Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (9 page)

Cardinal Campeggio, appointed by the pope to consider the case, made his weary and painful journey to England in the summer of 1528; he suffered from gout, and needed many halts along the way. He was awaited with impatience and, as soon as he was lodged at Bath House in London, Wolsey came to importune him. ‘They will endure no procrastination,’ Campeggio told Rome, ‘alleging that the affairs of the kingdom are at a standstill, and that if the cause remains undetermined it will give rise to infinite and imminent perils.’ Unfortunately he was under instruction to delay at all costs.

Soon enough he was granted an audience with the king at the palace of Blackfriars, where the cardinal advised him ‘against attempting this matter’; if necessary the pope would grant Henry a fresh dispensation to unite himself with Katherine. The king listened patiently and then gave what Campeggio described as a ‘premeditated’ answer on the total invalidity of the marriage. It was clear that he was not about to be moved. Then Campeggio offered the suggestion that Katherine should enter a religious house; if she were wedded to God, then Henry would be free to remarry.

So Campeggio and Wolsey visited the queen who, after much reflection, rejected the idea. ‘I intend,’ she told them, ‘to live and die in the state of matrimony, to which God has called me. I will always remain of this opinion, and will never change it.’ Her dignity and self-possession, in the face of intolerable pressure, were remarkable. In this impasse Rome repeated its instructions that nothing should be said or done ‘without a new and express commission from this place’.

The threat to Katherine took a more definite form. It was alleged in the king’s council that a plot, to poison the king and the cardinal, had been discovered; a letter was sent to her on the subject ‘in which if she had any hand, she must not expect to be spared’. It was a crude attempt to subdue her, but it did not succeed. The council also complained that ‘she showed herself much abroad, and by civilities, and by gracious bowing her head, which had not been her custom formerly, did study to work upon the people’. But the crowds of London were already supporting her. Wolsey ordered a search to be made for hackbuts and crossbows, the material of insurrection. The situation had reached a point of crisis, not at all helped by the sudden discovery of what became known as ‘the Spanish brief’; this was another papal dispensation, permitting the marriage of Katherine and Henry.

As the weeks of autumn and winter passed without any progress, Anne Boleyn and Henry became increasingly angry and impatient. The king was besotted by her; he lodged her in the palace at Greenwich and lavished jewels and other presents on her. ‘He sees nothing,’ Campeggio told Rome, ‘he thinks of nothing but Anne.’ In their irritation and anxiety they turned their fire
upon the cardinal. In turn Wolsey berated Campeggio with the threat that, if nothing were done, such a storm would burst that ‘it were better to die than to live’. One of the king’s envoys, Stephen Gardiner, knelt before the pope. ‘You who should be as simple as doves,’ he said in a remarkable act of impropriety, ‘are full of all deceits, and craft, and dissembling.’ The pope had informed Henry that he could not act without hearing the arguments of both sides, and in the spring of 1529 Sir Francis Bryan, a cousin of Anne Boleyn, wrote from Rome that ‘who so ever hath made your grace believe that he would do for you in this cause hath not, I think, done your grace the best service’. He was clearly alluding to the cardinal. Wolsey himself was saying to his confidential servants that he would pursue the matter as far as he could, and then retire voluntarily in order to devote himself to spiritual affairs. He knew well enough, in any case, that his end might be approaching.

On the last day of May 1529, the legatine court under the direction of Wolsey and Campeggio was convened in the parliament chamber at Blackfriars; the king and queen were staying at the palace of Bridewell, close by, and crossed a wooden bridge over the Fleet river to attend the court. They were both summoned to appear on Friday 18 June, but two days before that date Katherine asked to meet the archbishop of Canterbury and eight bishops; she protested against the whole notion of a trial and told them that she wished to refer the matter to Rome. This would ensure an endless process of debate and questioning. She also delivered a formal protest to the two cardinals at Blackfriars, declaring that they were incompetent judges.

On the day appointed the king and queen came to the legatine court, where Henry took his seat under a cloth of state. Campeggio then delivered an oration on the ‘intolerable’ matter of ‘adultery, or rather incest’ that they must now adjudicate.

‘King Harry of England, come into the court!’

‘Here,’ he replied.

‘Katherine queen of England, come into the court!’

