The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon Part 7

In England alone was to be found clear purpose and steadiness of action.

The divorce in England was an important feature in the quarrel with the Papacy, but it was but a single element in the great stream of Reformation, and the main anxiety of King and people was not fixed on Catherine, but on the mighty changes which were rus.h.i.+ng forward. When a Parliament was first summoned, on the fall of Wolsey, the Queen had a.s.sumed that it was called for nothing else but to empower the King to separate from her. So she thought at the beginning, so she continued to think. Yet session had followed session, and the Legislature had found other work to deal with. They had manacled the wrists of her friends, the clergy; but that was all, and she was to have yet another year of respite.

The "blind pa.s.sion" which is supposed to have governed Henry's conduct was singularly deliberate. Seven years had pa.s.sed since he had ceased cohabitation with Catherine, and five since he had fallen under the fascination of the impatient Anne; yet he went on as composedly with public business as if Anne had never smiled on him, and he was still content to wait for this particular satisfaction. As long as hope remained of saving the unity of Christendom without degrading England into a va.s.sal State of the Empire, Henry did not mean to break it. He had occupied himself, in concert with the Parliament, with reforming the internal disorders and checking the audacious usurpations of the National Church.

He had, so far, been enthusiastically supported by the immense majority of the laity, and was about to make a further advance in the same direction.

The third Session opened on 13th of January, Peers, Prelates, and Commons being present in full number. By this time a small but active opposition had been formed in the Lower House to resist measures too violently anti-clerical. They met occasionally to concert operations at the Queen's Head by Temple Bar. The Bishops, who had been stunned by the Praemunire, were recovering heart and intending to show fight. Tunstal of Durham, who had been reflecting on the Royal Supremacy during the recess, repented of his consent, and had written his misgivings to the King. The King used the opportunity to make a remarkable reply.

"People conceive," he said, "that we are minded to separate our Church of England from the Church of Rome, and you think the consequences ought to be considered. My Lord, as touching schism, we are informed by virtuous and learned men that, considering what the Church of Rome is, it is no schism to separate from her, and adhere to the Word of G.o.d. The lives of Christ and the Pope are very opposite, and therefore to follow the Pope is to forsake Christ. It is to be trusted the Papacy will shortly vanish away, if it be not reformed; but, G.o.d willing, we shall never separate from the Universal body of Christian men."[173]

Archbishop Warham also had failed to realise the meaning of his consent to the Royal Supremacy. He had consecrated the Bishop of St. Asaph on the receipt of a nomination from Rome before the Bulls had been presented to the King. He learnt that he was again under a Praemunire. The aged Primate, fallen on evil times, drew the heads of a defence which he intended to make, but never did make, in the House of Lords. Archbishops, he said, were not bound to enquire whether Bishops had exhibited their Bulls or not. It had not been the custom. If the Archbishop could not give the spiritualities to one who was p.r.o.nounced a bishop at Rome till the King had granted him his temporalities, the spiritual powers of the Archbishops would depend on the temporal power of the Prince, and would be of little or no effect, which was against G.o.d's law. In consecrating the Bishop of St. Asaph he had acted as the Pope's Commissary. The act itself was the Pope's act. The point for which the King contended was one of the Articles which Henry II. sought to extort at Clarendon, and which he was afterwards compelled to abandon. The liberties of the Church were guaranteed by Magna Charta, and the Sovereigns who had violated them, Henry II., Edward III., Richard II., had come to an ill end. The lay Peers had threatened that they would defend the matter with their swords. The lay Peers should remember what befell the knights who slew St. Thomas. The Archbishop said he would rather be hewn in pieces than confess this Article, for which St.

Thomas died, to be a Praemunire.[174]

Warham was to learn that the spirit of Henry II. was alive again in the present Henry, and that the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon, then premature, were to become the law of the land.

Fisher of Rochester had received no summons to attend the present Parliament; but he sent word to the Imperial Amba.s.sador that he would be in his place, whether called up or not, that he might defend Catherine should any measure be introduced which affected her. He begged Chapuys not to mention his name in his despatches, except in cipher. If they met in public Chapuys must not speak to him or appear to know him. He on his part would pa.s.s Chapuys without notice till the present tyranny was overpast.

