1528 with the widow of a brother; to which it was replied, that by a passage in Deuteron. (xxv., 5), the prohibition was not universal, and that in Henry's case, such a marriage was lawful. The advocates of the divorce, therefore, abandoned the arguments from Scripture, and questioned the validity of the dispensation on three grounds. 1.-Because it was not sufficiently ample. 2. Because it had been obtained under false pretences; the marriage having been sought, so the bull stated, for the sake of peace between England and Spain, although such peace was then actually subsisting. 3. Because it had been solicited without the consent of Henry, the party chiefly interested in it.* The dispensing power of the Pope was, thus, not questioned by the King's advocates, farther than in its application to prohibitions which were of divine authority, and therefore generally binding; and the court of Rome did not dare to lay claim, openly and distinctly, to an extension of its exercise. Thomas Aquinas, Henry's favourite author, lays it down distinctly, that this dispensing power of the Pope had no authority to alter or set aside the divine law, but only the laws of the church.† But the law forbidding marriage with a brother's widow was prescribed only to the Jewish people, and formed a part of their purely national code. Still it was a divine law; yet on the other hand it was not a regulation which was binding upon Christians, but had, with other prohibitions, been transplanted by the sovereigns of all Christian countries into their respective codes; and the church had by long usage and by its written canons adopted it. Therefore, so far as Christians were concerned, it was not a law of divine authority, but one which had been laid down by the church; and it was naturally concluded that the highest authority of the church might dispense with a regulation to which the church had subjected its members. This was a reasonable construction, fatal to Henry's pretensions, but gave a new sense and a more limited authority to the Levitical law.t The popular 34. Popular opinion opposed to the divorce. feeling was opposed to the divorce. "The people," says Mackintosh, "ignorant of law, but moved by generous feeling, saw nothing in the transaction but the sacrifice of an innocent woman to the passions of a dissolute monarch, which was in truth its most important and essential character."§ * Lingard, VI., 119; Burnet's Reformation, I., 72. † Hume IV., 165. Mackintosh, II., 155-157; Froude, I., 120-123; Lingard, VI., Appendix, note B. § History, II., 154. CHAP. II. Two men had the "courageous honesty" to stand in opposition to the King's desire. These were Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Winchester, who, after reading the treatise which Henry had written upon the subject, declined to support the divorce. During the summer of 1528 a plague broke out in London called the Sweating Sickness. Public business was suspended; the court broke up; and Henry, Anne, and the cardinal all fled from one another to escape infection. The former passed the time in religious exercises with his wife, and it was thought that the visitation would lead him to abandon his project. But no sooner had the contagion ceased than he recalled Anne to court, and in a few weeks all his former hopes were revived by the arrival of Cardinal Campeggio (October 7th, 1528). On Sunday (November 8th), Henry held a great council of peers, prelates, and judges, in the great hall of his palace of Bridewell, and the mayor and chief citizens of London also attended. After explaining to them the motives which had induced him to join France against the Emperor (for as the war had interrupted the commerce between England and Flanders, and thus injured the woollen trade, there had been great discontent among the people), Henry described to them the scruples he had long entertained on account of his marriage, and the inducements which had led him to solicit from the Pope a commission of inquiry. He then concluded by noticing the popular murmurings against the divorce, and cautioned those present, and through them all his subjects, that they should answer with their heads if they presumed to talk any more about the matter. 35. The Commission of Inquiry. The next seven months were consumed in negotiations, and attempts at reconciliation. Campeggio pretended that the matter had become surrounded with so many perplexities since his arrival, that he must write to Rome for fresh instructions. At the time that the Pope's answer was expected, intelligence arrived (February, 1529) that he was dying, and was probably now dead. This news once more turned Wolsey's ambition towards the tiara, and Henry and Francis united their efforts to place it on his head. But Clement unexpectedly recovered. Soon after this, Francis and the Emperor secretly signed the preliminaries which afterwards led to the peace of Cambray; the Pontiff had some time before made his peace with Charles on very advantageous terms, so that everything appeared to be going against Henry; he was dismayed and irritated, and the divorce seemed farther off than ever. At last the legates opened their court (May 31st, 1529), in the parliament 1529 chamber at the Blackfriars, and they summoned the King and Queen to appear on the 18th of June. Catherine protested against the commission, and appealed to the Pope, but her appeal was unnoticed, and the cause proceeded. It was not, however, the intention of Campeggio to hasten to a decision; fresh devices were constantly adopted to prolong the suit, and among other expedients he suspended the sittings of the court from July to October, because that period was the long vacation of the papal courts in Rome. But in less than a fortnight after the court had dissolved, it was known that Clement had revoked the commission, and cited Henry to appear by attorney in the papal court. 36. Wolsey's disgrace, fall, and death. Though Wolsey had his own reasons for coming to a speedy decision, he nevertheless consented to these proceedings of his colleague, and the decision of the Pope, although at the same time he advised the King to effect the divorce by ecclesiastical authority within the realm, and then to confirm it by act of parliament.