Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History — Katharine and Anne - the Divorce, Part 2

Through the plague-scourged summer of 1528 Henry and Anne waited impatiently for the coming of the Legate Campeggio.

He was old and gouty, hampered with a mission which he dreaded; for he could not hope to reconcile the irreconcilable, and the Pope had quietly given him the hint that he need not hurry.

Clement was, indeed, in a greater fix than ever.

He had been made to promise by the Emperor that the case should not be decided in England, and yet he had been forced into giving the dispensation and decretal not only allowing it to be decided there in favour of Henry, but had despatched Campeggio to pronounce judgment.

He had, however, at the same time assured the Emperor that means should be found to prevent the finality of any decision in England until the Emperor had approved of it, and Campeggio was instructed accordingly.

The Spaniards thought that the English Cardinal would do his best to second the efforts of the Pope without appearing to do so, and there is no doubt that they were right, for Wolsey was now (the summer of 1528) really alarmed at the engine he had set in motion and could not stop.

Katharine knew that the Legate was on his way, and that the Pope had, in appearance, granted all of Henry's demands; but she did not know, or could not understand, the political forces that were operating in her favour, which made the Pope defraud the King of England, and turned her erstwhile mortal enemy Wolsey into her secret friend.

Tact and ready adaptability might still have helped Katharine.

The party of nobles under Norfolk, it is true, had deserted her; but Wolsey and the bureaucrats were still a power to be reckoned with, and the middle classes and the populace were all in favour of the Queen and the imperial alliance.

If these elements had been cleverly combined they might have conquered, for Henry was always a coward and would have bent to the stronger force.

But Katharine was a bad hand at changing sides, and Wolsey dared not openly do so.

For a few days in the summer of 1528, whilst Campeggio was still lingering on the Continent, it looked as if a mightier power than any of them might settle the question for once and all.

Henry and Anne were at Greenwich when the plague broke out in London.

In June one of Anne's attendants fell ill of the malady, and Henry in a panic sent his favourite to Hever, whilst he hurried from place to place in Hertfordshire.

The plague followed him.

Sir Francis Poyns, Sir William Compton, William Carey, and other members of his Court died in the course of the epidemic, and the dread news soon reached Henry that Anne and her father were both stricken at Hever Castle.

Henry had written daily to her whilst they had been separated.

"Since your last letter, mine own darling," he wrote a few days after she left, "Walter Welsh, Master Brown, Thomas Care, Grion of Brereton, and John Coke the apothecary have fallen of the sweat in this house....

By the mercy of God the rest of us be yet well, and I trust shall pass it, either not to have it, or at least as easily as the rest have done."

Later he wrote: "The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and alarmed me exceedingly; and I should not have had any quiet without hearing certain tidings.

But now, since you have felt as yet nothing, I hope, and am assured, that it will spare you, as I hope it is doing with us.

For when we were at Waltham two ushers, two valets, and your brother, master-treasurer, fell ill, but are now quite well; and since we have returned to our house at Hunsdon we have been perfectly well, and have not now one sick person, God be praised.

I think if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger.

There is another thing may comfort you, which is, in truth, that in this distemper few or no women have been taken ill, and no person of our Court has died.

[61] For which reason I beg you, my entirely beloved, not to frighten yourself, nor be too uneasy at our absence, for wherever I am, I am yours: and yet we must sometimes submit to our misfortunes; for whoever will struggle against fate is generally but so much the further from gaining his end.

Wherefore, comfort yourself and take courage, and avoid the pestilence as much as you can; for I hope shortly to make you sing _la renvoye_.

No more at present from lack of time, but that I wish you in my arms that I might a little dispel your unreasonable thoughts.

Written by the hand of him who is, and always will be, yours."

When the news of Anne's illness reached him he despatched one of his physicians post haste with the following letter to his favourite: "There came to me suddenly in the night the most afflicting news that could have arrived.

The first, to hear the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own, so that I would gladly bear half your illness to make you well; the second, the fear that I have of being still longer harassed by my enemy--your absence--much longer ...

who is, so far as I can judge, determined to spite me more, because I pray God to rid me of this troublesome tormentor;

the third, because the physician in whom I have most confidence is absent at the very time when he might be of the most service to me, for I should hope by his means to obtain one of my chiefest joys on earth--that is, the care of my mistress.

Yet, for want of him, I send you my second, and hope that he will soon make you well.

I shall then love him more than ever.

I

beseech you to be guided by his advice, and I hope soon to see you again, which will be to me a greater comfort than all the precious jewels in the world."

In a few days Anne was out of danger, and the hopes and fears aroused by her illness gave place to the old intrigues again.

A few weeks later Anne was with her lover at Ampthill, hoping and praying daily for the coming of the gouty Legate, who was slowly being carried through France to the coast.