Bishop Fisher was entering upon dangerous courses, which were to lead him into traitorous efforts to introduce an invading army into England and to bring his own head to the block. History has only pity for these unfortunate old men, and does not care to remember that, if they could have had their way, a bloodier persecution than the Marian would have made a swift end of the Reformation.

I need not repeat what I have written elsewhere on the acts of this Session.[175] A few details only deserve further notice. The privilege of the clergy to commit felony without punishment was at last abolished.

Felonious clerks were thenceforward to suffer like secular criminals. An accident provided an ill.u.s.trative example. A priest was executed in London for chipping the coin, having been first drawn through the streets in the usual way. Thirty women sued in vain for his pardon. He was hanged in his habit, without being degraded, against the protest of the Bishop--"a thing never done before since the Island was Christian."[176] The Const.i.tutions of Clarendon were to be enforced at last. The Arches court and the Bishops' courts were reformed on similar lines, their methods and their charges being brought within reasonable limits. Priests were no longer allowed to evade the Mortmain Acts by working on death-bed terrors. The exactions for mortuaries, legacy duties, and probate duties, long a pleasant source of revenue, were abolished or cut down. The clergy in their synods had pa.s.sed what laws they pleased and enforced them with spiritual terrors. The clergy were informed that they would no longer be allowed to meet in synod without royal licence, and that their laws would be revised by laymen. Chapuys wittily observed that the clergy were thus being made of less account than cordwainers, who could at least enact their own statutes.

A purpose of larger moment was announced by Henry for future execution.

More's chancellors.h.i.+p had been distinguished by heresy-prosecutions. The stake in those three years had been more often lighted than under all the administration of Wolsey. It was as if the Bishops had vented on those poor victims their irritation at the rude treatment of their privileges.

The King said that the clergy's province was with souls, not with bodies.

They were not in future to arrest men on suspicion, imprison, examine, and punish at their mere pleasure. There was an outcry, in which the Chancellor joined. The King suspended his resolution for the moment, but did not abandon it. He was specially displeased with More, from whom he had expected better things. He intended to persist. "May G.o.d," exclaimed the orthodox and shocked Chapuys, "send such a remedy as the intensity of the evil requires."[177] None of Henry's misdeeds shocked Chapuys so deeply as the tolerating heresy.

The Royal Supremacy had been accepted by Convocation. It was not yet confirmed by Parliament. Norfolk felt the pulses of the Peers. He called a meeting at Norfolk House. He described the Pope's conduct. He insisted on the usual topics--that matrimonial causes were of temporal jurisdiction, not spiritual; that the King was sovereign in his own dominions, etc., etc., and he invited the Peers' opinions. The Peers were cold. Lord Darcy had spoken freely against the Pope in his indictment of Wolsey. It seemed his ardour was abating. He said the King and Council must manage matters without letting loose a cat among the legs of the rest of them.[178] The meeting generally agreed with Darcy, and was not pressed further. Papal privilege came before Parliament in a more welcome form when a bill was introduced to withdraw annates or first fruits of benefices which had been claimed and paid as a tribute to the Holy See. The imposition was a grievance. There were no annates in Spain. The Papal collectors were detested. The House of Commons made no difficulty. The Nuncio complained to the King. The King told him that it was not he who brought forward these measures. They were moved by the people, who hated the Pope marvellously.[179] In the Upper House the Bishops stood by their spiritual chief this time unanimously. Among the mitred Abbots there was division of opinion. The abbeys had been the chief sufferers from annates, and had complained of the exaction for centuries. All the lay Peers, except Lord Arundel, supported the Government. The bill was pa.s.sed, but pa.s.sed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown to arrange a compromise if the Pope would agree to treat. For the next year the annates were paid in full, as usual, to give time for his Holiness to consider himself.[180]

Thus steadily the Parliament moved on. Archbishop Warham, who was dying broken-hearted, dictated a feeble protest from his bed against all which had been done by it in derogation of the Pope or in limitation of the privileges of the Church. More had fought through the session, but, finding resistance useless, resigned the chancellors.h.i.+p. He saw what was coming. He could not prevent it. If he retained his office he found that he must either go against his conscience or increase the displeasure of the King.[181] He preferred to retire.

