History of the Reformation, vol. 5

Chapter 5

Wolsey desires to be revenged—The Divorce suggested—Henry’s Sentiments towards the Queen—Wolsey’s first Steps—Longland’s Proceedings—Refusal of Margaret of Valois—Objection of the Bishop of Tarbes—Henry’s Uneasiness—Catherine’s Alarm—Mission to Spain

Wolsey, mortified at not being able to obtain the pontifical throne, to which he had so ardently aspired, and being especially irritated by the ill-will of Charles V, meditated a plan which, entirely unsuspected by him, was to lead to the enfranchisement of England from the papal yoke. “They laugh at me, and thrust me into the second rank,” he had exclaimed. “So be it! I will create such a confusion in the world as has not been seen for ages I will do it, even should England be swallowed up in the tempest!” Desirous of exciting imperishable hatred between Henry VIII and Charles V, he had undertaken to break the marriage which Henry VII and Ferdinand the Catholic had planned to unite for ever their families and their crowns. His hatred of Charles was not his only motive. Catherine had reproached him for his dissolute life, and he had sworn to be revenged. There can be no doubt about Wolsey’s share in the matter. “The first terms of the divorce were put forward by me,” he told the French ambassador. “I did it,” he added, “to cause a lasting separation between the houses of England and Burgundy.” The best informed writers of the sixteenth century, men of the most opposite parties, Pole, Polydore Virgil, Tyndale, Meteren, Pallavicini, Sanders, and Roper, More’s son-in-law, all agree in pointing to Wolsey as the instigator of that divorce, which has become so famous. He desired to go still farther, and after inducing the king to put away his queen, he hoped to prevail on the pope to depose the emperor. It was not his passion for Anne Boleyn, as so many of the Romish fabulists have repeated, but the passion of a cardinal for the triple crown which gave the signal of England’s emancipation. Offended pride is one of the most active principles of human nature. HRSCV5 785.2

Wolsey’s design was a strange one, and difficult of execution, but not impossible. Henry was living apparently on the best terms with Catherine; on more than one occasion Erasmus had spoken of the royal family of England as the pattern of the domestic virtues. But the most ardent of Henry’s desires was not satisfied; he had no son; those whom the queen had borne him had died in their infancy, and Mary alone survived. The deaths of these little children, at all times so heartrending, were particularly so in the palace of Greenwich. It appeared to Catherine that the shade of the last Plantagenet, immolated on her marriage-altar, came forth to seize one after another the heirs she gave to the throne of England, and to carry them away to his tomb. The queen shed tears almost unceasingly, and implored the divine mercy, while the king cursed his unhappy fate. The people seemed to share in the royal sorrow; and men of learning and piety (Longland was among their number) declared against the validity of the marriage. They said that “the papal dispensations had no force when in opposition to the law of God.” Yet hitherto Henry had rejected every idea of a divorce. HRSCV5 785.3

The times had changed since 1509. The king had loved Catherine; her reserve, mildness, and dignity, had charmed him. Greedy of pleasure and applause, he was delighted to see his wife content to be the quiet witness of his joys and of his triumphs. But gradually the queen had grown older, her Spanish gravity had increased, her devout practices were multiplied, and her infirmities, become more frequent, had left the king no hope of having a son. From that hour, even while continuing to praise her virtues, Henry grew cold towards her person, and his love by degrees changed into repugnance. And then he thought that the death of his children might be a sign of God’s anger. This idea had taken hold of him, and induced him to occupy apartments separate from the queen’s. HRSCV5 785.4

Wolsey judged the moment favorable for beginning the attack. It was in the latter months of 1526, when calling Longland, the king’s confessor, to him, and concealing his principal motive, he said: “You know his majesty’s anguish. The stability of his crown and his everlasting salvation seem to be compromised alike. To whom can I unbosom myself, if not to you, who must know the inmost secrets of his soul?” The two bishops resolved to awaken Henry to the perils incurred by his union with Catherine; but Longland insisted that Wolsey should take the first steps. HRSCV5 786.1

The cardinal waited upon the king, and reminded him of his scruples before the betrothal; he exaggerated those entertained by the nation, and speaking with unusual warmth, he entreated the king to remain no longer in such danger: “The holiness of your life and the legitimacy of your succession are at stake.”—“My good father,” said Henry, “you would do well to consider the weight of the stone that you have undertaken to move. The queen is a woman of such exemplary life that I have no motive for separating from her.” HRSCV5 786.2

The cardinal did not consider himself beaten; three days later he appeared before the king accompanied by the bishop of Lincoln. “Most mighty prince,” said the confessor, who felt bold enough to speak after the cardinal, “you cannot, like Herod, have your brother’s wife. I exhort and conjure you, as having the care of your soul, to submit the matter to competent judges.” Henry consented, and perhaps not unwillingly. HRSCV5 786.3

