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38 <p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
39 <p align="center"><b><font size="7">The Divorce of<br>Catherine of Aragon</font></b><br>
40 <font size="5">by
41 JA Froude, 1891</font></p>
42 <p align="center">
43 <img border="0" src="aragon-new1.jpg" alt="miniature portrait of Katharine of Aragon by Lucas Horenbout" width="325" height="321"></td>
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50 <div align="left">
51 <b><font size="4">CHAPTER ONE</font></b></div>
52 <blockquote>
53 <p align="left"><font size="4">Prospects of a disputed succession to the
54 crown -- Various claimants -Catherine incapable of having further children
55 -- Irregularity of her marriage with the King -- Papal dispensations --
56 First mention of the divorce -- Situation of the Papacy -- Charles V. --
57 Policy of Wolsey -- Anglo-French alliance -- Imperial troops in Italy --
58 Appeal of the Pope -- Mission of Inigo de Mendoza -- The Bishop of Tarbes
59 -Legitimacy of the Princess Mary called in question -- Secret meeting of
60 the Legates' court -- Alarms of Catherine -- Sack of Rome by the Duke of
61 Bourbon -- Proposed reform of the Papacy -- The divorce promoted by Wolsey
62 -- Unpopular in England -- Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey.</font></p>
63 </blockquote>
64 <p align="left">IN the year 1526 the political prospects of England became
65 seriously clouded. A disputed succession had led in the previous century to
66 a desperate civil war. In that year it became known in private circles that
67 if Henry VIII. was to die the realm would again be left without a certain
68 heir, and that the strife of the Roses might be renewed on an even more
69 distracting scale. The sons who had been born to Queen Catherine had died in
70 childbirth or had died immediately after it. The passionate hope of the
71 country that she might still produce a male child who would survive had been
72 constantly disappointed, and now could be entertained no longer. She was
73 eight years older than her husband. She had &quot;certain diseases&quot; which made it
74 impossible that she should be again pregnant, and Henry had for two years
75 ceased to cohabit with her. He had two children still living -- the Princess
76 Mary, Catherine's daughter, then a girl of eleven, and an illegitimate son
77 born in 1519, the mother being a daughter of Sir John Blount, and married
78 afterwards to Sir Gilbert Talboys. By presumptive law the Princess was the
79 next heir; but no woman had ever sat on the throne of England alone and in
80 her own right, and it was doubtful whether the nation would submit to a
81 female sovereign. The boy, though excluded by his birth from the prospect of
82 the crown, was yet brought up with exceptional care, called a prince by his
83 tutors, and probably regarded by his father as a possible successor should
84 his sister go the way of her brothers. In 1525, after the King had
85 deliberately withdrawn from Catherine, he was created Duke of Richmond -- a
86 title of peculiar significance, since it had been borne by his grandfather,
87 Henry VII. -- and he was granted precedence over the rest of the peerage.
88 Illegitimacy was a serious, but, it might be thought, was not an absolute,
89 bar. The Conqueror had been himself a bastard. The Church, by its habits of
90 granting dispensations for irregular marriages or of dissolving them on
91 pleas of affinity or consanguinity or other pretext, had confused the
92 distinction between legitimate and illegitimate. A Church Court had
93 illegitimatised the children of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Grey, on the ground
94 of one of Edward's previous connections; yet no one regarded the princes
95 murdered in the Tower as having been illegitimate in reality; and to prevent
96 disputes and for an adequate object, the Duke of Richmond, had he grown to
97 manhood, might, in the absence of other claims, have been recognised by
98 Parliament. But the Duke was still a child, and might die as Henry's other
99 sons had died; and other claims there were which, in the face of the bar
100 sinister, could not fail to be asserted. James V. of Scotland was next in
101 blood, being the son of Henry's eldest sister, Margaret. There were the
102 Greys, inheriting from the second sister, Mary. Outside the royal house
103 there were the still popular representatives of the White Rose, the Marquis
104 of Exeter, who was Edward IV.'s grandson; the Countess of Salisbury,
105 daughter of Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence, and sister of the
106 murdered Earl of Warwick; and Henry's life was the only obstacle between the
107 collision of these opposing pretensions. James, it was quite certain, would
108 not be allowed to succeed without a struggle. National rivalry forbade it.