In this way, at least in England, the situation was clearing, and parties and individuals were drifting into definite positions. Montfalconet,[182]

writing to Charles in May, said that he had been in England and had seen Queen Catherine, who was still clamouring for the Pope's sentence. "Every one," he continued, speaking for the Catholic party, whom alone he had seen, "was angry with the Pope, and angry with the Emperor for not pressing him further. Peers, clergy, laity, all loved the Queen. She was patient. She thought that if she could but see the King all might yet be well. Were the sentence once delivered she was satisfied that he would submit."[183] The French Amba.s.sador in London, on the other hand, recommended Francis to force the Pope to hold his hand. He told Chapuys that "France must and would take Henry's part if a rupture came. The Emperor had no right to throw Europe into confusion for the sake of a woman. If the King of England wished to marry again, he should do as Louis XII. had done under the same circ.u.mstances--take the woman that he liked and waste no more time and money."[184]

At Rome the Pope had been fingering his briefs with hesitating heart. The first, which he had issued under Charles's eye at Bologna, had been comparatively firm. He had there ordered Henry to take Catherine back under penalty of excommunication. The last, though so hardly extracted from him, was meagre and insignificant. The King, when it was presented, merely laughed at it. "The Pope," he said, "complains that I have sent the Queen away. If his Holiness considers her as my wife, the right of punis.h.i.+ng her for the rudeness of her behaviour belongs to me and not to him."[185]

Ortiz, finding it hopeless to expect a decision on the marriage itself from the Pope, demanded excommunication on the plea of disobedience to the Bologna brief. He had succeeded, or thought he had succeeded, in bringing the Pope to the point. The excommunication was drawn up, "but when it was to be engrossed and sealed the enemy of mankind prevented its completion in a manner only known to G.o.d." Ortiz continued to urge. The doc.u.ment could be sent secretly to the Emperor, to be used at his discretion. "If the Emperor thought fit to issue it, bearing, as it did, G.o.d's authority, G.o.d in such cases would infallibly send his terrors upon earth and provide that no ill should come of it."[186] The Pope was less certain that G.o.d would act as Ortiz undertook for him, and continued to offend the Lord by delay. In vain Catherine's representative railed at him, in vain told him that he would commit a great sin and offence against G.o.d if he did not excommunicate a King who was, in mortal sin, keeping a mistress at his Court. The Pope rationally answered that there was no evidence of mortal sin. "It was the custom in England for Princes to converse intimately with ladies. He could not prove that, in the present case, there was anything worse, and the King might allege his conscience as a reason for not treating the Queen as a husband."[187] Ortiz insisted that the devil had got hold of the King in the shape of that woman, and unless the Pope obliged him to put her away, the Pope would be d.a.m.ned. But it was an absurdity to excommunicate the King and declare him to have forfeited his crown when the original cause of the quarrel was still undecided. The King might prove after all to be right, as modern law and custom has in fact declared him to have been.

Charles himself felt that such a position could not be maintained. Henry was evidently not frightened. There was no sign that the English people were turning against him. If a bull of excommunication was issued, Charles himself would be called on to execute it, and it was necessary to be sure of his ground.

Ortiz raged on. "I told his Holiness," he wrote, "that if he did not excommunicate the King I would stand up at the day of judgment and accuse him before G.o.d."[188] Charles was obliged to tell Ortiz that he must be more moderate. A further difficulty had risen in Rome itself. If the cause was tried at Rome, was it to be tried before the Cardinals in consistory or before the court of the Rota? The Cardinals were men of the world.

Micer Mai's opinion was that from the Rota only a judgment could be with certainty expected in the Queen's favour.[189] "The winds are against us,"

he wrote to Secretary Covos; "what is done one day is undone the next. The Cardinals will not stir, but quietly pocket the ducats which come from the Emperor, and the larger sums which come from the English, who are lavish in spending. The Pope will not break with France. He says he has so many ties with the Kings of France and England that he must pretend goodwill to the latter for fear they both break off from the Church, as they have threatened to do."[190]

CHAPTER XII.

