The Pope had heard this language before. The Emperor was afraid of going to war with England, and the Pope knew it. The alternative, therefore, was either to make some concession to Henry or to let him go on as he pleased, bringing the Holy See into contempt by exposing its weakness: and either course would be equally dispiriting to the Queen and his own friends in England. “Everybody,” wrote Chapuys, “cries murder on the Pope for his delays, and for not detaining the Archbishop’s Bulls, till the definitive sentence had been given. He was warned of the danger of granting them. There is not a lord in the Court of either side who does not say publicly his Holiness will betray the Emperor. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk speak of it with more assurance, saying they know it well and could give good evidence of it.”214
The Act of Appeals, though strongly resisted in the House of Commons for fear of the consequences, was evidently to pass; and it was now understood that, as soon as it became law, Cranmer was to try the divorce suit and to give final judgment. The Pope’s extraordinary conduct had paralysed opposition. The clergy, like some wild animal hardly broken in, were made to parade their docility and to approve beforehand the Archbishop’s intended action. It was to be done in haste, for Anne was enceinte. The members of the Synod were allowed scant time, even to eat their dinners; they were so harassed that no one opened his mouth to contradict, except the Bishop of Rochester, and Rochester had no weight, being alone against all the rest. So docile was the assembly and so imperious the King that the Queen and all her supporters now regarded her cause as lost.215 Ortiz wrote from Rome to Charles that, “though he was bound to believe the contrary, he feared the Pope had sent, or might send, absolution to the King.” Something might be done underhand to revoke the last brief, although the Pope knew what an evil thing it would be, and how ignominious to the Holy See.216
The reforming party in England laughed at the expected interdict. The Pope, they said, would not dare to try it, or, if he did, Christian princes would not trouble themselves about him. The King said, significantly, to the Nuncio that he was only defending himself: “if the Pope gave him occasion to reconsider the matter, he might undo what was being aimed at his authority.”217
The Bill passed more rapidly through its later stages. The Papal jurisdiction was ended. Anyone who introduced Briefs of Excommunication or Interdict into the realm was declared guilty of high treason. The Bishop of Rochester, becoming violent, was committed to friendly custody under charge of Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester. Appeals to the Pope on any matter, secular or spiritual, were forbidden thenceforward, and the Act was made retrospective, applying to suits already in progress. All was thus over. The Archbishop’s sentence was known beforehand, and Anne Boleyn was to be crowned at Whitsuntide. Force was now the only remedy, and the constitutional opposition converted itself into conspiracy, to continue in that form till the end of the century. The King was convinced that the strength and energy of the country was with him. When told that there would be an invasion, he said that the English could never be conquered as long as they held together. Chapuys was convinced equally that they would not hold together. The clergy, and a section of the peers with whom he chiefly associated, spoke all in one tone, and he supposed that the language which they used to him represented a universal opinion. Thenceforward he and his English friends began to urge on the Emperor the necessity of armed intervention, and assured him that he had only to declare himself to find the whole nation at his back.