109 Yet it was no less certain that he would try, and would probably be backed
110 by France. There was but one escape from convulsions which might easily be
111 the ruin of the realm. The King was in the flower of his age, and might
112 naturally look for a Prince of Wales to come after him if he was married to
113 a woman capable of bearing one. It is neither unnatural nor, under the
114 circumstances, a matter to be censured if he and others began to reflect
115 upon the peculiar character of his connection with Catherine of Aragon. It
116 is not sufficiently remembered that the marriage of a widow with her
117 husband's brother was then, as it is now, forbidden by the laws of all
118 civilised countries. Such a marriage at the present day would be held <i>
119 ipso facto</i> invalid and not a marriage at all. An irregular power was
120 then held to rest with the successors of St. Peter to dispense, under
121 certain conditions, with the inhibitory rules. The popes are now understood
122 to have never rightly possessed such an authority, and therefore, according
123 to modern law and sentiment, Henry and Catherine never were husband and wife
124 at all. At the time it was uncertain whether the dispensing power extended
125 so far as to sanction such a union, and when the discussion rose upon it the
126 Roman canonists were themselves divided. Those who maintained the widest
127 view of thepapal faculty yet agreed that such a dispensation could only be
128 granted for urgent cause, such as to prevent foreign wars or internal
129 seditions, and no such cause was alleged to have existed when Ferdinand and
130 Henry VII. arranged the marriage between their children. The dispensation
131 had been granted by Pope Julius with reluctance, had been acted upon after
132 considerable hesitation, and was of doubtful validity, since the necessary
133 conditions were absent. The marriages of kings were determined with little
134 reference to the personal affection of the parties. Between Henry and
135 Catherine there was probably as much and as little personal attachment as
136 there usually is in such cases. He respected and perhaps admired her
137 character; but she was not beautiful, she was not attractive, while she was
138 as proud and intractable as her mother Isabella. Their union had been
139 settled by the two fathers to cement the alliance between England and Spain.
140 Such connections rest on a different foundation from those which are
141 voluntarily entered into between private persons. What is made up for
142 political reasons may pardonably be dissolved when other reasons of a
143 similar kind require it; and when it became clear that Catherine could never
144 bear another child, that the penalty threatened in the Levitical law against
145 marriages of this precise kind had been literally enforced in the death of
146 the male offspring, and that civil war was imminent in consequence upon the
147 King's death, Henry may have doubted in good faith whether she had ever been
148 his wife at all -- whether, in fact, the marriage was not of the character
149 which everyone would now allow to attach to similar unions. Had there been a
150 Prince of Wales, the question would never have arisen, and Henry, like other
151 kings, would have borne his fate. But there was no prince, and the question
152 had risen, and there was no reason why it should not. There was no trace at
153 the outset of an attachment to another woman. If there had been, there would
154 be little to condemn; but Anne Boleyn, when it was first mooted, was no more
155 to the King than any other lady of the court. He required a wife who could
156 produce a son to secure the succession. The powers which had allowed an
157 irregular marriage could equally dissolve it, and the King felt that he had
158 a right to demand a familiar concession which other sovereigns had often
159 applied for in one form or another, and rarely in vain. </p>
160 <p align="left">Thus as early as 1526 certainly, and probably as much as a
161 year before, Cardinal Wolsey had been feeling his way at Rome for a
162 separation between Henry and Catherine. On September 7 in that year the
163 Bishop of Bath, who was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal
164 of the arrival there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent
165 had spoken to the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that
166 there would be difficulties about it. The &quot;blessed divorce&quot; -- <i>benedictum
167 divorcium</i> the Bishop calls it -- had been already under consideration at
168 Rome. The difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the
169 time obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably
170 referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the
171 Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released
172 at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had
173 reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages for
174 the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half German,
175 remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of Italy; and
176 Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury which the world
177 believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines of the New World,
178 seemed advancing to universal empire. </p>
179 <p align="left">France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary
180 enemy of England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of
181 Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established alliance.
182 She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as link in the
183 confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times were changing.
184 Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through English influence; but
185 Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger to Europe than France
186 had been. The Italian princes were too weak to resist the conqueror of Pavia.
187 Italy once conquered, the Papacy would become a dependency of the empire,
188 and, with Charles's German subjects in open revolt against it, the Church
189 would lose its authority, and the organisation of the Catholic world would
190 fall into hopeless decrepitude. So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of
191 English ministers. He believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the
192 best defence of order and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a
193 change of partners. England held the balance between the great rival powers.