Henry advised to marry without waiting for sentence--Meeting of Henry and Francis--Anne Boleyn present at the interview--Value of Anne to the French Court--Pressure on the Pope by the Agents of the Emperor--Complaints of Catherine--Engagements of Francis--Action of Clement--The King conditionally excommunicated--Demand for final sentence--Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury--Marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn--Supposed connivance of the Pope--The Nuncio attends Parliament--The Act of Appeals--The Emperor entreated to intervene--Chapuys and the King.

The Pope had promised Ortiz that nothing should be said of the intended excommunication till the brief was complete. He betrayed the secret to the English Agents, by whom it was conveyed to Henry. The French Amba.s.sador had advised the King to hesitate no longer, but to marry and end the controversy. The Pope himself had several times in private expressed the same wish. But Henry, in love though he is supposed to have been, determined to see Francis in person before he took a step which could not be recalled. He desired to know distinctly how far France was prepared to go along with him in defying the Papal censures. An interview between the two Kings at such a crisis would also show the world that their alliance was a practical fact, and that if the Emperor declared war in execution of the censures he would have France for an enemy as well as England.

The intended meeting was announced at the end of August, and, strange to say, there was still a belief prevailing that a marriage would come of it between the King and a French princess, and that Anne would be disappointed after all. "If it be so," wrote Chapuys, "the Lady Anne is under a singular delusion, for she writes to her friends that at this interview all that she has been so long wis.h.i.+ng for will be accomplished."

One thing was clear, both to the Imperial Amba.s.sador and the Nuncio, that the Pope by his long trifling had brought himself into a situation where he must either have to consent to a judgment against Catherine or encounter as best he could the combination of two of the most powerful Princes in Christendom. The least that he could do was to issue an inhibition against the King's marriage either with Anne or with the Frenchwoman.

The Pope's danger was real enough, but Anne Boleyn had nothing to fear for herself. She was to form part of the cortege. She was to go, and to be received at the French court as Henry's bride-elect, and she was created Marchioness of Pembroke for the occasion. Queen Catherine believed that the marriage would be completed at the interview with a publicity which would make Francis an accomplice. The Emperor was incredulous. Reluctantly he had been driven to the conclusion that Henry was really in earnest, and he still thought it impossible that such an outrage as a marriage could be seriously contemplated while the divorce was still undecided.[191] Yet contemplated it evidently was. Politically the effect would have been important, and it is not certain that Francis would not have encouraged a step which would be taken as an open insult by Charles. The objection, so Chapuys heard, came from the lady herself, who desired to be married in state with the usual formalities in London.[192] Invited to the interview, however, she certainly was by Francis. The French Queen sent her a present of jewels. The Sieur de Langey came with special compliments from the King to request her attendance. She had been a useful instrument in dividing Henry from the Emperor, and his master, De Langey said, desired to thank her for the inestimable services which she had rendered, and was daily rendering him. He wished to keep her devoted to his interests. Wolsey himself had not been more valuable to him. He had not to pay her a pension of 25,000 crowns, as he had done to the Cardinal. Therefore he meant to pay her in flattery and in forwarding the divorce at Rome.[193]

In vain Catherine poured out to Clement her wailing cries for sentence--sentence without a moment's delay. Less than ever could the Pope be brought to move. He must wait and see what came of the meeting of the Kings; and whether the Emperor got the better of the Turks. It was the harder to bear because she had persuaded herself, and had persuaded Ortiz, that, if the King was once excommunicated, the whole of England would rise against him for his contumacious disobedience.[194]

The interview which took place in October between the Kings of France and England was a momentous incident in the struggle, for it did, in fact, decide Henry to take the final step. The scene itself, the festivities, the regal reception of Anne, the Nun of Kent and the discovery of the singular influence which a hysterical impostor had been able to exercise in the higher circles of English life, have already been described by me, and I can add nothing to what I have already written. A more particular account, however, must be given of a French Commission which was immediately after despatched to Rome. Francis had not completely satisfied Henry. He had repeated the advice of his Amba.s.sadors. He had encouraged the King to marry at once. He had reiterated his promises of support if the Emperor declared war. Even an engagement which Henry had desired to obtain from him, to unite France with England in a separate communion, should the Pope proceed to violence, Francis had seemed to give, and had wished his good brother to believe it. But his language had been less explicit on this point than on the other.

