The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

Henry being thus peremptory, Chapuys and the Nuncio had to consider what was to be done. The Pope, before the Nuncio’s despatch, had received private advices from Wolsey, of which the Baron de Burgo had been informed. The evil, Wolsey had admitted, was too far gone for gentle treatment: it needed cautery and incision; but they must proceed cautiously. If the Pope used threats, the King would go at once to Parliament; there would then be war, in which France would take a part. Might not a personal interview be brought about between the King and the Emperor? The Nuncio could not see his way, but was willing to be guided by Chapuys. Chapuys was for instant action on the Pope’s part. Moderation, he said, was useless. He believed (of course Wolsey had told him so) that, if the Pope would deliver sentence at Rome immediately, the King would find no one in the realm, or out of it, to help him in a quarrel against the Church. The responsibility ought not to be thrown upon the Emperor. The Pope must speak, and all good Catholics would be at his side.126 The Nuncio agreed. The clergy in England were irritated and alarmed, and the opportunity was favourable. The Nuncio and the Ambassadors decided between them that the Pope was to be advised to end the cause at once, threaten the King with excommunication, and let a copy of the brief be in England before Parliament opened.

Chapuys, well as he thought that he understood England, had something to learn about it which was to be a disagreeable surprise. He had imagined that the Pope’s authority, when boldly asserted there, had never been successfully resisted. Tradition remembered Anselm and Becket. It had forgotten the legislation of the Edwards and of Richard II. According to Chapuys, the Pope was to issue a brief forbidding Parliament to meddle in the divorce case. There were laws on the statute book which forbade the interference of the Pope under any circumstances in the internal affairs of the English realm. Should the Pope, by bull or brief, by presentation to offices of the Church or by delegation of his authority, attempt to exercise direct jurisdiction in England to the prejudice of the rights of the Crown, all persons who introduced such bulls or briefs, who recognized the Pope’s pretensions or acted on his orders, fell under Præmunire – a vague but terrible consequence, almost as fatal as a proved charge of treason. The statutes had been long obsolete. The sword was in its scabbard. Wolsey had forgotten their existence when he sought and accepted the position of Legate of the Holy See. Henry had forgotten them when he applied for a Legatine commission to try his cause in London. The clergy who had claimed to be independent of the State, to be an imperium in imperio with the Pope at their head, the officials who had made the name of a Church court execrated in every county in England – all had forgotten them. But the Acts themselves were unrepealed, and survived as a monument of the spirit of a past generation. Doubtless it was known that the Pope was being urged to violence. Doubtless it was known that large numbers of the clergy were prepared to stand by him, in terror at the threatened Reformation. The blow was to be parried by an appeal to the historical precedents of the realm. These impatient persons were to learn that, instead of joining in attack upon the King, they would have enough to do to purchase their pardons for their own offences. The well-tempered steel sprang to light again bright as ever, and while the Nuncio was dreaming of excommunication and interdict, he learnt to his astonishment that the subject coming before Parliament was not the divorce of the Queen, but the position of the whole spiritualty of the realm.

By recognising Wolsey as Legate from the Holy See the entire clergy were found to be under Præmunire. On the divorce, perhaps, or on excommunication arising out of it, there might still have been a difference of opinion in Parliament; but the Papal authority was now to be argued there on the lines of the past development of English liberty. Notice of what was coming was given at the beginning of October by a proclamation warning all persons of the illegality of introducing briefs from Rome. The Nuncio rushed to the council chamber; he saw the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk; he asked passionately what was meant? what was the Pope accused of? what English privileges had he violated? why had he not been warned beforehand? The two Dukes answered “that they cared nothing for Pope or Popes in England – not even if St. Peter himself came to life again. The King was Emperor and Pope in his own dominions. The Pope was alienating the English people, and, if he wished to recover their affection, he must deserve it by attending to their petitions.”127

The Nuncio assumed a bold face and told them they would find themselves mistaken if they thought they could intimidate the Holy See. He applied to the King. Henry told him that nothing had been published to the Pope’s injury. He was merely using his prerogative to guard against opposition to the ordinances which he had made, or was about to make, for the reformation of the clergy. He had gone promptly to work, lest the Pope should issue an inhibition. The Nuncio knew not what to make of it. Queen Catherine was greatly disturbed; she feared the edict was a proof that the King was not afraid of the Pope after all. On the whole, the Nuncio considered that an attempt was being made to frighten him, and he sent off fresh letters advising the Pope to proceed at once to pass sentence.128

Henry was, in fact, checkmating them all. With the help of the revived Statute of Provisors he was able to raise the whole question of the Pope’s authority in England without fresh legislation on present points of difference. Parliament, which was to have met in October, was prorogued till January, to mature the intended measures. The King went to Hampton Court. He sent for the Nuncio to come to him. He told him that by the citation to Rome the Pope had violated the privileges of sovereign princes, and had broken the promise which he had given him in writing at Orvieto. If the Pope showed no more consideration for him, he would have to show that the Pope’s pretension to authority was a usurpation, and very serious consequences would then follow.