Wolsey had to be very humble now, for Anne had shown her ability to make Henry brave him, and the King rebuked him publicly at her bidding,[62] but until Campeggio came and the fateful decision was given that would make Anne a Queen, both she and Henry diplomatically alternated cajolery with the humbling process towards the Cardinal.

Anne's well-known letter with Henry's postscript, so earnestly asking Wolsey for news of Campeggio, is written in most affectionate terms, Anne saying, amongst other pretty things, that she "loves him next unto the King's grace, above all creatures living."

But the object of her wheedling was only to gain news of the speedy coming of the Legate.

The King's postscript to this letter is characteristic of him.

"The writer of this letter would not cease till she had caused me likewise to set my hand, desiring you, though it be short, to take it in good part.

I assure you that there is neither of us but greatly desireth to see you, and are joyous to hear that you have escaped the plague so well; trusting the fury thereof to be passed, especially with them that keepeth good diet, as I trust you do.

The not hearing of the Legate's arrival in France causeth us somewhat to muse: notwithstanding, we trust, by your diligence and vigilance, with the assistance of Almighty God, shortly to be eased out of that trouble."

[63] Campeggio was nearly four months on his way, urged forward everywhere by English agents and letters, held back everywhere by the Pope's fears and his own ailments; but at last, one joyful day in the middle of September, Henry could write to his lady-love at Hever: "The Legate which we most desire arrived at Paris on Sunday last past, so that I trust next Monday to hear of his arrival at Calais: and then I trust within a while after to enjoy that which I have so long longed for, to God's pleasure and both our comfort.

No more to you at present, mine own darling, for lack of time, but that I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you."

Henry had to wait longer than in his lover-like eagerness he had expected; it was fully a fortnight before he had news of Campeggio's arrival at Dover.

Great preparations had been made to entertain the Papal Legate splendidly in London, and on his way thither;

but he was suffering and sorry, and begged to be saved the fatigue of a public reception.

So ill was he that, rather than face the streets of London on the day he was expected, he lodged for the night at the Duke of Suffolk's house on the Surrey side of London bridge, and the next day, 8th October, was quietly carried in the Duke's barge across the river to the Bishop of Bath's palace beyond Temple Bar, where he was to lodge.

There he remained ill in bed, until the King's impatience would brook no further delay; and on the 12th he was carried, sick as he was, and sorely against his will, in a crimson velvet chair for his first audience.

In the great hall of the palace of Bridewell, hard by Blackfriars, Henry sat in a chair of state, with Wolsey and Campeggio on his right hand, whilst one of the Legate's train delivered a fulsome Latin oration, setting forth the iniquitous outrages perpetrated by the imperialists upon the Vicar of Christ, and the love and gratitude of the Pontiff for his dearest son Henry for his aid and sympathy.

The one thing apparently that the Pope desired was to please his benefactor, the King of England.

When the public ceremony was over, Henry took Campeggio and Wolsey into a private room; and the day following the King came secretly to Campeggio's lodging, and for four long hours plied the suffering churchman with arguments and authorities which would justify the divorce.

Up to this time Campeggio had fondly imagined that he might, with the Papal authority, persuade Henry to abandon his object.

But this interview undeceived him.

He found the King, as he says, better versed in the matter "than a great theologian or jurist"; and Campeggio opined at last that "if an angel descended from heaven he would be unable to persuade him" that the marriage was valid.

When, however, Campeggio suggested that the Queen might be induced to enter a convent, Henry was delighted.

If they would only prevail upon her to do that she should have everything she demanded: the title of Queen and all her dowry, revenue, and belongings; the Princess Mary should be acknowledged heiress to the crown, failing legitimate male issue to the King, and all should be done to Katharine's liking.

Accordingly, the next day, 14th October, Campeggio and Wolsey took boat and went to try their luck with the Queen, after seeing the King for the third time.

Beginning with a long sanctimonious rigmarole, Campeggio pressed her to take a "course which would give general satisfaction and greatly benefit herself"; and Wolsey, on his knees, and in English, seconded his colleague's advice.

Katharine was cold and collected.

She was, she said, a foreigner in England without skilled advice, and she declined at present to say anything.

She had asked the King to assign councillors to aid her, and when she had consulted them she would see the Legates again.

As day broke across the Thames on the 25th October, Campeggio lay awake in bed at Bath House, suffering the tortures of gout, and perturbed at the difficult position in which he was placed, when Wolsey was announced, having come from York Place in his barge.

When the Cardinal entered the room he told his Italian colleague that the King had appointed Archbishop Warham, Bishop Fisher, and others, to be councillors for the Queen, and that the Queen had obtained her husband's permission to come to Campeggio and confess that morning.

At nine o'clock Katharine came unobserved to Bath House by water, and was closeted for long with the Italian Cardinal.

What she told him was under the sacred seal of the confessional, but she prayed that the Pope might in strict secrecy be informed of certain of the particulars arising out of her statements.