The Bishop of Tarbes, now Cardinal Grammont, was sent to Rome, with Cardinal Tournon, direct from the interview, with open instructions to demand a General Council, to inform the Pope that if he refused the two Kings would call a Council themselves and invite the Lutheran Princes to join them, and that, if the Pope excommunicated Henry, he would go to Rome for absolution so well accompanied that the Pope would be glad to grant it.[195] If Catherine's friends in Rome were rightly informed, the Cardinals had brought also a secret Commission, which went the full extent of Henry's expectation. The Pope was to be required to fulfil at once the promise which he had given at Orvieto, and to give judgment for the divorce; "otherwise the Kings of France and England would abrogate the Papal authority in their several realms." The Pope, confident that the alternative before him was the loss of the two kingdoms, was preparing to yield.[196] Henry certainly returned to England with an understanding that Francis and himself were perfectly united, and would adopt the same course, whatever that might be. A report went abroad that, relying on these a.s.surances, he had brought his hesitation to an end, and immediately after landing made Anne secretly his wife. The rumour was premature, but the resolution was taken. The Pope, the King said, was making himself the tool of the Emperor. The Emperor was judge, and not the Pope; and neither he nor his people would endure it. He would maintain the liberties of his country, and the Pope, if he tried violence, would find his mistake.[197]

It is not easy to believe that on a point of such vast consequence Henry could have misunderstood what Francis said, and he considered afterwards that he had been deliberately deceived; but under any aspect the meeting was a demonstration against the Papacy. Micer Mai, who watched the Pope from day to day, declared that his behaviour was enough to drive him out of his senses. Mai and Ortiz had at last forced another brief out of him--not a direct excommunication, but an excommunication which was to follow on further disobedience. They had compelled him to put it in writing that he might have committed himself before the French Cardinals'

arrival. But when it was written he would not let it out of his hands. He was to meet the Emperor again at Bologna, and till he had learnt from Charles's own lips what he was prepared to do, it was unfair and unreasonable, he said, to require an act which might fatally commit him.

He was not, however, to be allowed to escape. Catherine, when she heard of the despatch of the Cardinals, again flung herself on her nephew's protection. She insisted that the Pope should speak out. The French must not be listened to. There was nothing to be afraid of. "The English themselves carried no lightning except to strike her."[198] Letters from Ortiz brought her news of the Pope's continued indecision--an indecision fatal, as she considered it, to the Church and to herself. Rumours reached her that the King had actually married, and she poured out her miseries to Chapuys. "The letters from Rome," she said, "reopen all my wounds. They show there is no justice for me or my daughter. It is withheld from us for political considerations. I do not ask His Holiness to declare war--a war I would rather die than provoke; but I have been appealing to the Vicar of G.o.d for justice for six years, and I cannot have it. I refused the proposals made to me two years ago by the King and Council. Must I accept them now? Since then I have received fresh injuries. I am separated from my lord, and he has married another woman without obtaining a divorce; and this last act has been done while the suit is still pending, and in defiance of him who has the power of G.o.d upon earth. I cover these lines with my tears as I write. I confide in you as my friend. Help me to bear the cross of my tribulation. Write to the Emperor. Bid him insist that judgment be p.r.o.nounced. The next Parliament, I am told, will decide if I and my daughter are to suffer martyrdom. I hope G.o.d will accept it as an act of merit by us, as we shall suffer for the sake of the truth."[199]

Catherine might say, and might mean, that she did not wish to be the cause of a war. But unless war was to be the alternative of her husband's submission, the Papal thunders would be as ineffectual as she supposed the English to be. The Emperor had not decided what he would do. He may still have clung to the hope that a decision would not be necessary, but he forced or persuaded the Pope to disregard the danger. The brief was issued, bearing the date at which it was drawn, and was transmitted to Flanders as the nearest point to England for publication.