194 If the English alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the
195 Emperor could be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised.
196 Wolsey was utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an unnatural one.
197 Charles, busy with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with
198 suspicious forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were
199 disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by
200 plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and ravished
201 nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been as little
202 spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was another
203 inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's master
204 meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to Clement as
205 perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded, and desperate
206 condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution was possible. To
207 the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering to its fall, and
208 Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might precipitate the catastrophe.
209 To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal offence to the Spanish nation by
210 agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of Aragon was to ask him to sign his
211 death-warrant. No wonder, therefore, that he found difficulties. Yet it was
212 to France and England that Clement had to look for help in his extremities.
213 The divorce perhaps had as yet been no more than a suggestion, a part of a
214 policy which was still in its infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more
215 convenient season. Meantime he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg
216 aid; and to Henry personally he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not
217 to desert the Apostolic See in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for
218 his importunacy, but he said he hoped that history would not have to record
219 that Italy had been devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour
220 of the King and of Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would
221 himself be ruined. The Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open
222 their eyes at last, but they would open them too late. So piteous was the
223 entreaty that Henry when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears. Clement
224 had not been idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to
225 oppose Bourbon; he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend
226 himself. He was called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war
227 with the most Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless
228 the Western powers interfered the end would come. </p>
229 <p align="left">If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with
230 France. The change of policy was ill understood, and was not popular among
231 Henry's subjects. The divorce as yet had not been spoken of. No breath of
232 such a purpose had gone abroad. But English sentiment was imperial, and
233 could endure with equanimity even the afflictions of a pope. The King was
234 more papal than his people; he allowed Wolsey to guide him, and negotiations
235 were set on foot at once for a special treaty with France, one of the
236 conditions of which was to be the marriage of the Princess Mary -- allotted
237 like a card in a game -- either to Francis or to one of his sons; another
238 condition being that the English crown should be settled upon her should
239 Henry die without a legitimate son. Sir John Russell was simultaneously
240 despatched to Rome with money to help the Pope in paying his troops and
241 garrisoning the city. The ducats and the &quot;kind words&quot; which accompanied them
242 &quot;created incredible joy,&quot; encouraged his Holiness to reject unjust
243 conditions which had been offered, and restored him, if for the moment only,
244 &quot;from death to life.&quot; If Russell described correctly what he saw in passing
245 through Italy, Clement had good cause for anxiety. &quot;The Swabians and
246 Spaniards,&quot; he wrote, &quot;had committed horrible atrocities. They had burnt
247 houses to the value of two hundred million ducats, with all the churches,
248 images, and priests that fell into their hands. They had compelled the
249 priests and monks to violate the nuns. Even where they were received without
250 opposition they had burned the place; they had not spared the boys, and they
251 had carried off the girls; and whenever they found the Sacrament of the
252 Church they had thrown it into a river or into the vilest place they could
253 find. If God did not punish such cruelty and wickedness, men would infer
254 that He did not trouble Himself about the affairs of this world.&quot;</p>
255 <p align="left">The news from Italy gave a fresh impulse to Wolsey's policy
256 and the Anglo-French Alliance, which was pushed forward in spite of popular
257 disapproval. The Emperor, unable to pay, and therefore unable to control,
258 his troops, became himself alarmed. He found himself pressed into a course
259 which was stimulating the German revolt against the Papacy, and he professed
260 himself anxious to end the war. Inigo de Mendoza, the Bishop of Burgos, was
261 despatched to Paris to negotiate for a general pacification. From Paris he
262 was to proceed to London to assure Henry of the Emperor's inalienable
263 friendship, and above all things to gain over Wolsey by the means which
264 experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart. The great
265 Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was several years
266 in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the arrears should be
267 immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be secured to him on
268 the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make him a further grant
269 of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish bishoprics. No means
270 was to be spared to divert the hostility of so dangerous an enemy.</p>
271 <p align="left">Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large
272 schemes which he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions
273 Francis I. was as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were
274 brightening. Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by
275 creating six new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition
276 of these sacred offices. A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its
277 head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's
278 defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were
279 refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the
280 marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret
281 projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with
282 Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with
283 Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and
284 probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in
285 Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's marriage
286 with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the discussion
287 of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired whether it
288 was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate. </p>
289 <p align="left">Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the &quot;Foreign
290 and Domestic Calendar of State Papers,&quot; doubts whether the Bishop did
291 anything of the kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes
292 was among the best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned
293 during subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in
294 Paris, and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were
295 publicly appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the
296 country, in the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in
297 the various repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is
298 impossible that the Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was
299 made of his name, and impossible equally to suppose that he would have
300 allowed his name to be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was
301 unquestionably the first person to bring the question publicly forward. It
302 is likely enough, however, that his introduction of so startling a topic had
303 been privately arranged between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the
304 further steps which were immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this
305 time been finally resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration
306 of the balance of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever
307 were alleged for similar separations. The Pope's hesitation, it might be
308 assumed, would now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon
309 England and France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse
310 than they were. </p>
311 <p align="left">The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned,
312 were taken entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been
313 under consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint
314 had reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by
315 the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred
316 to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she was
317 irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of Richmond; she