She rose without replying and, leaving her small circle of advisers and lawyers, she went over to the king; she knelt at his feet and spoke to him so that all could hear her. ‘I am a poor
woman, and a stranger in your dominions, where I cannot expect good counsel or indifferent judges. I have been long your wife, and I desire to know wherein I have offended you.’ She then pleaded her virginity when she met him, and the fact that she had borne him several children (only one of which, of course, had lived). ‘If I have done anything amiss, I am willing to be put away in shame.’ She spoke a little more, saying that no lawyer in England would, or could, speak freely for her. ‘I desire to be excused until I hear from Spain.’ With that she rose, and made a low curtsy to the king before leaving the court. The cardinals called after her but she made no answer.

The king then spoke to those assembled, stating that she had always been a true and obedient wife. Wolsey rose and denied the reports that he had been the first mover in the matter of the divorce. The king vindicated him and declared that his own scruples of conscience had prompted him. If his marriage were found to be lawful, he would be happy to continue living with the queen. Few in the court believed him.

In succeeding days a number of witnesses were called, the principal among them testifying that Katherine and Prince Arthur had consummated the marriage after their wedding. On leaving the bedroom on the following morning, Arthur had been heard to say that ‘I have been in Spain all night’. One of Katherine’s supporters, John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester, protested against ‘things detestable to be heard’; Wolsey rebuked him and sharp words were exchanged between them.

Charles V sent an envoy to Rome, saying that a verdict against his aunt would be a great dishonour to his family. He insisted that the matter be ‘avocated’ or recalled to Rome, where a more fair investigation would be held; he had also given an undertaking that the pope’s immediate family would be established as the rulers of Florence. An agent for Wolsey, Dr Bennet, threw himself at the feet of the pope and declared, in tears, that then ‘the king and kingdom of England will be certainly lost’. It was unthinkable that his master would appear at a Roman court as a suppliant. Pope Clement wept, and begged for death. On 9 July he called the English ambassadors and told them that the hearing had been
recalled to Rome. ‘I am between the hammer and forge,’ he said. ‘It is impossible to refuse what the emperor now demands, whose forces so surround me.’

Meanwhile Campeggio had been drawing out the process of judgment with a series of delays and procedural questions. By Friday 23 July, it seemed that the end was in sight. But on that day Campeggio adjourned the proceedings until October, on the pretence that he must follow the Roman system of justice. He hoped that a favourable verdict might then be announced. The duke of Suffolk was among those who loudly announced their discontent. ‘By the Mass,’ he said, ‘I see now the truth of what is commonly said, that never cardinal yet did good in England!’ A few days later the letter from the pope, declaring that the court had been recalled to Rome, arrived for the king. The failure of the legatine court to deliver a favourable verdict to Henry was the decisive moment in Wolsey’s career. It is clear enough that he was no longer conducting the affairs of the realm; his last warrant for a royal payment was signed on 18 July, and his last letter to any English envoys was sent on 27 July. He had not yet been dismissed, but the shadow had fallen upon him. Anne Boleyn wrote to him an angry letter, in which she accused him of secretly supporting Katherine’s cause; she now relied only on heaven and the king ‘to set right again those plans which you have broken and spoiled’. One of the attendants at a royal banquet heard a conversation between Anne and the king which he later reported to the cardinal’s usher. ‘There is never a nobleman within this realm,’ she said, ‘that if he had done but half so much as he has done, but he were well worthy to lose his head.’

A book was prepared in which the failures of the cardinal’s administration were outlined; this account of pride and waste and folly was signed by thirty-four of the royal council. The French ambassador was sure of their real intentions. ‘These lords’, he wrote, ‘intend after Wolsey is dead or ruined, to impeach the state of the Church, and take all their goods.’

Henry was not sure how to proceed after the failure of his attempt to procure a favourable court verdict, and so he gathered together a team of scholars and clerics in pursuit of his ‘great matter’. Among these was Thomas Cranmer. The young reader of
divinity at Cambridge suggested that the king could avoid long and fruitless negotiations at Rome by appealing directly to the scholars and universities of Europe; if they declared in his favour, the pope would be obliged to act. As soon as he was informed of Cranmer’s plan the king declared that the cleric ‘had the sow by the right ear’. In time Cranmer became the man to guide the English Reformation.

