HENRY
223
HENRY
natural masterfulness of Henry's character. He had
long shown to discerning eyes, like those of Sir Thomas
More, that he would brook contradiction in nothing.
Without being guilty of notable proflif!;acy in com-
parison with the other monarchs of his time, it is
doubtful if Henry's married life had ever been pure,
even from the first, and we know that in 1519 he had,
by Elizabeth Blount, a son whom, at the age of six,
he made Duke of Richmond. He had also carried on
an intrigue with Mary Boleyn which led to some com-
plications at a later date.
Such was Henry when, probably about the be- ginning of the year 1527, he formed a violent passion ffw Mary's younger sister, Anne. It is possible that the idea of the divorce had suggested itself to the king much earlier than tliis (see Brown, " Venetian Calen- dars", II, 479), and it is highly probable that it was motived by the desire of male issue, of which he had been disappointed by the death in infancy of all Catherine's children save Mary. Anne Boleyn was restrained by no moral scruples, but she saw her opportunity in Henry's infatuation and determined that she would only yield as his acknowledged queen. Anyway, it soon became the one absorbing object of the king's desires to secure a divorce from Catherine, and in the piu-suit of this he condescended to the most unworthy means. He had it put about that the Bishop of Tarbes, when negotiating an alliance in behalf of the French king, had raised a doubt as to the Princess Mary's legitimacy. He also prompted Wolsey, as legate, to hold with Archbishop Warham a private and collusive inquiry, summoning Henry to prove before them that his marriage was valid. The only result was to give Catherine an inkling of what was in the king's mind, and to elicit from her a solemn declaration that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated. From this it followed that there never had been any impediment of "affinity" to bar her union with Henry, but only the much more easily dispensed impediment known as publico honestatis. The best canonists of the time also held that a papal dispensation which formally removed the impedi- ment of affinity also involved by implication that of publicw honestatis, or " puljlic decency". The col- lusive suit was thereupon dropped, and Henry now set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting in tliis independently of Wolsey, to whom he at first communicated nothing of his design so far as it related to Anne. William Knight, the king's secre- tary, was sent to Pope Clement VII (q. v.) to sue for the declaration of the nullity of his union with Cathe- rine, on the ground that the dispensing Bull of Julius II was obreptitious — i. e. obtained by false pretences. Henry also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free, for a dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connexion. This clearly had reference to Anne Boleyn, and the fictitious nature of Henry's conscientious scruples about his marriage is betrayed by the fact that he himself was now applying for a dispensation of precisely the same nature as that which he scrupled about, a dispensation which he later on maintained the pope had no power to grant.
As the pope was at that time the prisoner of Charles V, Knight had some difficulty in obtaining access to him. In the end the king's envoy had to return with- out accomplishing much, though the (contlitional) dispensation for a new marriage was readily accorded. Henry had now no choice but to put his great matter into the hands of Wolsey, and Wolsey, although the whole divorce policy ran counter to his better judg- ment, strained every nerve to secure a decision in his master's favour. An account of the mission of Gar- diner and Foxe and of the failure of the divorce pro- ceedings before the papal commissioners, Wolsey and Campeggio, mainly on account of the production of
the Brief, has been given in some detail in the article
Clement VII (vol. IV, p. 26), to which the reader is
referred. The revocation of the cause to Rome in
July, 1529, owing, no doubt, in part to Queen Cathe-
rine's most reasonable protests against her helpless-
ness in England and the compulsion to which she was
subjected, had many important results. First amongst
these we must count the disgrace and fall of Wolsey,
hitherto the only real check upon Henry's wilfulness.
The incredible meanness of the pra-munire, and conse-
quent confiscation, which the cardinal was pronounced
to have incurred for olitainins; his oardinnlate and
Henry V'III. Drawing by Han8 Holbein
From the original cartoon praserved in the priiit-room
.It Munich
legateship from Rome — though of course this had been done with the king's full knowledge and consent — would alone suffice to stamp Henry as one of the basest of mankind. But, .secondly, we may trace to this same crisis the rise of both Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, the two great architects of Henry's new policy. It was Cranmer who, in the autumn of 1529, made the momentous suggestion that the king should consult the universities of Europe upon the question of the nullity of his marriage, a suggestion which at once brought its author into favour. The project was carried out as soon as possible with a lavish expendi- ture of bribes, and the use of other means of pressure. The result was naturally highly favourable to the king's wishes, though the universities which lay within the dominions of Charles V were not consulted. The answers were submitted to Parliament, where the king still kept up the pretence of having no personal interest in the matter. He professed to be suffering from scruples of conscience, now rendered more acute by such a weight of learned opinion. With the same astuteness he persuaded the leading noliility of the kingdom to write to the pope praying him to give sentence in Henry's favour, for fear that worse might follow. All this drew the king into closer relations with Cranmer, who was made ambassador to the