318 was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained that she was
319 kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting herself to the
320 utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to arrest Wolsey's
321 policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the divorce she had not
322 heard a word. It was to come upon her like a thunderstroke.</p>
323 <p align="left">Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out
324 of place of the two persons who were to play the principal parts on the
325 stage, as they were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian
326 ambassador in England. Of Catherine his account is brief. </p>
327 <p align="left">&quot;The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and
328 very religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved
329 by the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five
330 years old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and
331 one daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives.&quot; </p>
332 <p align="left">On the King, Falieri is more elaborate. </p>
333 <p align="left">&quot;In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined
334 as to surprise and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position,
335 showing the superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so
336 fair it is; his head bald like Cæsar's, and he wears a beard, which is not
337 the English custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his
338 horse well, tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow
339 excellent well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts
340 with the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated
341 also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his
342 childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and writes
343 Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is kind,
344 gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he is
345 always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two masses
346 a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable, giving
347 away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and cripples.&quot;</p>
348 <p align="left">Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the
349 preposterous pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established
350 marriage laws had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the
351 European world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden
352 of decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If
353 the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English
354 courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had
355 he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the
356 Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have been
357 indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of itself. It
358 would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the difficulty, and
359 it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first entertained. He knew
360 that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.</p>
361 <p align="left">On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty
362 with France, he called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place.
363 Archbishop Warham sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the
364 Cardinal, having stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his
365 marriage, enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the
366 good of his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The
367 King assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced
368 and considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon
369 lawyers must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled
370 bishops. The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged
371 Bishop of Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly
372 that the marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient. </p>
373 <p align="left">These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy
374 which had hitherto been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and
375 her friends learnt now for the first time the measure which was in
376 contemplation. Mendoza, writing on the day following the York Place meeting
377 to the Emperor, informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable
378 authority, that Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to
379 divorce the Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself
380 to speak of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been
381 invited to sign a declaration that, being his brother's widow, she could not
382 be the wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take
383 part against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal
384 Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken
385 against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet had
386 been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might be
387 kept as private as possible.</p>
388 <p align="left">That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify
389 Henry at Charles's expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the
390 German Emperor were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and
391 England were the only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week
392 before the meeting of Wolsey's court he had experienced in the most terrible
393 form what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that
394 same month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm.
395 The city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through
396 the streets on mules' backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns
397 were abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may
398 have been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy
399 persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days
400 were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently
401 conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo,
402 looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have
403 appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the
404 final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider
405 it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been
406 animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic Christendom.
407 Charles himself is not likely to have intended the humiliation of the Holy
408 See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings, and Wolsey's policy was not
409 without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles's Minister at Genoa, and Lope de
410 Soria's opinions, freely uttered, may have been shared by many a Catholic
411 besides himself. On the 25th of May, a fortnight after the storm, he wrote
412 to his master the following noticeable letter: -- </p>
413 <p align="left">&quot;The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God,
414 who permits his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other
415 Christian princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust
416 wars which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom,
417 the faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated. . . . Should the Emperor think
418 that the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope's
419 temporal power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I
420 cannot but remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious
421 action, to reform the Church; so that the Pope's authority be confined
422 exclusively to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to
423 Cæsar, since by right what is God's belongs to God, and what is Cæsar's to
424 Cæsar. I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the
425 Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that
426 time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a
427 remedy to that evil.&quot;</p>
428 <p align="left">Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who
429 could recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes
430 and Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles
431 himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria's words might have been
432 dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment placed
433 himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would have been
434 different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this might be
435 what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything most
436 objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical administration
437 of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles was the surest
438 method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was an incident in
439 the situation, but not the least important. Catherine represented the
440 Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to make the breach with
441 her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon himself to assure the
442 King that after the last outrage the Pope would agree to anything that
443 France and England demanded of him, and would trust to his allies to bear
444 him harmless. That the divorce was a thing reasonable in itself to ask for,
445 and certain to be conceded by any pope who was free to act on his own
446 judgment, was assumed as a matter of course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the