The king’s envoys visited the universities of Europe in order to gain the opinions of eminent canonists on the prohibitions of Leviticus against marrying a brother’s widow. Some of them could be persuaded by the liberal use of bribes to declare in his favour, but others proved recalcitrant. It was not a wholly successful enterprise. Paris and Bologna, together with six other universities, supported his position. But the divines of Padua, Ferrara and Venice were against him. Poitiers and Salamanca also favoured Katherine. When it was rumoured that even the doctors and proctors of Oxford were opposed, the king wrote a harsh letter to them from Windsor that ended with the words ‘
non est bonum irritare crabrones
’, ‘It is not good to stir a hornets’ nest’. The king also arranged for a sympathetic letter, signed by all the peers and prelates of England, to be dispatched to the pontiff. He had not yet decided to defy the pope and was still willing to persuade him.

By the early autumn of 1529 it was clear to all observers that the time of Wolsey had come to an end. He was no longer one of the king’s confidential councillors, and Henry had been alerted to secret correspondence between Wolsey and the pope. Wolsey’s usher reported that, on one of the last occasions the cardinal was at court, the king took out a letter and was overheard asking him ‘how can that be: is not this in your own hand?’ The nature of the letter is not known, yet it must have contained something to the cardinal’s disadvantage.

On 9 October the first formal charges were laid against Wolsey. He was accused of
praemunire
, or of placing the interests of the pope before those of the king. Since he had become papal legate at Henry’s urgent instigation, this was not the principal issue. The king was attacking the pretensions of the pope as well as the supposed malfeasance of the cardinal. When the writ was issued against Wolsey, it was decreed that all of his lands and
goods were also forfeited to the Crown. His days of glory had come to an end. The cardinal then wrote to Henry pleading for ‘grace, mercy, remission and pardon’. The French ambassador visited him and found him scarcely able to speak. His countenance ‘has lost half of its life’.

Two weeks after Wolsey’s dismissal the king was pleased to invite Thomas More to become the new chancellor. Since More was known to be an avid hunter of heretics, it was evident proof that Henry did not wish to disavow the orthodox Church. In fact More started his pursuit within a month of taking his position; he arrested a citizen of London, Thomas Phillips, on suspicion of heresy. Phillips was interrogated many times and yet refused to admit any guilt; More consigned him to prison, where he remained for three years. It was the beginning of the new chancellor’s campaign of terror against the ‘known men’.

Yet ambiguous words were still coming from the king himself. Even as he was working to obtain papal consent for his separation from Katherine, he was reflecting upon the alternatives. In a heated argument with the queen he had declared that if the pope did not judge the marriage to be null and void, he ‘would denounce the pope as a heretic and marry whom he pleased’. He told the imperial ambassador that Luther had been right to attack the pomp and circumstance of the Church. Yet he saw no certain way forward, and had no grand strategy for religious reformation. He was in any case perplexed and anxious after the uncertain ending of the legatine court. It was reported that he was suffering from insomnia, and was ill in bed ‘in consequence of the grief and anger he had lately gone through’. He spent four hours closeted with the French ambassador, talking over the options and perils that faced him.

Nevertheless Henry now took over the direction and administration of the country. He would never again allow any one minister to determine policy in the manner of Wolsey. Eleven days after the cardinal’s dismissal the king applied the Great Seal, the sign and symbol of royal power, to certain documents in an inner chamber at Windsor; it was a ceremonial occasion, and was duly recorded as such. He gathered a new inner group around him,
among them the dukes of Norfolk and of Suffolk. Even the lord chancellor was a layman, thus breaking an ancient precedent.

One other member of the administration was recruited. Thomas Cromwell had been previously in the service of Wolsey, particularly in the work of dissolving smaller monasteries and nunneries. On his master’s fall he was seen weeping, with a book of prayers to the Virgin in his hand; yet he inveigled himself into the king’s good grace and was nominated for a place in parliament. Soon enough his talent and self-assurance helped him to rise, in a career that has been compared to that of a grand vizier in an eastern despotism, and he became successively royal councillor, master of the king’s jewels, chancellor of the exchequer for life, master of the rolls and secretary of state. Yet he never repudiated his old patron and when granted his own coat-of-arms he adopted Wolsey’s device of the Cornish chough.