The King, the Nuncio said, spoke with much show of regret and with tears in his eyes. He added that the present Parliament had been called at the request of the nation for the restraint of the clergy. They were so hated throughout the realm, both by nobles and people, that, but for his protection, they would be utterly destroyed. He should wait to take action till February, to see whether the Pope would meanwhile change his conduct towards him.129

Norfolk, to whom the Nuncio went next, gave him no comfort; he said that, “though Queen Catherine was a good woman, her coming to England had been the curse of the country;” God had shown his displeasure at the marriage by denying the King a male heir; if the King should die without a son, old feuds would be reopened and the realm would be plunged into misery. It was not tolerable that the vital interests of England should be sacrificed to the Emperor. He advised the Nuncio to use his influence with the Pope. “The King’s severity might then perhaps be modified.”

One more direct appeal was made by Henry himself to Clement. “Finding his just demands neglected, the requests of the King of France unattended to, and the address of his nobles despised and derided,” he perceived, he said, that the Pope was wholly devoted to the Emperor’s will, and ordained, prorogued and altered to serve the times. He required the Pope, therefore, to set down in writing his grounds for rejecting his suit. He demanded once more that the cause should be heard in England before indifferent judges. “The laws of the realm would not suffer the contrary; he abhorred contention, but would not brook denial.”130

Queen Catherine was in despair. The hearing of the cause had again been postponed at Rome. A party in her favour had been formed in the House of Commons, but were at a loss what course to follow. If the Pope would give a decision they would know what to do, but the delay of sentence seemed to imply that he was himself uncertain where the right really lay. They questioned Chapuys whether any directions had arrived from Rome on which to rest their opposition, hoping perhaps that an inhibitory brief had been issued. Opposition, they feared, would be useless without further action at the Papal Court.

“The Pope,” Chapuys said, “had been so dilatory and so dissembling that he was not in favour with either side.”131 A change was passing over public feeling. Every day gave strength to the King’s cause. Archbishop Warham, who had been hitherto for the Queen, was beginning to waver, and even to think that he might try the suit in his own court.132 The Queen, the Nuncio, the Bishop of Rochester, and the friends who remained staunch to her agreed unanimously that the boldest course would be the wisest. Immediate sentence at Rome in the Queen’s favour was the only remedy. Gentleness was thrown away. Let the King see that the Pope was really in earnest, and he would not venture to go further. Catherine herself wrote to Clement with the passion of a suffering woman. “Delay,” she said, “would be the cause of a new hell upon earth, the remedy for which would be worse than the worst that had ever yet been tried.”133 She did not blame the King. The fault was with the wicked counsellors who misled him. Once delivered out of their hands, he would be as dutiful a son of the Church as he had ever been.134

It is noticeable throughout that each of the two parties assumed that the Pope’s judgment when he gave it must be on its own side. The King demanded a sentence in favour of the divorce; the Queen and the Emperor a sentence that the marriage was good. The Pope was to try the cause; but neither admitted that the right or the wrong was doubtful, or that the Pope must hear the arguments before he could decide. Doubtless they were justified in so regarding the Pope’s tribunal. The trial would be undertaken, if a trial there was to be, with a foregone conclusion; but what kind of a court of justice could the Rota be if it could be so spoken of, and its master so be addressed?

Most idolatries pass through the same stage. The idol is whipped before he is finally discarded. The Holy Ghost is still invited to assist the Cathedral Chapters in the choice of a Bishop, but must choose the person already named by the Prime Minister under pain of Præmunire. Men should choose their idols better. Reasonable beings are not fit objects of such treatment. Much is to be said in favour of stuffed straw or the graven image, which the scourge itself cannot force to speak. Anne Boleyn was jubilant. “She is braver than a lion,” wrote Chapuys. She said to one of the Queen’s ladies that she wished all the Spaniards in the world were in the sea. The lady told her such language was disrespectful to her mistress. She said she cared nothing for the Queen, and would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as her mistress.135 Clement, goaded by Micer Mai, issued at last a second brief, repeating the terms of the first, again forbidding the second marriage, and threatening Parliaments, Bishops, and Divines in England if they dared to interfere. But between a brief and the execution of it was a long interval. Sentence on the original cause he would not pass; and in leaving his final decision doubtful he left opinion free to the rest of the world. The brief was to be presented by the Nuncio. The Pope accompanied it with a deprecatory, and not undignified, letter to Henry from himself.136 Chapuys feared that “by his loose talk” Clement was secretly encouraging the King. The brief might bring on a crisis. He did not relish the prospect of remaining in England “in the boiling vortex likely to be opened.” But as the Queen insisted that he should stay, he pressed unceasingly for “excommunication and interdict.” “The Emperor might then make effectual war with the English. They would lose their trade with Spain and Flanders, and the disaffection to the King and Council would be greatly increased.”137