In removing the Queen from his company without waiting for the decision of his cause, and cohabiting with a certain Anne, Clement told the King that he was insulting Divine justice and the Papal authority. He had already warned him, but his monition had not been respected. Again, therefore, he exhorted him on pain of excommunication to take Catherine back as his Queen, and put Anne away within a month of the presentation of the present letter. If the King still disobeyed, the Pope declared both him and Anne to be, _ipso facto_, excommunicated at the expiration of the term fixed, and forbade him to divorce himself by his own authority.[200]

It might seem that the end had now come, and that in a month the King, and the subjects who continued loyal to him, would incur all the consequences of the Papal censures. But the proceedings of the Court of Rome were enveloped in formalities. Conditional excommunications affected the spiritual status of the persons denounced, but went no further. A second Bull of Excommunication was still requisite, declaring the King deposed and his subjects absolved from their allegiance, before the secular arm could be called in; and this last desperate remedy could not decently be resorted to, with the approval even of the Catholic opinion of Europe, until it had been decided whether Catherine was really legal queen. The enthusiastic Ortiz, however, believed that judgment on "the princ.i.p.al cause" would now be immediately given, and that the victory was won. He enclosed to the Empress a letter from Catherine to him, "to be preserved as a relic, since she would one day be canonised." "May G.o.d inspire the King of England," he said, "to acknowledge the error into which the Enemy of Mankind has led him, and amend his past conduct; otherwise it must follow that his disobedience to the Pope's injunction and his infidelity to G.o.d once proved, he will be deprived of his kingdom and the execution of the sentence committed to his Imperial Majesty. This done, all those in England who fear G.o.d will rise in arms, and the King will be punished as he deserves, the present brief operating as a formal sentence against him.

On the main cause, there being no one in Rome to answer for the opposite party, sentence cannot long be delayed."[201]

Ortiz was too sanguine, and the vision soon faded. The brief sounded formidable, but it said no more than had been contained or implied in another which Clement had issued three years before. He had allowed the first to be disregarded. He might equally allow the last. Each step which he had taken had been forced upon him, and his reluctance was not diminished. Chapuys thought that he had given a brief instead of pa.s.sing sentence because he could recall one and could not recall the other; that "he was playing both with the King and the Emperor;" and in England, as well as elsewhere, it was thought "that there was some secret intelligence between him and the King." The Pope and the Emperor had met at Bologna and Charles's language had been as emphatic as Catherine desired; yet even at Bologna itself and during the conference Clement had a.s.sured the English Agents that there was still a prospect of compromise. It was even rumoured that the Emperor would allow the cause to be referred back to England, if securities could be found to protect the rights of the Princess Mary; nay, that he had gone so far as to say, "that, if the King made a suitable marriage, and not a love-marriage, he would bring the Pope and Catherine to allow the first marriage to be annulled."[202]

In London the talk continued of the removal of the suit from Rome to Cambray. The Nuncio and the King were observed to be much together and on improved terms, the Nuncio openly saying that his Holiness wished to be relieved of the business. It was even considered still possible that the Pope might concede the dispensation to the King which had been originally asked for, to marry again without legal process. "If," wrote Chapuys, who thoroughly distrusted Clement, "the King once gains the point of not being obliged to appear at Rome, the Pope will have the less shame in granting the dispensation by absolute power, as it is made out that the King's right is so evident; and if his Holiness refuses it, the King will be more his enemy than ever. A sentence is the only sovereign remedy, and the Queen says the King would not resist, if only from fear of his subjects, who are not only well disposed to her and to your Majesty, but for the most part are good Catholics and would not endure excommunication and interdict. If a tumult arose I know not if the Lady, who is hated by all the world, would escape with life and jewels. But, unless the Pope takes care, he will lose his authority here, and his censures will not be regarded."[203]

It was true that Anne was ill liked in England, and the King, in choosing her, was testing the question of his marriage in the least popular form which it could have a.s.sumed. The Venetian Amba.s.sador mentions that one evening "seven or eight thousand women went out of London to seize Boleyn's daughter," who was supping at a villa on the river, the King not being with her. Many men were among them in women's clothes. Henry, however, showed no sign of change of purpose. He had presented her to the French Court as his intended Queen. And on such a matter he was not to be moved by the personal objections of his subjects. The month allowed in the brief went by. She was still at the court, and the continued negotiations with the Nuncio convinced Catherine's friends that there was mischief at work behind the scenes. Their uneasiness was increased by the selection which was now made of a successor to Archbishop Warham.

