The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the “Foreign and Domestic Calendar of State Papers,” doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris, and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that the Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was made of his name, and impossible equally to suppose that he would have allowed his name to be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was unquestionably the first person to bring the question publicly forward. It is likely enough, however, that his introduction of so startling a topic had been privately arranged between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the further steps which were immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this time been finally resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration of the balance of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever were alleged for similar separations. The Pope’s hesitation, it might be assumed, would now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon England and France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse than they were.

The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained that she was kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting herself to the utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to arrest Wolsey’s policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the divorce she had not heard a word. It was to come upon her like a thunderstroke.7

Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out of place of the two persons who were to play the principal parts on the stage, as they were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador in England. Of Catherine his account is brief.

“The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and very religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved by the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five years old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and one daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives.”

On the King, Falieri is more elaborate.

“In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel’s, so fair it is; his head bald like Cæsar’s, and he wears a beard, which is not the English custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well, tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable, giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and cripples.”8

Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.

On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage, enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced and considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon lawyers must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled bishops. The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged Bishop of Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly that the marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient.

These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy which had hitherto been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and her friends learnt now for the first time the measure which was in contemplation. Mendoza, writing on the day following the York Place meeting to the Emperor, informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable authority, that Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to divorce the Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself to speak of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been invited to sign a declaration that, being his brother’s widow, she could not be the wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take part against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet had been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might be kept as private as possible.9

That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify Henry at Charles’s expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the German Emperor were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and England were the only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week before the meeting of Wolsey’s court he had experienced in the most terrible form what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that same month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm. The city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through the streets on mules’ backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns were abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may have been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic Christendom. Charles himself is not likely to have intended the humiliation of the Holy See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings, and Wolsey’s policy was not without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles’s Minister at Genoa, and Lope de Soria’s opinions, freely uttered, may have been shared by many a Catholic besides himself. On the 25th of May, a fortnight after the storm, he wrote to his master the following noticeable letter: —

“The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God, who permits his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other Christian princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust wars which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom, the faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated… Should the Emperor think that the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope’s temporal power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I cannot but remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious action, to reform the Church; so that the Pope’s authority be confined exclusively to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to Cæsar, since by right what is God’s belongs to God, and what is Cæsar’s to Cæsar. I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a remedy to that evil.”10

Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who could recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes and Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria’s words might have been dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment placed himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would have been different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this might be what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything most objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical administration of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles was the surest method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was an incident in the situation, but not the least important. Catherine represented the Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to make the breach with her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon himself to assure the King that after the last outrage the Pope would agree to anything that France and England demanded of him, and would trust to his allies to bear him harmless. That the divorce was a thing reasonable in itself to ask for, and certain to be conceded by any pope who was free to act on his own judgment, was assumed as a matter of course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the English agent at Rome, was instructed to obtain access to Clement in St. Angelo, to convey to him the indignation felt in England at his treatment, and then to insist on the illegality of the King’s relations with Catherine, on the King’s own scruples of conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects that there should be a male heir to the crown. The “urgent cause” such as was necessary to be produced when exceptional actions were required of the popes was the imminence or even certainty of civil war if no such heir was born.

Catherine meanwhile had again communicated with Mendoza. She had spoken to her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was impossible, had told her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a separation was necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears and reproaches.11 The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a matter where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her gently, till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in the matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis, and consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence of the Pope’s imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself helpless, might become a puppet in the Emperor’s hands. Under such circumstances he could not be trusted by other countries with the spiritual authority attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed for some interim arrangement by which France and England were to constitute themselves into a separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its head as Archbishop of Rouen. Mendoza says that this proposal had been actually made to Wolsey by the French Ambassador.12 In Spain it was even believed to be contemplated as a permanent modification of the ecclesiastical system. The Imperial Councillors at Valladolid told the Venetian Minister that the Cardinal intended to separate the Churches of England and France from that of Rome, saying that as the Pope was a prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that even if the Emperor released him, he still would not be free unless his fortresses and territory now in the Emperor’s hands were restored to him.13 Wolsey had reason for anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the Emperor insisting that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey’s Legatine powers.