447 English agent at Rome, was instructed to obtain access to Clement in St.
448 Angelo, to convey to him the indignation felt in England at his treatment,
449 and then to insist on the illegality of the King's relations with Catherine,
450 on the King's own scruples of conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects
451 that there should be a male heir to the crown. The &quot;urgent cause&quot; such as
452 was necessary to be produced when exceptional actions were required of the
453 popes was the imminence or even certainty of civil war if no such heir was
454 born. </p>
455 <p align="left">Catherine meanwhile had again communiated with Mendoza. She
456 had spoken to her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was
457 impossible, had told her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a
458 separation was necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears
459 and reproaches. The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a matter
460 where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her gently,
461 till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in the
462 matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis, and
463 consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence of the
464 Pope's imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself helpless,
465 might become a puppet in the Emperor's hands. Under such circumstances he
466 could not be trusted by other countries with the spiritual authority
467 attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed for some interim
468 arrangement by which France and England were to constitute themselves into a
469 separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its head as Archbishop of Rouen.
470 Mendoza says that this proposal had been actually made to Wolsey by the
471 French Ambassador. In Spain it was even believed to be contemplated as a
472 permanent modification of the ecclesiastical system. The Imperial
473 Councillors at Valladolid told the Venetian Minister that the Cardinal
474 intended to separate the Churches of England and France from that of Rome,
475 saying that as the Pope was a prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that
476 even if the Emperor released him, he still would not be free unless his
477 fortresses and territory now in the Emperor's hands were restored to him.
478 Wolsey had reason for anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the
479 Emperor insisting that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey's Legatine
480 powers. </p>
481 <p align="left">In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it
482 soon became known thoughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The
483 nation generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their
484 hereditary friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen,
485 but did not touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an
486 injured wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he
487 should not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to
488 a project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the
489 most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand
490 men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join
491 them. He saw Wolsey -- he reasoned with him, and when he found reason
492 ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give.
493 Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He
494 spoke of the Papacy: &quot;how the chair was now in the Emperor's hands, and the
495 Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation.&quot; The
496 glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been Wolsey's
497 highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had served the
498 Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still trusted that the
499 Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church. Mendoza's answer was
500 not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that both the spiritual and
501 temporal powers were now centred in his master, and he advised Wolsey, if he
502 desired an arrangement, to extend his journey from France, go on to Spain,
503 and see the Emperor in person. It was precisely this centering which those
504 who had charge of English liberties had a right to resent. Divorce or no
505 divorce, they could not allow a power possessed of so much authority in the
506 rest of Christendom to be the servant of a single prince. The divorce was
507 but an illustration of the situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza
508 contemplated would reduce England and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the
509 Empire. </p>
510 </font>
511 <font face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
512 <hr>
513 <p align="left"><font size="2">From <i>The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon:
514 The Story as Told by the Imperial Ambassadors Resident at the Court of Henry
515 VIII</i> by J.A. Froude.&nbsp; Published in New York by C. Scribner's Sons,
516 1891.</font></p>
517 </blockquote>
518</blockquote>
519
520<p align="center"><font size="2">
521<a href="froudetwo.html">to Chapter Two</a></font></p>
522<p align="center"><a href="secondary.html">
523<font size="2">to Secondary Sources</font></a></p>
524<p align="center">
525<a href="monarchs/aragon.html"><font size="2">to
526Katharine of Aragon website</font></a></p>
527 </font>
528<blockquote>
529 <blockquote>
530 <font style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
531 <font face="Times New Roman">
532 </font><font style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
533 </font>
534 <p class="3text" align="left">&nbsp;</p>
535 </font>
536 </blockquote>
537</blockquote>
538
539</body>
540
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