“Englishmen, high and low,” Chapuys wrote, “desire your Majesty to send an army to destroy the venomous influence of the Lady and her adherents, and reform the realm. Forgive my boldness, but your Majesty ought not to hesitate. When this accursed Anne has her foot in the stirrup she will do the Queen and the Princess all the hurt she can. She boasts that she will have the Princess in her own train; one day, perhaps, she will poison her, or will marry her to some varlet, while the realm itself will be made over to heresy. A conquest would be perfectly easy. The King has no trained army. All of the higher ranks and all the nobles are for your Majesty, except the Duke of Norfolk and two or three besides. Let the Pope call in the secular arm, stop the trade, encourage the Scots, send to sea a few ships, and the thing will be over. No injustice will be done, and, without this, England will be estranged from the Holy Faith and will become Lutheran. The King points the way and lends them wings, and the Archbishop of Canterbury does worse. There is no danger of French interference. France will wait to see the issue, and will give you no more trouble if this King receives his due. Again forgive me, but pity for the Queen and Princess obliges me to speak plainly.”218
The King could hardly be ignorant of the communications between the disaffected nobles and the Imperial Ambassador, but no outward sign appeared that he was aware of them. Lord Mountjoy, however, was sent with a guard to watch Catherine’s residence, and, the decisive Act being passed through Parliament, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, with Lord Exeter and the Earl of Oxford, repaired to her once more to invite her, since she must see that further resistance was useless, to withdraw her appeal, and to tell her that, on her compliance, every arrangement should be made for her state and comfort, with an establishment suited to her rank. Chapuys demanded an audience of the King to remonstrate, and a remarkable conversation ensued. The Ambassador said he had heard of the proceedings in Convocation and in Parliament. It was his duty to speak. If the King had no regard for men whom he despised, he hoped that he would have respect to God. “God and his conscience,” Henry answered calmly, “were on perfectly good terms.” Chapuys expressed a doubt, and the King assured him that he was entirely sincere. Chapuys said he could not believe that at a time when Europe was distracted with heresies the King of England would set so evil an example. The King rejoined that, if the world found his new marriage strange, he himself found it more strange that Pope Julius should have granted a dispensation for his marriage with his brother’s wife. He must have an heir to succeed him in his realm. The Emperor had no right to prevent him. The Ambassador spoke of the Princess. To provide a husband for the Princess would be the fittest means to secure the succession. Henry said he would have children of his own, and Chapuys ventured on more dangerous ground than he was aware of by hinting that he could not be sure of that. “Am I not a man,” the King said sharply, “am I not a man like others? Am I not a man?” Thrice repeating the words. “But,” he added, “I will not let you into my secrets.” The Ambassador enquired whether he intended to remain on friendly terms with the Emperor. The King asked him with a frown what he meant by that. On his replying that the Emperor’s friendship depended on the treatment of the Queen, the King said coldly that the Emperor had no right to interfere with the laws and constitution of England.
Chapuys persisted.
The Emperor, he said, did not wish to meddle with his laws, unless they personally affected the Queen. The King wanted to force her to abandon her appeal, and it was not to be expected that she would submit to statutes which had been carried by compulsion.
The King grew impatient. The statutes, he said, had been passed in Parliament, and the Queen as a subject must obey them.
The Ambassador retorted that new laws could not be retrospective; and, as to the Queen being a subject, if she was his wife she was his subject; if she was not his wife, she was not his subject.
This was true, and Henry was to be made to feel the dilemma. He contented himself, however, with saying that she must have patience, and obey the laws of the realm. The Emperor had injured him by hindering his marriage and preventing him from having male succession. The Queen was no more his wife than she was Chapuys’s. He would do as he pleased, and if the Emperor made war on him he would fight.
Chapuys inquired whether, if an interdict was issued, and the Spaniards and Flemings resident in England obeyed it, his statutes would apply to them.
The King did not answer; but, turning to someone present, he said: “You have heard the Ambassador hint at excommunication. It is not I that am excommunicated, but the Emperor, who has kept me so long in mortal sin. That is an excommunication which the Pope cannot take off.”219
To the lords who carried the message to Catherine she replied as she had always done – that Queen she was, and she would never call herself by any other name. As to her establishment, she wanted nothing but a confessor, a doctor, and a couple of maids. If that was too much, she would go about the world and beg alms for the love of God.
“The King,” Chapuys said, “was naturally kind and generous,” but the “Lady Anne had so perverted him that he did not seem the same man.” Unless the Emperor acted in earnest, she would make an end of Catherine, as she had done of Wolsey, whom she did not hate with half as much intensity. “All seems like a dream,” he said. “Her own party do not know whether to laugh or cry at it. Every day people ask me when I am going away. As long as I remain here it will be always thought your Majesty has consented to the marriage.”
CHAPTER XIII
The King’s claim – The obstinacy of Catherine – The Court at Dunstable – Judgment given by Cranmer – Debate in the Spanish Council of State – Objections to armed interference – The English opposition – Warning given to Chapuys – Chapuys and the Privy Council – Conversation with Cromwell – Coronation of Anne Boleyn – Discussions at Rome – Bull supra Attentatis– Confusion of the Catholic Powers – Libels against Henry – Personal history of Cromwell – Birth of Elizabeth – The King’s disappointment – Bishop Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England – Growth of Lutheranism.