Thomas Cranmer had been Lord Wilts.h.i.+re's private chaplain, and had at one time been his daughter's tutor. He had attended her father on his Emba.s.sy to the Emperor, had been active in collecting opinions on the Continent favourable to the divorce, and had been resident amba.s.sador at the Imperial court. He had been much in Germany. He was personally acquainted with Luther. He had even married, and, though he could not produce his wife openly, the connection was well known. Protestant priests in taking wives were a.s.serting only their natural liberty. Luther had married, and had married a nun. An example laudable at Wittenberg could not be censurable in London by those who held Luther excused. The German clergy had released themselves from their vows, as an improvement on the concubinage which had long and generally prevailed. Wolsey had a son and was not ashamed of him, even charging his education on English benefices.

Clerical marriages were forbidden only by the Church law, which Parliament had never been invited to sanction, and though Cranmer could not introduce a wife into society he was at least as fit for archi-episcopal rank as the great Cardinal. He was a man of high natural gifts, and ardent to replace superst.i.tion and corruption by purer teaching. The English Liturgy survives to tell us what Cranmer was. His nomination to the Primacy took the world by surprise, for as yet he had held no higher preferment than an archdeaconry; but the reorganisation of the Church was to begin; Parliament was to meet again in February, and the King needed all the help that he could find in the House of Lords. The Bishops were still but half conquered. A man of intellect and learning was required at the head of them. "King Henry loved a man," it was said. He knew Cranmer and valued him. The appointment was made known in the first month of the new year.

Before the new Primate could be installed a Bull of Confirmation was still legally necessary from Rome. The King was in haste. The annates due on the vacancy of the see of Canterbury were despatched at once, the King himself advancing the money and taking no advantage of the late Act. Such unusual precipitancy raised suspicions that something more was contemplated in which Cranmer's help would be needed.

The knot had, in fact, been cut which Henry had been so long struggling to untie. The Lady Anne had aspired to being the central figure of a grand ceremony. Her nuptials were to be attended with the pomp and splendour of a royal marriage. Public feeling was in too critical a condition to permit what might have been resented; and, lest the prize should escape her after all, she had brought down her pride to agree to a private service. When it was performed, and by whom, was never known. The date usually received was "on or before the 25th of January." Chapuys says that Cranmer himself officiated in the presence of the lady's father, mother and brother, two other friends of the lady, and a Canterbury priest.[204] But Chapuys was relating only the story current at the time in society. Nothing authentic has been ascertained.... The fact that the marriage had taken place was concealed till the divorce could be p.r.o.nounced by a Court protected by Act of Parliament, and perhaps with the hope that the announcement could be softened by the news that the nation might hope for an heir.

Dispatch was thus necessary with Cranmer's Bulls. He himself spoke without reserve on the right of the King to remarry, "being ready to maintain it with his life." Chapuys and the Nuncio both wrote to request the Pope not to be in a hurry with the confirmation of so dangerous a person.[205] The Pope seemed determined to justify the suspicions entertained of him by his eagerness to meet Henry's wishes. It is certain that the warning had reached him.[206] He sent the Bulls with all the speed he could. He knew, perhaps, what they were needed for.

Henry meanwhile was preparing to meet the Parliament, when the secret would have to be communicated to the world. The modern reader will conceive that no other subject could have occupied his mind. The relative importance of things varies with the distance from which we view them. He was King of England first. His domestic anxieties held still the second place. Before the opening, as the matter of greatest consequence, a draft Act was prepared to carry out the object which in the last year he had failed in securing--"an Act to restrain bishops from citing or arresting any of the King's subjects to appear before them, unless the bishop or his commissary was free from private grudge against the accused, unless there were three, or at least two, credible witnesses, and a copy of the libel had in all cases been delivered to the accused, with the names of the accusers." Such an Act was needed. It was not to s.h.i.+eld what was still regarded as impiety, for Frith was burned a few months later for a denial of the Real Presence, which Luther himself called heresy. It was to check the arbitrary and indiscriminate tyranny of a sour, exasperated party, who were pursuing everyone with fire and sword who presumed to oppose them.