On the spot and surrounded by an atmosphere of passion, Chapuys was in favour of war. The Emperor, still unwilling to part with the hereditary friendship of England, was almost as reluctant as Clement. He had supposed that Henry was influenced by a passing infatuation, that by supporting Catherine he would please the greater part of the nation, and ultimately, perhaps, secure the gratitude of Henry himself. He had not allowed for the changes which were passing over the mind of the English people. He had not foreseen the gathering indignation of a proud race jealous of their liberties when they saw him dictating to the Spiritual Judge of Europe on a question which touched their own security. But he had gone too far to draw back. He found himself sustained, not only by Spanish opinion, but by the part of his subjects about whom he had felt most uneasy. The Italian universities had for the most part gone with Paris and declared against the dispensing power. In Germany Henry had been disappointed. The King of England had been an old antagonist of Luther. Sir Thomas More, as Chancellor, had been enforcing the heresy laws against Luther’s English proselytes with increased severity. The Lutherans in turn declared decidedly against Henry’s divorce. The Emperor was their feudal sovereign. They saw no reason for entering into a new quarrel with him on a cause which, so far as they understood, was none of their own. Henry was evidently alarmed. Chapuys reported that he was busy building ships, casting cannon, repairing fortresses, and replenishing the Tower arsenal, as if conscious that he might have serious work before him. The Emperor still clung to the belief that he would be afraid to persevere, and Chapuys himself began to think that the Emperor might be more right than himself, and that the storm might pass off. No sign, however, appeared of yielding. The new brief was known to have been issued, and to have been forwarded to the Nuncio. Not contented with the warning already given by proclamation, Norfolk on the 13th of January sent for Chapuys to draw his attention once more to the law. The introduction of briefs from Rome touching the honour and authority of the Crown was forbidden by Act of Parliament. It was understood that “certain decretals” had been procured by the Queen’s friends, and were about to be published. The Duke desired the Ambassador to know that if the Pope came in person to present such briefs he would be torn in pieces by the people. It was not a new question. Popes had tried in past times to usurp authority in England. The King’s predecessors had always resisted, and the present King would resist also. Kings were before Popes. The King was master in his own dominions. If any such decretal came into the Ambassador’s hands, the Duke warned him not to issue it.138

Imperialist officials were more accustomed to dictate to others than to submit to commands. Chapuys was brave, and, when occasion required, could be haughty to insolence. He thanked the Duke for giving him the notice. “He would not argue,” he said, “on the authority possessed by Popes over disobedient kings and kingdoms. It was a notorious fact in full practice at that very time. His curiosity had not extended so far as the study of the English statute book, and on such points he must refer the Council to the Nuncio. For himself he could only say he thought they would have done better if they had not given occasion for such ‘briefs’ from the Pope. The Emperor would not consent to an unreasonable sentence against the King, for he regarded him as his ally and friend, but he could assure the Duke that if his master was to direct him to assist the publication of any Papal brief in England he would unquestionably execute his Majesty’s commands. As to the nation at large, he did not think they would resist the Pope’s decretals. He thought, on the contrary, they would help their execution with all their power. Truth and justice must reign everywhere, even among thieves and in hell. The Church of Christ was never so unprovided with defenders as to be unable to carry the world with her, and the English would have no right to complain if the Emperor, having exhausted all means of conciliation, caused justice to take her course.”139

Such language could bear but one meaning. Chapuys perhaps intended to frighten Norfolk. The Duke was suspected to be less staunch in support of the King than he professed to be in Council. The Duchess was a fiery partisan of Catherine, and a close intimate of the Ambassador himself. He thought that he had produced an impression; but Norfolk answered at last that, “if the King could take another wife he certainly would;” the Pope had no business to interfere, except in cases of heresy.140 To the Nuncio the Duke gave the same warning which he had given to the Ambassador, drawing special attention to the pains and penalties to which disobedience would make him liable. The Nuncio answered, like Chapuys, that at whatever cost he would obey the Pope’s orders, and “would die if necessary for his lord and master.”