If circumstances can be imagined to justify the use of the dispensing power claimed and exercised by the Papacy, Henry VIII. had been entitled to demand assistance from Clement VII. in the situation in which he had found himself with Catherine of Aragon. He had been committed when little more than a boy, for political reasons, to a marriage of dubious legality. In the prime of his life he found himself fastened to a woman eight years older than himself; the children whom she had borne to him all dead, except one daughter; his wife past the age when she could hope to be again a mother; the kingdom with the certainty of civil war before it should the King die without a male heir. In hereditary monarchies, where the sovereign is the centre of the State, the interests of the nation have to be considered in the arrangements of his family. Henry had been married irregularly to Catherine to strengthen the alliance between England and Spain. When, as a result, a disputed succession and a renewal of the civil wars was seen to be inevitable, the King had a distinct right to ask to be relieved of the connection by the same irregular methods. The causa urgentissima, for which the dispensing power was allowed, was present in the highest degree, and that power ought to have been made use of. That it was not made use of was due to a control exerted upon the Pope by the Emperor, whose pride had been offended; and that such an influence could be employed for such a purpose vitiated the tribunal which had been trusted with a peculiar and exceptional authority. The Pope had not concealed his conviction that the demand was legitimate in itself, or that, in refusing, he was yielding to intimidation, and the inevitable consequences had followed. Royal persons who receive from birth and station remarkable favours of fortune occasionally have to submit to inconveniences attaching to their rank; and, when the occasion rises, they generally meet with little ceremony. At the outset the utmost efforts had been made to spare Catherine’s feelings. Both the King and the Pope desired to avoid a judgment on the validity of her marriage. An heir to the crown was needed, and from her there was no hope of further issue. If at the beginning she had been found incapable of bearing a child, the marriage would have been dissolved of itself. Essentially the condition was the same. Technical difficulties could be disposed of by a Papal dispensation. She would have remained queen, her honour unaffected, the legitimacy of Mary unimpugned, the relations between the Holy See and the Crown and Church of England undisturbed. The obstinacy of Catherine herself, the Emperor’s determination to support her, and the Pope’s cowardice, prevented a reasonable arrangement; and thus the right of the Pope himself to the spiritual sovereignty of Europe came necessarily under question, when it implied the subjugation of independent princes to another power by which the Court of Rome was dominated.
Such a question once raised could have but one answer from the English nation. Every resource had been tried to the extreme limit of forbearance, and all had failed before the indomitable will of a single woman. A request admitted to be just had been met by excommunication and threats of force. With entire fitness, the King and Parliament had replied by withdrawing their recognition of a corrupt tribunal, and determining thenceforward to try and to judge their own suits in their own courts.
Thus, on the 10th of May, Cranmer, with three Bishops as assessors, sate at Dunstable under the Royal licence to hear the cause which had so long been the talk of Europe, and Catherine, who was at Ampthill, was cited to appear. She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to make. Chapuys advised her not to notice the summons. “Nothing done by such a Court could prejudice her,” he said, “unless she renounced her appeal to Rome.” As she made no plea, judgment was promptly given.220 The divorce was complete so far as English law could decide it, and it was doubtful to the last whether the Pope was not at heart a consenting party. The sentence had been, of course, anticipated. On the 27th of April Chapuys informed the Emperor how matters then stood.