She reviewed the whole of her life from the day of her arrival in England, and solemnly swore on her conscience that she had only slept with young Arthur seven nights, _e che da lui resto intacta e incorrupta_;[64] and this assertion, _as far as it goes_, we may accept as the truth, seeing the solemn circumstances under which it was made.

But when Campeggio again urged Katharine to get them all out of their difficulty by retiring to a convent and letting the King have his way, she almost vehemently declared that "she would die as she had lived, a wife, as God had made her."

"Let a sentence be given," she said, "and if it be against me I shall be free to do as I like, even as my husband will."

"But neither the whole realm, nor, on the other hand, the greatest punishment, even being torn limb from limb, shall alter me in this, and if after death I were to return to life, I would die again, and yet again, rather than I would give way."

Against such firmness as this the poor, flaccid old churchman could do nothing but hold up his hands and sigh at the idea of any one being so obstinate.

A day or two afterwards Wolsey and Campeggio saw the Queen again formally.

She was on this occasion attended by her advisers, and once more heard, coldly and irresponsively, the appeals to her prudence, her worldly wisdom, her love for her daughter, and every other feeling that could lead her to cut the gordian knot that baffled them all.

"She would do nothing to her soul's damnation or against God's law," she said, as she dismissed them.

Whether it was at this interview, or, as it seems to me more likely, the previous one that she broke out in violent invective against Wolsey for his enmity towards the Emperor, we know not, but the storm of bitter words she poured upon him for his pride, his falsity, his ambition, and his greed; her taunts at his intrigues to get the Papacy, and her burning scorn that her marriage, unquestioned for twenty years, should be doubted now,[65] must have finally convinced both Wolsey and Campeggio that if Henry was firm Katharine was firmer still.

Campeggio was in a pitiable state of mind, imploring the Pope by every post to tell him what to do.

He and Wolsey at one time conceived the horrible idea of marrying the Princess Mary to her half brother, the Duke of Richmond, as a solution of the succession difficulty, and the Pope appears to have been inclined to allow it;[66] but it was soon admitted that the course proposed would not forward, but rather retard, the King's second marriage, and that was the main object sought.

At length Wolsey ruefully understood that conciliation was impossible;

and, pressed as he was by the King, was forced to insist with Campeggio that the cause must be judicially decided without further delay.

Illness, prayerful attempts to bring one side or the other to reason, and many other excuses for procrastination were tried, but at length Campeggio had to confess to his colleague that the Pope's decretal, laying down the law in the case in Henry's favour, was only a show document not to be used, or to leave his possession for a moment; and, moreover, that no final judgment could be given by him that was not submitted to the Pope's confirmation.

Wolsey was aghast, and wrote in rage and indignation to the English agent with the Pope denouncing this bad faith.

[67] "I see ruin, infamy, and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the Apostolic See if this course be persisted in.

You see in what dangerous times we are.

If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt those remedies that are so injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind.

Without the Pope's compliance I cannot bear up against the storm; and when I reflect upon the conduct of his Holiness I cannot but fear lest the common enemy of souls, seeing the King's determination, inspires the Pope with his present fears and reluctance, which will alienate all the faith and devotion from the Apostolic See....

It is useless for Campeggio to think of reviving the marriage.

If he did it would lead to worse consequences.

Let him therefore proceed to sentence.

Prostrate at the feet of his Holiness I most urgently beg of him to set aside all delays."

This cry, wrung evidently from Wolsey's heart at the knowledge of his own danger, is the first articulate expression of the tremendous religious issue that might depend upon the conduct of the various parties in the divorce proceedings.

The fire lit by Luther a few years previously had spread apace in Germany, and had reached England.

All Christendom would soon have to range itself in two divisions, cutting athwart old national affinities and alliances.

Charles had defied Luther at the outset; and the traditions of his Spanish house made him, the most powerful monarch in Europe, the champion of orthodoxy.

But his relations with the Papacy, as we have seen, had not been uniformly cordial.

To him the Pope was a little Italian prince whilst he was a great one, and he was jealous of the slightest interference of Rome with the Spanish Church.

His position in Germany, moreover, as suzerain of the princes of the Empire, some of whom already leant to Lutheranism, complicated the situation: so that it was not yet absolutely certain that Charles would finally stake everything upon the unification of the Christian Church by force, on the lines of strict Papal authority.

On the other hand, both Francis and Henry had for political reasons strongly supported the Pope in his greatest distress, and their religion was certainly no less faithful than that of the Emperor.

It was inevitable that, whichever side Charles took in the coming religious struggle, would not for political reasons commend itself to Francis, and _vice versa_; and everything depended upon the weight which Henry might cast into one scale or the other.

