Six Wives (33 page)
Authors: David Starkey
Catherine had then, according to this account, resorted to a woman's prerogative, 'bursting into tears and being too agitated to reply'. The effect (and no doubt the intended one) was to unman Henry. Instead of forcing a separation as he intended, he made a clumsy attempt to comfort her. 'All should be done for the best,' he mumbled. Then he 'begged her to keep secrecy upon what he had told her' and fled. It was a less than convincing display of patriarchal power.
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But the evidence from Henry's side suggests that there had been steel behind Catherine's tears. 'The Queen', Wolsey wrote to Henry, relaying what he had heard from his Court agent Sampson, 'was very stiff and obstinate, affirming that your brother did never know her carnally, and that she desired counsel [that is, legal advice] as well of your subjects as of strangers.'
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Wolsey had immediately smelled a rat. Catherine must have been (as we know she was) forewarned and forearmed. 'This device could never come of her head, but of some that were learned [legally expert].' Indeed, to his anguish, Wolsey realised that Catherine had put her finger on the weakness in Henry's case. 'These were the worst points that could be imagined for the impeaching [preventing] of this matter . . . that she would resort to the counsel of strangers [foreigners] . . . and . . . intended to make all the counsel of the world, France except, as a party against it.' Henry had envisaged the case as England
versus
Catherine. Thanks to Catherine's intrepidity, Wolsey feared, it was turning into the World
versus
England and England's King.
versus
Catherine. Thanks to Catherine's intrepidity, Wolsey feared, it was turning into the World
versus
England and England's King.
* * *
It was Round One to Catherine. Hence Wolsey's urgent advice to Henry to avoid alienating her further. Instead, he recommended, 'your Grace should handle her both gently and doucely [sweetly or softly]'. Henry, after a moment of doubt when he thought that Wolsey himself was going soft on the case, agreed.
The new treatment seemed to work, as Sampson reported on 25 July. The royal family – Henry, Catherine and Mary – were all at Court and Sampson, as he told Wolsey, had carefully observed their mutual demeanour. It was most satisfactory:
The Great Matter [the code name for the Divorce] is in very good train; good countenance, much better than was in mine opinion; less suspicion or little, the merry visage is returned not less than was wont. The other party [Catherine], as your Grace knoweth, lacketh no wit, and so sheweth highly in this matter.
The Court had moved from Hunsdon to Beaulieu on the 23rd. The King had been ready early. 'Yet he tarried for the Queen. And so they rode forth together.' They were once more the very image of a happy couple.
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* * *
But Catherine could dissemble too. As Wolsey suspected, she had immediately seen that if Henry needed secrecy, she could only gain from broadcasting her plight. Rumour and the force of public opinion would do part of her work for her. Indeed their operations had already started and, according to the Spanish ambassador, 'the affair is as notorious as if it had been proclaimed by the public crier'. But Catherine had a more specific target, her nephew Charles V. For the last few years he had neglected her. But now, in her hours of need, she was confident that he would not let her down. She was right.
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But first, she had to get in touch with him directly. The Spanish ambassador, though he reported her plight sympathetically, was reluctant to be involved too openly, lest he wreck the already shaky relations between the two countries. So she would have to find her own messenger. She had the ideal candidate: her Spanish servant, Francisco Felipez. Felipez, who was one of the Queen's sewers (waiters at table), had been in her service since her days as Princess of Wales. He was utterly loyal to her, 'and hath been always privy unto the Queen's affairs and secrets'. She decided to send him to Charles in Spain 'with a letter explaining the position in which she is now placed'. But how to get him past the English authorities?
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There now ensued an elaborate game of bluff and double bluff. Felipez approached the King directly to ask for permission to go to Spain, using the excuse (which was, even then, an old one) of 'visit[ing] his mother, who is very sore sick'. To divert suspicion, Catherine ostentatiously refused her consent and asked Henry to do the same. Henry immediately saw through the scheme. But instead of keeping Felipez at home, he decided to outwit both his wife and her servant. Publicly, he gave Felipez permission. But, privately, he ordered Wolsey to have Felipez picked up in France. Wolsey, though he praised Henry's cunning to his face, immediately realised that the King might have been too clever by half: what if Felipez bypassed France and sailed directly for Spain? Which of course he did.