It was not enough for Wolsey to separate Henry from the emperor; he must, for greater security, unite him to Francis I. The king of England shall repudiate the aunt of Charles V, and then marry the sister of the French king. Proud of the success he had obtained in the first part of his plan, Wolsey entered upon the second. “There is a princess,” he told the king, “whose birth, graces, and talents charm all Europe. Margaret of Valois, sister of King Francis, is superior to all of her sex, and no one is worthier of your alliance.” Henry made answer that it was a serious matter, requiring deliberate examination. Wolsey, however, placed in the king’s hands a portrait of Margaret, and it has been imagined that he even privily caused her sentiments to be sounded. Be that as it may, the sister of Francis I having learnt that she was pointed at as the future queen of England, rebelled at the idea of taking from an innocent woman a crown she had worn so nobly. “The French king’s sister knows too much of Christ to consent unto such wickedness,” said Tyndale. Margaret of Valois replied: “Let me hear no more of a marriage that can be effected only at the expense of Catherine of Aragon’s happiness and life.” The woman who was destined in future years to fill the throne of England was then residing at Margaret’s court. Shortly after this, on the 24th of January 1527, the sister of Francis I married Henry d’Albret, king of Navarre. HRSCV5 786.4

Henry VIII, desirous of information with regard to his favorite’s suggestion, commissioned Fox, his almoner, Pace, dean of St. Paul’s, and Wakefield, professor of Hebrew at Oxford, to study the passages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy which related to marriage with a brother’s wife. Wakefield, who had no wish to commit himself, asked whether Henry was for or against the divorce. Pace replied to this servile hebraist that the king wanted nothing but the truth. HRSCV5 786.5

But who would take the first public step in an undertaking so hazardous? Everyone shrank back; the terrible emperor alarmed them all. It was a French bishop that hazarded the step; bishops meet us at every turn in this affair of the divorce, with which bishops have so violently reproached the Reformation. Henry, desirous of excusing Wolsey, pretended afterwards that the objections of the French prelate had preceded those of Longland and the cardinal. In February 1527, Francis I had sent an embassy to London, at the head of which was Gabriel de Grammont, bishop of Tarbes, with the intention to procure the hand of Mary of England. Henry’s ministers having inquired whether the engagement of Francis with the queen-dowager of Portugal did not oppose the commission with which the French bishop was charged, the latter answered: “I will ask you in turn what has been done to remove the impediments which opposed the marriage of which the Princess Mary is issue.” They laid before the ambassador the dispensation of Julius II, which he returned, saying, that the bull was not sufficient, seeing that such a marriage was forbidden jure divino; and he added: “Have you English a different gospel from ours?” HRSCV5 786.6

The king, when he heard these words (as he informs us himself), was filled with fear and horror. Three of the most respected bishops of Christendom united to accuse him of incest! He began to speak of it to certain individuals: “The scruples of my conscience have been terribly increased (he said) since the bishop spoke of this matter before my council in exceedingly plain words.” There is no reason to believe that these terrible troubles of which the king speaks were a mere invention on his part. A disputed succession might again plunge England into civil war. Even if no pretenders should spring up, might they not see a rival house, a French prince for instance, wedded to Henry’s daughter, reigning over England? The king, in his anxiety, had recourse to his favorite author, Thomas Aquinas, and this angel of the schools declared his marriage unlawful. Henry next opened the Bible, and found this threat against the man who took his brother’s wife: “He shall be childless!” The denunciation increased his trouble, for he had no heir. In the midst of this darkness a new perspective opened before him. His conscience might be unbound; his desire to have a younger wife might be gratified; he might have a son! The king resolved to lay the matter before a commission of lawyers, and this commission soon wrote volumes. HRSCV5 786.7

During all this time Catherine, suspecting no evil, was occupied in her devotions. Her heart, bruised by the death of her children and by the king’s coldness, sought consolation in prayer both privately and in the royal chapel. She would rise at midnight and kneel down upon the cold stones, and never missed any of the canonical services. But one day (probably in May or June 1527) some officious person informed her of the rumors circulating in the city and at court. Bursting with anger and alarm, and all in tears, she hastened to the king, and addressed him with the bitterest complaints. Henry was content to calm her by vague assurances; but the unfeeling Wolsey, troubling himself still less than his master about Catherine’s emotion, called it, with a smile, “a short tragedy.” HRSCV5 787.1

The offended wife lost no time: it was necessary that the emperor should be informed promptly, surely, and accurately of this unprecedented insult. A letter would be insufficient, even were it not intercepted. Catherine therefore determined to send her servant Francis Philip, a Spaniard, to her nephew; and to conceal the object of his journey, they proceeded, after the tragedy, to play a comedy in the Spanish style. “My mother is sick and desires to see me,” said Philip. Catherine begged the king to refuse her servant’s prayer; and Henry, divining the stratagem, resolved to employ trick against trick. “Philip’s request is very proper,” he made answer; and Catherine, from regard to her husband, consented to his departure. Henry meantime had given orders that, “notwithstanding any safe-conduct, the said Philip should be arrested and detained at Calais, in such a manner, however, that no one should know whence the stoppage proceeded.” HRSCV5 787.2

It was to no purpose that the queen indulged in a culpable dissimulation; a poisoned arrow had pierced her heart, and her words, her manners, her complaints, her tears, the numerous messages she sent, now to one and now to another, betrayed the secret which the king wished still to conceal. Her friends blamed her for this publicity; men wondered what Charles would say when he heard of his aunt’s distress; they feared that peace would be broken; but Catherine, whose heart was “rent in twain,” was not to be moved by diplomatic considerations. Her sorrow did not check Henry; with the two motives which made him eager for a divorce—the scruples of his conscience and the desire of an heir—was now combined a third still more forcible. A woman was about to play an important part in the destinies of England. HRSCV5 787.3