In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it soon became known throughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The nation generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their hereditary friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen, but did not touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an injured wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he should not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to a project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join them.14 He saw Wolsey – he reasoned with him, and when he found reason ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give. Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He spoke of the Papacy: “how the chair was now in the Emperor’s hands, and the Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation.” The glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been Wolsey’s highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had served the Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still trusted that the Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church. Mendoza’s answer was not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that both the spiritual and temporal powers were now centred in his master, and he advised Wolsey, if he desired an arrangement, to extend his journey from France, go on to Spain, and see the Emperor in person. It was precisely this centering which those who had charge of English liberties had a right to resent. Divorce or no divorce, they could not allow a power possessed of so much authority in the rest of Christendom to be the servant of a single prince. The divorce was but an illustration of the situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza contemplated would reduce England and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the Empire.

CHAPTER II

Mission of Wolsey to Paris – Visits Bishop Fisher on the way – Anxieties of the Emperor – Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII. – Large offers to Wolsey – Address of the French Cardinals to the Pope – Anne Boleyn chosen by Henry to succeed Catherine – Surprise and displeasure of Wolsey – Fresh attempts of the Emperor to bribe him – Wolsey forced to continue to advocate the divorce – Mission of Dr. Knight to Rome – The Pope at Orvieto – The King applies for a dispensation to make a second marriage – Language of the dispensation demanded – Inferences drawn from it – Alleged intrigue between the King and Mary Boleyn.

It was believed at the time – and it was the tradition afterwards – that Wolsey, in his mission to Paris, intended to replace Catherine by a French princess, the more surely to commit Francis to the support of Henry in the divorce, and to strengthen the new alliance. Nothing can be inherently more likely. The ostensible reason, however, was to do away with any difficulties which might have been suggested by the objection of the Bishop of Tarbes to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary. If illegitimate, she would be no fitting bride for the Duke of Orleans. But she had been born bonâ fide parentum. There was no intention of infringing her prospective rights or of altering her present position. Her rank and title were to be secured to her in amplest measure.

The Cardinal went upon his journey with the splendour attaching to his office and befitting a churchman who was aspiring to be the spiritual president of the two kingdoms. On his way to the coast he visited two prelates whose support to his policy was important. Archbishop Warham had been cold about the divorce, if not openly hostile. Wolsey found him “not much changed from his first fashion,” but admitting that, although it might be unpleasant to the Queen, truth and justice must prevail. Bishop Fisher was a more difficult subject. He had spoken in the Legate’s court in Catherine’s favour. It was from him, as the King supposed, that Catherine herself had learnt what was impending over her. Wolsey called at his palace as he passed through Rochester. He asked the Bishop plainly if he had been in communication with the Queen. The Bishop, after some hesitation, confessed that the Queen had sought his advice, and said that he had declined to give an opinion without the King’s command. Before Wolsey left London, at a last interview at York Place, the King had directed him to explain “the whole matter” to the Bishop. He went through the entire history, mentioned the words of the Bishop of Tarbes, and discussed the question which had risen upon it, on account of which he had been sent into France. Finally, he described the extreme violence with which Catherine had received the intelligence.

The Bishop greatly blamed the conduct of the Queen, and said he thought that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission. He agreed, or seemed to agree, that the marriage had been irregular, though he did not himself think that it could now be broken. Others of the bishops, he thought, agreed with him; but he was satisfied that the King meant nothing against the laws of God, and would be fully justified in submitting his misgivings to the Pope.15

