as a means of creating a breach between him and Charles V. In return for Mary's hand, Henry was endeavouring to obtain various advantages from Francis in the way of pensions, tribute and territory. Tarbes represented that the French King was so good a match for the English princess, that there was little need for further concession; to which Henry replied that Francis was no doubt an excellent match for his daughter, but was he free to marry? His precontract with Charles V.'s sister, Eleanor, was a complication which seriously diminished the value of Francis's offer; and the papal dispensation, which he hoped to obtain, might not be forthcoming (p. 197) or valid.[556] As a counter to this stroke, Tarbes may well have hinted that the Princess Mary was not such a prize as Henry made out. Was the dispensation for Henry's own marriage beyond cavil? Was Mary's legitimacy beyond question? Was her succession to the English throne, a prospect Henry dangled before the Frenchman's eyes, so secure? These questions were not very new, even at the time of Tarbes's mission. The divorce had been talked about in 1514, and now, in 1527, the position of importance given to the Duke of Richmond was a matter of public comment, and inevitably suggested doubts of Mary's succession. There is no documentary evidence that this argument was ever employed, beyond the fact that, within three months of Tarbes's mission, both Henry and Wolsey asserted that the Bishop had suggested doubts of the validity of Henry's marriage.[557] Henry, however, does not say that Tarbes first suggested the doubts, nor does Wolsey. The Cardinal declares that the Bishop objected to the marriage with the Princess Mary on the ground of these doubts; and some time later, when Henry explained his position to the Lord-Mayor and aldermen of London, he said, according to Du Bellay, that the scruple of conscience, which he had long entertained, had terribly increased upon him since Tarbes had spoken of it.[558]

[Footnote 554: Dr. Gairdner (Engl. Hist. Rev., xi., 675) speaks of the "full diplomatic correspondence which we possess"; the documents are these: (1) an undated letter (L. and P., iv., App. 105) announcing the ambassador's arrival in England; (2) a letter of 21st March (iv., 2974); (3) a brief note of no importance to Dr. Brienne, dated 2nd April (ibid., 3012); (4) the formal commission of Francis I., dated 13th April (ibid., 3059); (5) the treaty of 30th April (3080); and (6) three brief notes from Turenne to Montmorenci, dated 6th, 7th and 24th April. From Tarbes himself there are absolutely no letters relating to his negotiations, and it would almost seem as though they had been deliberately destroyed. Our knowledge depends solely upon Dodieu's narrative.]

[Footnote 555: L. and P., iv., 4942.]

[Footnote 556: "There will be great difficulty," wrote Clerk, "circa istud benedictum divortium." Brewer interpreted this as the earliest reference to Henry's divorce; it was really, as Dr. Ehses shows, in reference to the dissolution of the precontract between Francis I. and Charles V.'s sister Eleanor (Engl. Hist. Rev., xi., 676).]

[Footnote 557: L. and P., iv., 3231.]

[Footnote 558: Ibid., iv., 4231, 4942. Henry's own account of the matter was as follows: "For some years past he had noticed in reading the Bible the severe penalty inflicted by God on those who married the relicts of their brothers"; he at length "began to be troubled in his conscience, and to regard the sudden deaths of his male children as a Divine judgment. The more he studied the matter, the more clearly it appeared to him that he had broken a Divine law. He then called to counsel men learned in pontifical law, to ascertain their opinion of the dispensation. Some pronounced it invalid. So far he had proceeded as secretly as possible that he might do nothing rashly" (L. and P., iv., 5156; cf. iv., 3641). Shakespeare, following Cavendish (p. 221), makes Henry reveal his doubts first to his confessor, Bishop Longland of Lincoln: "First I began in private with you, my Lord of Lincoln" ("Henry VIII.," Act II., sc. iv.); and there is contemporary authority for this belief. In 1532 Longland was said to have suggested a divorce to Henry ten years previously (L. and P., v., 1114), and Chapuys termed him "the principal promoter of these practices" (ibid., v., 1046); and in 1536 the northern rebels thought that he was the beginning of all the trouble (ibid., xi., 705); the same assertion is made in the anonymous "Life and Death of Cranmer" (Narr. of the Reformation, Camden Soc., p. 219). Other persons to whom the doubtful honour was ascribed are Wolsey and Stafileo, Dean of the Rota at Rome (L. and P., iv., 3400; Sp. Cal., iv., 159).]