More, writing to Erasmus, said he had purposely stated in his epitaph that he had been hard upon the heretics. He so hated that folk that, unless they repented, he preferred their enmity, so mischievous were they to the world.[207]

The spirit of More was alive and dangerous. To Catholic minds there could be no surer evidence that the King was given over to the Evil One than leniency to heretics. They were the more disturbed to see how close the intimacy had grown between him and the Pope's representative. The Nuncio was constantly closeted with Henry or the Council. When Chapuys remonstrated, he said "he was a poor gentleman, living on his salary, and could not do otherwise." "The Pope had advised him to neglect no opportunity of promoting the welfare of religion." "Practices," Chapuys ascertained, were still going forward, and the Nuncio was at the bottom of them. The Nuncio a.s.sured him that he had exhorted the King to take Catherine back. The King had replied that he would not, and that reconciliation was impossible. Yet the secret communications did not cease, and the astonishment and alarm increased when the Nuncio consented to accompany the King to the opening of Parliament. He was conducted in state in the Royal barge from Greenwich. Henry sate on the throne, the Nuncio had a chair on his right, and the French Amba.s.sador on his left.

The object was to show the nation how little was really meant by the threat of excommunication, to intimidate the Bishops, and to make the clergy understand the extent of favour which they could expect from the Nuncio's master. The Nuncio's appearance was not limited to a single occasion. During the progress of the Session he attended the debates in the House of Commons. Norfolk gave him notice of the days on which the Pope would not be directly mentioned, that he might be present without scandal. The Duke admitted a wish for the world to see that the King and the Court of Rome understood each other. "By this presumption," said Chapuys, "they expect to make their profit as regards the people and the prelates who have hitherto supported the Holy See, who now, for the above reason, dare not speak, fearing to go against the Pope."[208]

The world wondered and was satisfied. The Opposition was paralysed. The Bishop of Rochester complained to the Nuncio, and received nothing but regrets and promises which were not observed. Again, a council was held of Peers, Bishops, and lawyers to consider the divorce, when it was agreed at last that the cause might be tried in the Archbishop of Canterbury's court, and that the arrival of the Bulls would be accepted as a sign of the Pope's tacit connivance. Chapuys had failed to stop them. "The Queen,"

he said, "was thunderstruck, and complained bitterly of his Holiness. He had left her to languish for three and a half years since her appeal, and, instead of giving sentence, had now devised a scheme to prolong her misery and b.a.s.t.a.r.dise her daughter. She knew the King's character. If sentence was once given there would be no scandal. The King would obey, or, if he did not, which she thought impossible, she would die happy, knowing that the Pope had declared for her. Her own mind would be at rest, and the Princess would not lose her right. The Pope was entirely mistaken if he thought that he would induce the King to modify his action against the Church. The Lady and her father, who were staunch Lutherans, were urging him on. The sentence alone would make him pause. He dared not disobey, and if the people rose the Lady would find a rough handling." This, Chapuys said, was the Queen's opinion, which she had commanded him to communicate to the Emperor. For himself, he could only repeat his request that the Bulls for Canterbury should be delayed till the sentence was ready for delivery. If the Pope knew Cranmer's reputation as a heretic, he would be in no haste to confirm him.[209]

Clement knew well enough what Cranmer was, and the Bulls had been despatched promptly before the Emperor could interfere. The King meanwhile had committed himself, and now went straight forward. He allowed his marriage to be known. Lord Wilts.h.i.+re had withdrawn his opposition to it.[210] Lord Rochfort, Anne's brother, was sent at the beginning of March to Paris, to say that the King had acted on the advice given him by his good brother at their last interview. He had taken a wife for the establishment of his realm in the hope of having male issue. He trusted, therefore, that Francis would remember his promise. In citing him to Rome the Pope had violated the rights of sovereign Princes. It touched them all, and, if allowed, would give the Pope universal authority. The time was pa.s.sed when such pretensions could be tolerated.[211]

At home he prepared for the worst. The fleet was further increased, new s.h.i.+ps were put on the stocks; the yeomanry were armed, drilled, and equipped, and England rang with sounds of preparation for war; while in Parliament the famous Act was introduced which was to form the const.i.tutional basis of national independence, and to end for ever the Papal jurisdiction in England. From the time that Convocation had acknowledged the King to be the Head of the Church the question of appeals to Rome had been virtually before the country. It was now to be settled, and English lawsuits were henceforth to be heard and decided within the limits of the empire. The Sibyl's pages were being rent out one by one.