Mendoza’s and the Queen’s letters had meanwhile been despatched to Spain, to add to the anxieties which were overwhelming the Emperor. Nothing could have been less welcome at such a juncture than a family quarrel with his uncle of England, whose friendship he was still hoping to retain. The bird that he had caged at Rome was no convenient prisoner. The capture of Rome had not been ordered by himself, though politically he was obliged to maintain it. The time did not suit for the ambitious Church reforms of Lope de Soria. Peace would have to be made with the Pope on some moderate conditions. His own Spain was hardly quieted after the revolt of the Comunidades. Half Germany was in avowed apostasy from the Church of Rome. The Turks were overrunning Hungary, and sweeping the Mediterranean with their pirate fleets, and the passionate and restless Francis was watching his opportunity to revenge Pavia and attack his captor in the Low Countries and in Italy. The great Emperor was moderate, cautious, prudent to a fault. In a calmer season he might have been tempted to take the Church in hand; and none understood better the condition into which it had fallen. But he was wise enough to know that if a reform of the Papacy was undertaken at all it must be undertaken with the joint consent of the other Christian princes, and all his present efforts were directed to peace. He was Catherine’s natural guardian. Her position in England had been hitherto a political security for Henry’s friendship. It was his duty and his interest to defend her, and he meant to do it; not, however, by sending roving expeditions to land in Cornwall and raise a civil war; all means were to be tried before that; to attempt such a thing, he well knew, would throw Europe into a blaze. The letters found him at Valladolid. He replied, of course, that he was shocked at a proceeding so unlooked for and so scandalous, but he charged Mendoza to be moderate and to confine himself to remonstrance.16 He wrote himself to Henry – confidentially, as from friend to friend, and ciphering his letter with his own hand. He was unable to believe, he said, that Henry could contemplate seriously bringing his domestic discomforts before the world. Even supposing the marriage illegitimate – even supposing that the Pope had no power to dispense in such cases – “it would be better and more honourable to keep the matter secret, and to work out a remedy.” He bade Mendoza remind the King that to question the dispensing power affected the position of other princes besides his own; that to touch the legitimacy of his daughter would increase the difficulties with the succession, and not remove them. He implored the King “to keep the matter secret, as he would do himself.” Meanwhile, he told Mendoza, for Catherine’s comfort, that he had written to demand a mild brief from the Pope to stop the scandal. He had requested him, as Catherine had suggested, to revoke Wolsey’s powers, or at least to command that neither he nor any English Court should try the case. If heard at all it must be heard before his Holiness and the Sacred College.17 But he could not part with the hope that he might still bring Wolsey to his own and the Queen’s side. A council of Cardinals was to meet at Avignon to consider the Pope’s captivity. The Cardinal of England was expected to attend. Charles himself might go to Perpignan. Wolsey might meet him there, discuss the state of Europe, and settle the King’s secret affair at the same time. Should this be impossible, he charged Mendoza once more to leave no stone unturned to recover Wolsey’s friendship. “In our name,” he said, “you will make him the following offers: —

“1. The payment of all arrears on his several pensions, amounting to 9,000 ducats annually.

“2. Six thousand additional ducats annually until such a time as a bishoprick or other ecclesiastical endowment of the same revenue becomes vacant in our kingdom.

“3. The Duke, who is to have Milan, to give him a Marquisate in that Duchy, with an annual rent of 12,000 ducats, or 15,000 if the smaller sum be not enough; the said Marquisate to be held by the Cardinal during his life, and to pass after him to any heir whom he shall appoint.”18

As if this was not sufficient, the Emperor paid a yet further tribute to the supposed all-powerful Cardinal. He wrote himself to him as to his “good friend.” He said that if there was anything in his dominions which the Cardinal wished to possess he had only to name it, as he considered Wolsey the best friend that he had in the world.19

For the ministers of great countries deliberately to sell themselves to foreign princes was the custom of the age. The measure of public virtue which such a custom indicates was not exalted; and among the changes introduced by the Reformation the abolition or suspension of it was not the least beneficial. Thomas Cromwell, when he came to power, set the example of refusal, and corruption of public men on a scale so scandalously enormous was no more heard of. Gold, however, had flowed in upon Wolsey in such enormous streams and from so many sources that the Emperor’s munificence and attention failed to tempt him. On reaching Paris he found Francis bent upon war, and willing to promise anything for Henry’s assistance. The belief at the French Court was that the Emperor, hearing that the Churches of England and France meant to decline from their obedience to the Roman Communion, would carry the Pope to Spain; that Clement would probably be poisoned there, and the Apostolic See would be established permanently in the Peninsula.20 Wolsey himself wrote this, and believed it, or desired Henry to believe it, proving the extreme uncertainty among the best-informed of contemporary politicians as to the probable issue of the capture of Rome. The French Cardinals drew and sent an address to the Pope, intimating that as long as he was in confinement they could accept no act of his as lawful, and would not obey it. Wolsey signed at the head of them. The Cardinals Salviati, Bourbon, Lorraine, and the Chancellor Cardinal of Sens, signed after him.21 The first stroke in the game had been won by Wolsey. Had the Pope recalled his powers as legate, an immediate schism might have followed. But a more fatal blow had been prepared for him by his master in England. Trusting to the Cardinal’s promises that the Pope would make no difficulty about the divorce, Henry had considered himself at liberty to choose a successor to Catherine. He had suffered once in having allowed politics to select a wife for him. This time he intended to be guided by his own inclination. When Elizabeth afterwards wished to marry Leicester, Lord Sussex said she had better fix after her own liking; there would be the better chance of the heir that her realm was looking for. Her father fixed also after his liking in selecting Elizabeth’s mother.