“Had his Holiness done as he was advised, and inserted a clause in the Archbishop’s Bulls forbidding the Archbishop to meddle in the case, he would have prevented much mischief. He chose to take his own way, and thus the English repeat what they have said all along: that in the end the Pope would deceive your Majesty… The thing now to be done is to force from the Pope a quick and sudden decision of the case, so as to silence those who affirm that he is only procrastinating till he can decide in favour of the King, or who think that your Majesty will then acquiesce and that there will be no danger of war… I have often tried to ascertain from the Queen what alternative she is looking to, seeing that gentleness produces no effect. I have found her hitherto so scrupulous in her profession of respect and affection for the King that she thinks she will be damned eternally if she takes a step which may lead to war. Latterly, however, she has let me know that she would like to see some other remedy tried, though she refers everything to me.”221
The proceedings at Dunstable may have added to Catherine’s growing willingness for the “other remedy.” She was no longer an English subject in the eye of the law, and might hold herself free to act as she pleased. Simultaneously, however, a consultation was going forward about her and her affairs in the Spanish Cabinet which was not promising for Chapuys’s views. The Spanish Ambassador in London, it was said, was urging for war with England. The history of the divorce case was briefly stated. The delay of judgment had been caused by the King’s protest that he could not appear at Rome. That point had been decided against the King. The Pope had promised the Emperor that he would proceed at once to sentence, but had not done it. Brief on brief had been presented to the King, ordering him to separate from Anne Boleyn pendente lite, but the King had paid no attention to them – had married the Lady and divorced the Queen. The Emperor was the Queen’s nearest relation. What was he to do? There were three expedients before him: legal process, force, and law and force combined. The first was the best; but the King and the realm would refuse the tribunal, and the Pope always had been, and still was, very cold and indifferent in the matter, and most tolerant to the English King. Open force, in the existing state of Christendom, was dangerous. To begin an aggression was always a questionable step. Although the King had married “Anne de Bulans,” he had used no violence against the Queen, or done anything to justify an armed attack upon him. The question was “a private one,” and the Emperor must consider what he owed to the public welfare. Should the third course be adopted, the Pope would have to pronounce judgment and call in the secular arm. All Christian princes would then be bound to help him, and the Emperor, as the first among them, would have to place himself at the head of the enterprise. “But would it not be better and more convenient to avoid, for the present, harsh measures, which might bring on war and injure trade, and insist only on further censures and a sentence of deposition against the King? Should the Pope require to know beforehand what the Emperor would do to enforce the execution, it would be enough to tell the Pope that he must do his part first; any further engagement would imply that the sentence on the principal cause had been decided beforehand. Finally, it would have to be determined whether the Queen was to remain in England or to leave it.”
These were the questions before the Cabinet. A Privy Councillor, perhaps Granvelle (the name is not mentioned), gave his own opinion, which was seemingly adopted.
All these ways were to be tried. The Pope must proceed with the suit. Force must be suspended for the present, the cause being a personal one, and having already begun when peace was made at Cambray. The Pope must conclude the principal matter, or at least insist on the revocation of what had been done since the suit commenced, and then, perhaps, force would not be required at all. The advice of the Consulta on the answer to be given to the Pope, should he require to know the Emperor’s intentions, was exactly right. Nothing more need be said than that the Emperor would not forget the obligations which devolved on him, as an obedient son of the Church. The Queen, meanwhile, must remain in England. If she came away, a rupture would be inevitable.
The speaker advised further that a special embassy should be sent to England to remonstrate with the King.
This, however, if unsuccessful, it was felt would lead to war; and opposite to the words the Emperor himself wrote on the margin an emphatic No.222
The mention of the peace of Cambray is important. The divorce had reached an acute stage before the peace was concluded. It had not been spoken of there, and the Emperor was diplomatically precluded from producing it as a fresh injury. Both he and the Council were evidently unwilling to act. The Pope knew their reluctance, and did not mean, if he could help it, to flourish his spiritual weapons without a sword to support them.