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Felipez arrived at Valladolid by late July and Charles's response was immediate. He was shocked 'to hear of a case so scandalous'. And he was galvanised into action. He wrote to Henry, to ask him to think again. He wrote to Catherine, to offer his full support. He wrote to Pope Clement, alerting him to 'this ugly affair' and suggesting that, in view of Wolsey's partisanship, he revoke his legacy (special powers). Finally, he sent to Rome a special envoy, Quinones, the General of the Order of St Francis, who was 'fully . . . qualified for this sort of business', and who indeed became an ardent and effective partisan of Catherine's.
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Catherine had appealed to Caesar. And the Emperor, as she hoped, had informed the world. He was also, as Catherine likewise hoped and Wolsey feared, beginning to get the world on her side – on Catherine's side against Henry.
* * *
With the single bold gesture of the Felipez mission, Catherine had turned 'the Great Matter' from an English question into an international one. In so doing, she had turned the tables: Henry might win in England; she would be victorious abroad.
34. Between trials
C
atherine's coup in 1527 with the Felipez mission had internationalised the Divorce; it would take Henry and Wolsey almost eighteen months of frantic effort to repatriate it. She had also torn the veil of secrecy off the Great Matter and it could never be put back. Things were out in the open, and when the case next came to trial it would be in open court. The tribunal would be a stage, towards which the eyes of all Europe would turn. And Catherine would give the performance of her life.
atherine's coup in 1527 with the Felipez mission had internationalised the Divorce; it would take Henry and Wolsey almost eighteen months of frantic effort to repatriate it. She had also torn the veil of secrecy off the Great Matter and it could never be put back. Things were out in the open, and when the case next came to trial it would be in open court. The tribunal would be a stage, towards which the eyes of all Europe would turn. And Catherine would give the performance of her life.
* * *
But, meanwhile, she had to wait and to see. What would King Henry do? How would Pope Clement respond? Who would take her side and who her husband's? She was not passive, of course. But, as Henry was the aggressor, the initiative belonged to him. The strain, the insecurity began to tell. Above all, she suffered bitter pangs at her husband's personal rejection of her. That autumn, she found a confidant in Juan Luis Vives.
Vives had left England in May 1527 to spend the summer in the Netherlands. He returned, as agreed, in late September, 'to teach the most illustrious lady Princess the Latin language, and such precepts of wisdom as would arm her against any adverse fortune'. Instead, he found another more in need of his services as a comforter: Mary's mother, Catherine herself.
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Catherine took the first step. 'Troubled and afflicted with this controversy that had arisen about her marriage, [she] began to unfold . . . this her calamity' to Vives 'as her compatriot and [one who] used the same language'. It was probably the first time she had been able to talk freely about the matter in her native tongue to an intelligent and sympathetic listener. The emotional release proved too much. She broke down and cried like any other woman.
She wept over her destiny, that she should find him, whom she loved far more than herself, so alienated from her that he thought of marrying another; and this affected her with a grief the more intense as her love for him was the more ardent.
Vives offered her Job's comfort: God chastised those whom He loved. 'Who can blame me', Vives demanded, 'that I listened to a miserable and afflicted woman? that I soothed her by discourse and conversation?'
But the talk soon turned from these pious generalities to the more dangerous topic of the Great Matter itself. 'As we went on, we spoke more warmly, and proceeded to the discussion and examination of the cause.' Catherine told Vives that she was unable to find out what Henry had decided to do next, 'for it was concealed from all excepting very few'. But the 'report and common opinion was . . . that the cause was remitted to Rome'. She was desperately anxious that her case should not go unheard in Rome, as it had threatened to do in Wolsey's court at York Place. So, once again, she turned to the Emperor. Her agent lay to hand: she would use Vives as her go-between. He was commanded 'to go to the Emperor's ambassador, and to ask him, on her behalf, to write to request the Emperor that he would deal with the Pope that she might . . . be heard before his Holiness decided on her cause'. Ambassador Mendoza promised Vives that he would write as Catherine wished.
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Mendoza was as good as his word. On 26 October he wrote in unusually blunt terms to his master. 'The divorce is more talked of than ever,' he reported. 'If therefore the Emperor really has the Queen's honour and peace of mind at heart, orders should be sent to Rome for a trusty messenger to bring us the Pope's decision.' Catherine had also sent the ambassador, probably by Vives as well, an appeal in her own name to her nephew. Mendoza explained that he was sending Catherine's letter separately, 'that it may be safe in case of [this] being intercepted'.