However that may be, before the Bishop's negotiations were (p. 198) completed the first steps had been taken towards the divorce, or, as Wolsey and Henry pretended, towards satisfying the King's scruples as to the validity of his marriage. Early in April, 1527, Dr. Richard Wolman was sent down to Winchester to examine old Bishop Fox on the subject.[559] The greatest secrecy was observed and none of the Bishop's councillors were allowed to be present. Other evidence was doubtless collected from various sources, and, on 17th May, a week after Tarbes's departure, Wolsey summoned Henry to appear before him to explain his conduct in living with his brother's widow.[560] Wolman was appointed promoter of the suit; Henry put in a justification, (p. 199) and, on 31st May, Wolman replied. With that the proceedings terminated. In instituting them Henry was following a precedent set by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk.[561] In very early days that nobleman had contracted to marry Sir Anthony Browne's daughter, but for some reason the match was broken off, and he sought the hand of one Margaret Mortimer, to whom he was related in the second and third degrees of consanguinity; he obtained a dispensation, completed the marriage, and cohabited with Margaret Mortimer. But, like Henry VIII., his conscience or other considerations moved him to regard his marriage as sin, and the dispensation as invalid. He caused a declaration to that effect to be made by "the official of the Archdeacon of London, to whom the cognisance of such causes of old belongs," married Ann Browne, and, after her death, Henry's sister Mary. A marriage, the validity of which depended, like Henry's, upon a papal dispensation, and which, like Henry's, had been consummated, was declared null and void on exactly the same grounds as those upon which Henry himself sought a divorce, namely, the invalidity of the previous dispensation. On 12th May, 1528, Clement VII. issued a bull confirming Suffolk's divorce and pronouncing ecclesiastical censures on all who called in question the Duke's subsequent marriages. That is precisely the course Henry wished to be followed. Wolsey was to declare the marriage invalid on the ground of the insufficiency of the papal dispensation; Henry might then marry whom he pleased; the Pope was to confirm the sentence, and censure all who should dispute the second marriage or the legitimacy of its possible issue.

[Footnote 559: L. and P., iv., 5291. This examination took place on 5th and 6th April.]

[Footnote 560: Ibid., iv., 3140.]

[Footnote 561: L. and P., iv., 5859; cf. iv., 737.]

Another precedent was also forced on Henry's mind. On 11th March, (p. 200) 1527, two months before Wolsey opened his court, a divorce was granted at Rome to Henry's sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland.[562] Her pretexts were infinitely more flimsy than Henry's own. She alleged a precontract on the part of her husband, Angus, which was never proved. She professed to believe that James IV. had survived Flodden three years, and was alive when she married Angus. Angus had been unfaithful, but that was no ground for divorce by canon law; and she herself was living in shameless adultery with Henry Stewart, who had also procured a divorce to be free to marry his Queen. No objection was found at Rome to either of these divorces; but neither Angus nor Margaret Mortimer had an Emperor for a nephew; no imperial armies would march on Rome to vindicate the validity of their marriages, and Clement could issue his bulls without any fear that their justice would be challenged by the arms of powerful princes. Not so with Henry; while the secret proceedings before Wolsey were in progress, the world was shocked by the sack of Rome, and Clement was a prisoner in the hands of the Emperor's troops. There was no hope that a Pope in such a plight would confirm a sentence to the detriment of his master's aunt. "If the Pope," wrote Wolsey to Henry on receipt of the news, "be slain or taken, it will hinder the King's affairs not a little, which have hitherto been going on so well."[563] A little later he declared that, if Catherine repudiated his authority, it would be necessary to have the assent of the Pope or of the cardinals to the divorce. To obtain the former the Pope must be liberated; to secure the latter the cardinals must be assembled in France.[564] (p. 201)

[Footnote 562: L. and P., iv., 4130.]

[Footnote 563: Ibid., iv., 3147.]

[Footnote 564: L. and P., iv., 3311.]

To effect the Pope's liberation, or rather to call an assembly of cardinals in France during Clement's captivity, was the real object of the mission to France, on which Wolsey started in July. Such a body, acting under Wolsey's presidency and in the territories of the French King, was as likely to favour an attack upon the Emperor's aunt as the Pope in the hands of Charles's armies was certain to oppose it. Wolsey went in unparalleled splendour, not as Henry's ambassador but as his lieutenant; and projects for his own advancement were, as usual, part of the programme. Louise of Savoy, the queen-mother of France, suggested to him that all Christian princes should repudiate the Pope's authority so long as he remained in captivity, and the Cardinal replied that, had the overture not been made by her, it would have been started by himself and by Henry.[565] It was rumoured in Spain that Wolsey "had gone into France to separate the Church of England and of France from the Roman, not merely during the captivity of the Pope and to effect his liberation, but for a perpetual division,"[566] and that Francis was offering Wolsey the patriarchate of the two schismatic churches. To win over the Cardinal to the interest of Spain, it was even suggested that Charles should depose Clement and offer the Papacy to Wolsey.[567] The project of a schism was not found feasible; the cardinals at Rome were too numerous, and Wolsey only succeeded in gaining four, three French and one Italian, to join him in signing a protest repudiating Clement's authority so long as (p. 202) he remained in the Emperor's power. It was necessary to fall back after all on the Pope for assent to Henry's divorce, and the news that Charles had already got wind of the proceedings against Catherine made it advisable that no time should be lost. The Emperor, indeed, had long been aware of Henry's intentions; every care had been taken to prevent communication between Catherine and her nephew, and a plot had been laid to kidnap a messenger she was sending in August to convey her appeal for protection. All was in vain, for the very day after Wolsey's court had opened in May, Mendoza wrote to Charles that Wolsey "as the finishing stroke to all his iniquities, had been scheming to bring about the Queen's divorce"; and on the 29th of July, some days before Wolsey had any suspicion that a hint was abroad, Charles informed Mendoza that he had despatched Cardinal Quignon to Rome, to act on the Queen's behalf and to persuade Clement to revoke Wolsey's legatine powers.[568]