The King wrote to inform Charles of his marriage. “In the face of the Scotch pretensions to the succession,” he said, “other heirs of his body were required for the security of the Crown. The thing was done, and the Pope must make the best of it.” This was precisely what the Pope was inclined to do. Cifuentes thought that, though he seemed troubled, “he was really pleased.”223 “He said positively that, if he was to declare the King of England deprived of his crown, the Emperor must bind himself to see the sentence executed.”224 Charles had no intention of binding himself, nor would his Cabinet advise him to bind himself. The time was passed when Most Catholic Princes could put armies in motion to execute the decrees of the Bishop of Rome. The theory might linger, but the facts were changed. Philip II. tried the experiment half a century later, but it did not answer to him. A fresh order of things had risen in Europe, and passionate Catholics could not understand it. Dr. Ortiz shrieked that “the King, by his marriage, was guilty of heresy and schism;” the Emperor ought to use the opportunity, without waiting for further declarations from the Pope, and unsheath the sword which God had placed in his hands.225 English Peers and Prelates, impatient of the rising strength of the Commons and of the growth of Lutheranism, besieged Chapuys with entreaties for an Imperial force to be landed. They told him that Richard III. was not so hated by the people as Henry; but that, without help from abroad, they dared not declare themselves.226 Why could they not dare? The King had no janissaries about his throne. Why could they not stand up in the House of Lords and refuse to sanction the measures which they disapproved? Why, except that they were not the people. Numbers might still be on their side, but the daring, the intellect, the fighting-strength of England was against them, and the fresh air of dawning freedom chilled their blood. The modern creed is that majorities have a right to rule. If, out of every hundred men, four-fifths will vote on one side, but will not fight without help from the sword of the stranger; and the remaining fifth will both vote and fight – fight domestic cowards and foreign foes combined – which has the right to rule? The theory may be imperfect; but it is easy to foresee which will rule in fact. The marriage with Anne was formally communicated in the House of Lords. There were some murmurs. The King rose from the throne and said it had been necessary for the welfare of the realm. Peers and Commons acquiesced, and no more was said. The coronation of the new Queen was fixed for the 19th of May.
If the great men who had been so eager with Chapuys were poltroons, Chapuys himself was none. Rumours were flying that the Emperor was coming to waste England, destroy the Royal family, and place a foreign Prince on the throne. The Ambassador addressed a letter to Henry, saying that he held powers to take action for the preservation of the Queen’s rights; and he gave him notice that he intended to enter immediately on the duties of his office.227 Henry showed no displeasure at so bold a communication, but sent Thomas Cromwell to him, who was now fast rising into consequence, to remind him that, large as was the latitude allowed to Ambassadors, he must not violate the rights of the Crown, and to warn him to be careful. He was then summoned before the Privy Council. Norfolk had previously cautioned him against introducing briefs or letters from the Pope, telling him that if he did he would be torn in pieces by the people. The Council demanded to see the powers which he said that he possessed. He produced directions which he had received to watch over the Queen’s rights, and he then remarked on the several briefs by which the King was virtually excommunicated. Lord Wiltshire told him that if any subject had so acted he would have found himself in the Tower. The King wished him well; but if he wore two faces, and meddled with what did not concern him, he might fall into trouble.
Chapuys replied that the Council were like the eels of Melun, which cried out before they were skinned. He had done nothing, so far. He had not presented any “Apostolic letters.” As to two faces, the Earl meant, he supposed, that he was about to act as the Queen’s Proctor as well as Ambassador; he was not a lawyer; he had no such ambition. Then, speaking in Latin, because part of the Council did not understand French, he dwelt on the old friendship between the Emperor and the King. He said that the part which the Emperor had taken about the divorce was as much for the sake of the King and the realm as for the sake of the Queen, although the Queen and Princess were as a mother and a sister to him. He went through the case; he said their statutes were void in themselves, and, even if valid, could not be retrospective. The Archbishop had been just sworn to the Pope. He had broken his oath, and was under excommunication,228 and was, therefore, disqualified to act. He reminded the Council of the Wars of the Roses, and told them they were sharpening the thorns for fresh struggles.
Doctor Foxe (the King’s Almoner, afterwards bishop) replied that the King could not live with his brother’s wife without sin, and therefore left her. It was a fact accomplished, and no longer to be argued. To challenge the action of the Archbishop was to challenge the law of the land, and was not to be allowed. The Pope had no authority in England, spiritual or temporal. The introduction of bulls or briefs from Rome was unlawful, and could not be sheltered behind immunities of ambassadors. Chapuys was the representative of the Emperor, not of the Pope, and Foxe cautioned him against creating disturbances in the realm.