His national traditions and personal inclination would lead him to side with Charles, but at the crucial moment, when the first grain had to be dropped into the balance, he found himself bound by Wolsey's policy to Francis, and at issue with the Emperor, owing to the relationship of the latter to Katharine.

Wolsey felt, in the letter quoted above, that the Pope's shilly-shally, in order not to offend the Emperor, would drive the impatient King of England to flout, and perhaps break with, the Papacy, and events proved that the Cardinal was right in his fears.

We shall see later how the rift widened, but here the first fine crevice is visible.

Henry, prompted by Anne and his vanity, intended to have his way at whatever cost.

Katharine could give him no son: he would marry a woman who could do so, and one that he loved far better than he ever loved his wife.

In ordinary circumstances there need have been no great difficulty about the divorce, nor would there have been in this case, but for the peculiar political and religious situation of Europe at the time, and but for Katharine's unbending rigidity of character.

She might have made her own terms if she had consented to the conciliatory suggestions of the churchmen.

The legality of her marriage would have been declared, her daughter recognised as heiress presumptive, her own great revenues would have been left to her, and her title of Queen respected.

[68] She was not even to be asked to immure herself in a convent, or to take any conventual vow but that of chastity, if she would only consent to a divorce on the ground of her desire to devote herself to religion.

[69] As Campeggio repeated a dozen times, the only thing she would be asked to surrender was conjugal relations with the King, that had ceased for years, and in no case would be renewed.

Much as we may admire her firmness, it is impossible to avoid seeing that the course recommended to her was that which would have best served, not only her own interest and happiness, but also those of her daughter, of her religion, and of the good relations between Henry and the Emperor that she had so much at heart.

Henry, on his side, was determined to allow nothing to stand in his way, whilst keeping up his appearance of impeccability.

Legal and ecclesiastical authorities in England and France were besought to give their sanction to his view that no Pope had the power of dispensation for a marriage with a deceased brother's widow; and the English clergy were assured that the King only sought an impartial authoritative decision for the relief of his own conscience.

The attitude of the English people gave him some uneasiness; for, like all his house, he loved popularity.

"The common people, being ignorant," we are told, "and others that favoured the Queen, talked largely, and said that for his own pleasure the King would have another wife, and had sent for this Legate to be divorced from the Queen, with many foolish words; inasmuch as, whosoever spake against the marriage was of the common people abhorred and reproved."

[70] The feeling indeed in favour of Katharine was so outspoken and general that the King took the unusual course of assembling the nobles, judges, and so many of the people as could enter, in the great hall of Bridewell, on Sunday afternoon, the 8th November, to endeavour personally to justify himself in the eyes of his subjects.

As usual with him, his great aim was by sanctimonious protestations to make himself appear a pure-souled altruist, and to throw upon others the responsibility for his actions.

He painted in dismal colours the dangers to his subjects of a disputed succession on his death.

"And, although it hath pleased Almighty God to send us a fair daughter by a noble woman and me begotten, to our great joy and comfort, yet it hath been told us by divers great clerks that neither she is our lawful daughter, nor her mother our lawful wife, and that we live together abominably and detestably in open adultery."

He swore, almost blasphemously, that for the relief of his conscience he only sought authoritatively to know the truth as to the validity of his marriage, and that Campeggio had come as an impartial judge to decide it.

If Katharine was adjudged to be his wife nothing would be more pleasant or acceptable to him, and he praised her to the skies, as a noble lady against whom no words could be spoken.

[71] The measure of his sincerity is seen when we compare this hypocritical harangue with the letters now before us to and from his envoys in Rome, by which it is evident that the last thing he desired was an impartial judgment, or indeed any judgment, but one that would set him free to marry again.

One of the most extraordinary means employed to influence Katharine soon after this appears to have been another visit to her of Wolsey and Campeggio.

They were to say that the King had intelligence of a conspiracy against him and Wolsey by her friends and the Emperor's English partisans;

and they warned her that if anything of the sort occurred she would be to blame.

They were then to complain of her bearing towards the King, "who was now persuaded by her behaviour that she did not love him."

"She encouraged ladies and gentlemen to dance and make merry," for instance, whereas "she had better tell them to pray for a good end of the matter at issue."

"She shows no pensiveness of countenance, nor in her apparel nor behaviour.

She shows herself too much to the people, rejoicing greatly in their exclamations and ill obloquy; and, by beckoning with her head and smiling, which she has not been accustomed to do in times past, rather encouraged them in doing so."

For all this and many other things the King does not consider it fitting to be in her company, or to let the Princess be with her.

The acme of hypocrisy was reached in the assurance the Legates were then to give the Queen, that if she would behave well and go into a convent, the King neither could, nor would, marry another wife in her lifetime; and she could come out to the world again if the sentence were in her favour.

Let her go, they said, and submit to the King on her knees, and he would be good to her, but otherwise he would be more angry than ever.

[72] Scornful silence was the Queen's reply.