CHAPTER X

State of feeling in England – Clergy and laity – The Clergy in a Præmunire – The Royal Supremacy – Hesitation at Rome – Submission of the Clergy – The meaning of the new title – More and Fisher – Alarm of the Emperor – Appeal of Catherine to him – Unpopularity of Anne Boleyn – Threats of excommunication – Determination of Henry – Deputation of Peers to Catherine – Catherine’s reply – Intolerable pretensions of the Emperor – Removal of Catherine from the Court.

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

The spiritualty were already exasperated by the clipping of their claws in the last session. From the Bishop of Rochester, who represented clerical opinion in its most accentuated form, from great ladies, and from a party of the nobles with whom, as Catherine’s friends, he mainly associated, Chapuys had heard unanimous censures of the King’s conduct. These persons told him that the whole nation agreed with them, and certainly the opposition of a body so powerful as the clergy was by itself formidable. Before it came to war, therefore, with the Pontiff, the King had prepared his measures to disarm the Pontiff’s legionaries. To clip their claws was not enough. Their mouths had to be held with bit and bridle. Parliament, after repeated prorogations, was opened at last in January. Convocation, which was called simultaneously, was put formally in possession of a fact which had appeared on the first rumour of it incredible – that the whole body of the clergy lay under Præmunire for having recognised Cardinal Wolsey’s legation and the Papal Bull by which it was instituted. It was an intimation that the old English laws were awake again. The clergy were subjects of the Crown, not of the Pope, and to impress the fact upon their minds they learnt that legally their property was forfeited, that they would obtain their pardon only on paying a fine of a hundred thousand pounds, and on distinctly acknowledging the King as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Chapuys’s correspondence explained the motives of the Government in extorting the confession; and justified the arbitrary use which was made of the Præmunire. The Pope was being urged to excommunicate the King and declare him deposed. The clergy, through whom the Pope would act, were to be forced to admit that they were subjects of the Crown and were bound to obey the laws of their country. It was in no idle vanity, no ambitious caprice that Henry VIII. demanded the title which has been so much debated. It was as a practical assertion of the unity and independence of the realm. England was to have but one sovereign supreme within her own limits, with whom no foreign prince, secular or spiritual, had a right to interfere; and an acknowledgement of their obligation was demanded in ample form from the order which looked elsewhere for its superior. The black regiments were to be compelled to swear allegiance to the proper sovereign.

Clement’s mind had always misgiven him that, if he pushed Henry too far, mischief would befall him. He had refused the last brief till it was extorted from him.141 As if Mai had not been pressing and vehement enough, Catherine had now at Rome a special representative of her own, Dr. Ortiz, a bitter Catholic theologian with the qualities which belong to that profession. Mai and Ortiz together, listening to no excuse, drove the Pope on from day to day, demanding sentence with its inevitable consequence. The Cardinals were alarmed. One of them told Mai that, in his opinion, the original dispensation really was void, that Julius had no faculty to dispense in such a case. The Pope suggested that the affair might be suspended for two years. It might then, perhaps, drop and be forgotten. He enquired whether, if the King consented to plead by proxy before him, the Emperor would agree to any accommodation. Should the case go on, it might last fifteen or twenty years. All the Cardinals, said Mai, nay, the Pope himself, would like to put off the affair entirely, to avoid trouble.142 The Court of Rome had, in fact, discovered at last that matters were really serious, that Henry would not be played with, and that the quarrel must be peaceably settled. Mai and Ortiz were furious. They insisted on immediate action. Delay, they said, would be injurious to the Queen. Their orders were to urge the Pope to proceed and pass sentence, whether the parties appeared or not. They hinted that very soon there would be no more trouble from England; they had been told, and they believed, that, with the clergy on Catherine’s side, a Papal decree would end the whole business.

Their confidence was shaken and their activity rudely arrested by the news of the Præmunire and the demand for the submission of the English clergy. Too well the meaning of it was understood. On Chapuys and the Nuncio it fell like a thunderbolt. They held an anxious consultation, and they agreed on the least wise measure which they could possibly have adopted. The Nuncio, as representing the majesty of the Holy See, determined to go himself to Convocation, and exhort the Bishops to uphold the Church and resist the King and the House of Commons. He actually went, and was much astonished at the reception which he met with. The right reverend body was so “scandalised” at his intrusion that they entreated him to withdraw, without giving him time to declare his errand. They told him that, if he had anything to say, “he must address himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was not then present.” The Nuncio had to withdraw precipitately. In his vexation he had not even the prudence to depart quietly, but insisted on thrusting on the Bishop of London the words which he had meant to speak.143

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