To this Chapuys quietly answered that he would do his duty, let the consequences be what they might. Being again warned, he said he would wait for two or three days, within which he looked for a satisfactory reply from the King.
In leaving the council-room, he said, in imperious fashion, as if he was addressing a set of criminals, that reports were current about the Emperor which he desired to notice. Some declared that he had consented to the marriage with the Lady Anne. Others that he meant to make war. Both allegations alike were false and malicious. So far from wishing to injure England, the Emperor wished to help and support it, and could not believe that he would ever be obliged to act otherwise; and as to consenting to the divorce, if the Pope declared for it he would submit to the Pope’s judgment; otherwise the world would not turn him from the path which he meant to follow. He was acting as the King’s best friend, as the King would acknowledge if he could forget his passion for the Lady and consider seriously his relations with the Emperor. He begged the Council, therefore, to prevent such rumours from being circulated if they did not wish Chapuys to contradict them himself.
The Ambassador was keeping within the truth when he said that Charles was not meditating war. Chapuys’s instructions when first sent to England had been not to make matters worse than they were, not to threaten war, nor to imply in any way that there was danger of war.229 He had himself, however, insisted that there was no alternative. He had encouraged Catherine’s friends with hope of eventual help, and continued to convey to the Emperor their passionate wish that “his Majesty’s hand would soon reach England,” before “the accursed woman” made an end of the Queen and of them – to tell him that, were his forces once on land, they might raise as many men as they pleased, and the London citizens would stand by, “keep the enlistment money,” and wait to see which party won. As long, however, as his master was undecided he would not, he said, take measures which would do no good, and only lead to inconvenience. He had merely given the Council “a piece of his mind,” and had said what no one else would say, for fear of Lady Anne.
The answer to his letter which he expected from the King did not arrive, but instead of it an invitation to dinner from the Duke of Norfolk, which he refused lest his consent should be misconstrued. Ultimately, however, Cromwell came to him with the King’s permission. Cromwell, strange to say, had been a strong advocate for the Imperial alliance, in opposition to the French, and with Cromwell the Ambassador’s relations were more easy than with the Duke. Their conversations were intimate and confidential. Chapuys professed a hope that the King’s affection for the Lady would pass off, and promised, for himself, to pour no more oil on the fire till he received fresh orders. If they wished for peace, however, he said they must be careful of their behaviour to the Queen, and he complained of the removal of her arms from her barge in the river. Such petty acts of persecution ought to be avoided. The removal of the arms was the work of some too zealous friend of Anne. Cromwell had not heard of it, and said that the King would be greatly displeased. Meanwhile he trusted that Spanish notions of honour would not interfere with a friendship so useful to both countries. If it came to war, England would not be found an easy conquest. He defended the King’s action. The Pope would not do him justice, so he had slapped the Pope in the face. No doubt he had been influenced by love for the Lady. Neither the King himself, nor all the Preachers in the world, would convince him that love had nothing to do with it. But the King was well read in the canon law, and if his conscience was satisfied it was enough.
As Cromwell was so frank, Chapuys asked him when and where the marriage with Anne had been concluded. Cromwell either would not or could not tell him, saying merely that Norfolk had not been present at the ceremony, but others of the Council had, and there was no doubt that it had really taken place.
So matters stood in England, every one waiting to learn how the Emperor would act. Anne Boleyn was duly crowned at Whitsuntide – a splendid official pageant compensating for the secrecy of her marriage. The streets were thronged with curious spectators, but there was no enthusiasm. The procession was like a funeral. The Pope was about to meet the King of France at Nice. Norfolk was commissioned to attend the interview, and, as Henry still hoped that the Duke would bring back an acquiescence in his wishes from Clement, Chapuys saw him before his departure. The Duke said the peace of the world now depended on the Emperor. He repeated that his niece’s marriage had been no work of his. Her father and he had always been against it, and, but for them, it would have happened a year before. She had been furious with both of them. She was now enceinte, and had told her father and himself and Suffolk that she was in better plight than they wished her to be. To attempt to persuade the King to take Catherine back either by threat or argument would be labour thrown away, such “were his scruples of conscience and his despair of having male succession by her.”