* But the King began to consider him as a minister of too much refinement and duplicity, who was aiming at doing equally well with the papal and royal courts; both Catherine's and her rival's friends sought his overthrow, and all parties secretly and openly united to destroy the man who had been so long a domineering favourite. The proofs of his disgrace became daily more manifest. He was not invited to court; his opinion on matters of state was seldom asked, and even his letters were intercepted and opened. The King's hostility was kept alive by Anne and her friends, who insinuated that the cardinal had never been in earnest in the prosecution of the divorce, and that he had uniformly sacrificed the interests of his sovereign to those of the King of France. Aware of their hostility, Wolsey rested all his hopes on the result of a personal interview, and after many disappointments was at last gratified. He obtained permission to accompany Campeggio, when that prelate took leave of the King at Grafton (September 20th, 1529). The Italian was received with every respect; no preparation was made for the cardinal's reception; but, to the surprise of all, the King received his minister" with amiable cheer as ever he did," and held a private conference with him. Wolsey's enemies now trembled for their own safety; but they were relieved from their apprehensions by the ascendancy of Anne; and when the cardinal returned to the court next day, in obedience to the royal command, he found that the King had * Lingard, VI., 154. + Cavendish. CHAP. II. gone with his mistress to Hartwell. They never met each other after that day. When Michaelmas Term opened (October 9th), Wolsey went with his usual state to preside in the Court of Chancery; on the same day the Attorney-General filed two bills against him in the King's Bench, charging him with procuring bulls from Rome without the royal licence, and thus transgressing the Statute of Præmunire (16 Richard II.). The charge was "the consummation of injustice," because Wolsey had obtained these bulls with the knowledge, and for the service, of the King; and he had executed them under the King's own sanction. This stroke plunged him into despair. On the 17th of October he resigned the great seal, and retired from his noble palace of York Place (now Whitehall) to the humbler dwelling of Esher, in Surrey, a seat belonging to his bishopric of Winchester. Still the King occasionally evinced some gleams of kindness towards him; but his enemies had now gone too far to retreat with safety, and they sedulously laboured to keep alive the royal displeasure against him. On the 1st of December, the Lords, with Sir Thomas More, the new chancellor, at their head, presented an address to the King, enumerating forty-four real or imaginary offences he had committed, and praying that he might no more have any power, jurisdiction, or authority, within the realm. This address was sent to the Commons, to be drawn up in a bill of impeachment, but the more serious parts of it were confuted with such ability by Thomas Cromwell, the cardinal's late secretary, that it was found impossible to prosecute the accusation of treason. Wolsey had pleaded guilty to the indictment charging him with a breach of the Statute of Præmunire, and the court of Star Chamber had consequently pronounced that he was outlawed, his lands and chattels forfeited, and his person at the King's mercy. Through the influence of Cromwell, who had now entered the King's service, he was pardoned, and allowed to retire to his diocese of York (April, 1530). He arrived at Cawood Castle about the end of September, and while preparing for his installation in the archiepiscopal throne on the 7th November, was suddenly arrested, on the 4th, by the Earl of Northumberland, he who had been the discarded suitor of Anne Boleyn. He was carried first to Lord Shrewsbury's castle at Sheffield, where he was seized with a dysentery, which confined him a fortnight, and afterwards to Leicester Abbey, where he died, on the 29th of November, in *Mackintosh. 1530 the 60th year of his age. On the day before his death, Kyngston, the lieutenant of the Tower, entered the chamber of the dying cardinal, and it was to that officer that he addressed those memorable words, in which he so well described the character of Henry, and so bitterly spoke of the time he had spent in the royal service. "Henry," he said, "is a prince of most royal courage; rather than miss any part of his will, he will endanger one half of his kingdom." And then of himself he said, "Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is my just reward for my pains and study; not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my prince."* "Had such feelings," says Mackintosh, "pervaded his life, instead of shining at the moment of his death, his life would have been pure; especially if his conception of duty had been as exact as his sense of its obligation was strong." An unmerited interest is reflected back on his life by the suddenness and violence of his fall; his rule was not good for England, and he hardly deserves the honour of being ranked among English statesmen. As Henry became more irritated at the dissimulating policy of Rome, and approached his final determination to set at nought the papal authority, he must have perceived that Wolsey was an unsuitable instrument for such a daring policy. "The church and court of Rome had too many holds on the cardinal. It was the divergence of their political schemes which loosened the ties between the King and the cardinal;" and it was the hand of Anne Boleyn which at last brought him to the ground, "to clear the field for counsellors more irreconcilable to the Supreme Pontiff.”‡ SECTION III.-FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE END OF THE REIGN. 1530-1547. I. THE DIVORCE, AND THE ABOLITION OF PAPAL SUPREMACY. 37. General character of the period. We have now arrived at a great period of English history, in which the events are so complicated and contradictory, and the conduct of men so crooked and uncertain, that we have to feel our way amongst them, and act with the greatest caution. England was about to witness a greater revolution than any she had hitherto undergone; a revolution that was to endure * Cavendish. † Mack. II., 167. Mackintosh, II., 167; See Froude's opinion, which differs from that expressed in the text. I., 148. |