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The precaution worked and Catherine's letter reached its destination. It also shows that her claims of ignorance need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Her particular fears, she explained to Charles, arose from a meeting summoned for 15 November, when 'all the lawyers of the kingdom shall meet together and discuss whether I am or am not his lawful wife'. Their opinions, she continued, were to be collected together and forwarded to Pope Clement to serve as the basis for his decision.
Catherine, indeed, was extraordinarily well informed. The 15 November meeting, which followed up an earlier discussion at Hampton Court in October, was to take soundings on the 'King's Book'. This was an elaborately referenced position-paper, setting out Henry's case. It had been assembled that summer by a team of theologians and canon lawyers working with Henry's active participation and under his personal direction. The work had proceeded in strict secrecy; likewise the discussion-seminars. The Queen can only have heard about the November meeting from one of those summoned.
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This pattern would repeat itself. For the Divorce was a parting of the ways for the political establishment of Tudor England. Some remained true to Henry through thick and thin. But others found that they were drawn, inexorably and against their better interest, to Catherine. For some it was a matter of high, conscientious principle; for others, there were mundane reasons, such as family ties to the Queen's Household or the ancient, semi-feudal loyalty of servant to mistress. Those who sided with the Queen included many whom Henry regarded as his closest friends and advisers. Only the bravest of them dared act openly for her. But many betrayed Henry in secret by a whispered word or a carefully discarded paper: his ambassador in France; the Clerk of the Privy Council; one of his key agents in Rome. The result was that the King could do nothing in his Great Matter without Catherine knowing, and without Catherine broadcasting it to the world. The walls of his private apartments seemed to have ears. Was he safe in the Council Chamber? Or the confessional? Could he trust even Wolsey?
A cancer of suspicion and paranoia had planted itself in the King's mind. It would grow until it destroyed the whole political world of his youth – that carefree world of jousts and revels which he and Catherine had built together.
One of the first victims was Richard Pace, scholar, gossip and the sharpest pen in early Tudor England. The strain of serving two masters – Wolsey and Henry – had already driven him to a sort of nervous breakdown. He gave up politics and went back to the world of scholarship in which he had begun. The rest-cure worked and he recovered. But he could not escape his past, for the Divorce had now politicised scholarship itself. In the earliest days of the controversy, Pace was a strong supporter of Henry and recruited, for the King, Robert Wakefield, the greatest Hebrew scholar in England. But in the summer of 1527, Pace underwent a conversion and, swinging from one extreme to the other, became a violent partisan of Catherine.
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As usual with him, it was all or nothing. He spoke 'to the King touching this matter of the Queen and the government of the Cardinal' (Wolsey was widely blamed in the Queen's circle for instigating the Divorce). And he went beyond words to action. The result was pure cloak and dagger. Pace got in touch with Mendoza via a friendly English merchant. The message was: 'if he only would send one of his servants to speak with him [the Emperor's] interests might be served'. Mendoza duly sent one of his staff, who spoke English. Mendoza must meet with him at once, Pace insisted, 'and named the Church of St Paul's as the place of meeting least likely to arouse suspicion'. Wisely, ambassador Mendoza did not keep the rendezvous. But his member of staff had been tailed to Pace's house. On 25 October Pace was arrested and sent to the Tower. He knew too much.
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* * *
The following February, Wolsey was able to make a wider trawl through the ranks of the Queen's supporters. At the end of January, England joined France in declaring war on Charles V. High words were exchanged but no gunfire, since neither side actually wanted conflict. But the phoney war gave the opportunity to break diplomatic immunity. In Spain, Charles V carried out a mass detention of ambassadors; in England, Wolsey ordered the lightning arrest of Mendoza. It was done under cover of a summons to Court. But instead of being taken to the palace, the ambassador was led to 'a house which he did not know' and told that, unless he handed over the key to the strong-box containing his papers, it would be broken open. Mendoza managed to slip the key to his Secretary, who got back to the Embassy before the guards and removed and secreted safely 'all the letters and ciphers relating to the Emperor's affairs'.
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