Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, came to England in 1501 at sixteen and on 14 November that year married fifteen-year-old Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. Arthur died the following April, and all supposed that his death had ended the union of the English royal house with the ruler of Castile. The Spanish ambassador dutifully reported to Ferdinand the "grounds" for annulling the marriage contract, and Arthur's title of Prince of Wales did not formally pass to his younger brother Henry until two months after his death. But Catherine herself denied that the marriage had been consummated. She had brought a dowry of 200,000 ducats. Henry VII, unwilling to see Catherine go back to Spain with her large dowry, and wishing by marriage to keep his friendship and alliance with the mighty Ferdinand, proposed that Catherine marry Henry, six years her junior. One verse of Scripture (Leviticus 20:21) forbade such a marriage: "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing ... they shall be childless." Elsewhere the Bible teaches the opposite (Deuteronomy 25:5): "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child ... her husband's brother shall take her to him to wife." Warham, the archbishop, opposed the marriage, and Fox, Bishop of Winchester, agreed only if the pope approved. Henry VII put the problem to the pope, and Julius II allowed the marriage (1503). Some jurists, citing Scripture, held the pope competent to allow it, others not. The pope himself was not sure of his competence. The betrothal took place in 1503, but because Henry was not yet twelve the marriage was put off. In 1505 Prince Henry tried to break the contract his father had forced on him, but in view of England's political interests he consented, and the marriage took place in 1509, six weeks after he became king.
No Son
Seven months later (31 January 1510) Catherine bore a child who died in infancy. The next year she bore a son; Henry rejoiced that his male child would inherit the throne and carry on the Tudor line, but within weeks this child too died. Catherine's second and third sons also died after birth (1513 and 1514). The deaths of Catherine's children made Henry think of divorcing his wife for incapacity. Poor Catherine did not give up, and at last in 1516 she bore Mary, who after her father became queen of England. Henry became tender toward his wife, saying, "Now that she has borne a daughter, with God's mercy she will bear a son after." In 1518 Catherine bore another dead child. Since the two-year-old Mary was betrothed to the French king's son, the English feared that if Catherine bore no son Mary's future husband, the French king, would become heir to the English throne and make England a province of France.
The Dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk and Buckingham hoped to break off Mary's betrothal and so keep the English throne from the French. The Duke of Buckingham spoke of it so much and so stubbornly that in the end he was beheaded for treason (1521). Henry said in fear that, having defied God's command with the pope's consent, he had incurred the Creator's wrath. He vowed that if God gave him a son he would fight the Turks. But Catherine bore no more, and in 1525 all Henry's hope of a male heir by her was gone.
Anne Boleyn
Henry had long since driven love of Catherine from his heart. He was now thirty-four, in the heat of youth, while his wife had passed forty and looked older than her years. Catherine had never been an attractive woman, and now long illness and great disappointment had broken body and spirit. She was learned and intelligent, but few men love a wife for her learning. She was also a faithful wife, and next to Spain loved her husband above all else. Regarding herself as Spain's representative, she urged her husband to friendship and alliance with Ferdinand and Charles. In 1518 Henry for the first time since marriage fell for Elizabeth Blount, sister of Mountjoy, Erasmus's friend. In 1519 she bore him a son, whom he made Duke of Richmond and Somerset and meant to make his successor. In 1524 he was caught by another woman, Mary Boleyn. Sir George Throckmorton told him to his face that he had also had improper relations with Mary's mother (I soften the wording). The unwritten law of the time allowed rulers who had married for political reasons, not for love, to consort with other women.
In 1527, or perhaps earlier, Henry turned from Mary and took a fancy to her sister Anne. Their father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, was a well-known merchant and a favorite of the king. Their mother was from the aristocratic Howard family, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Anne was sent to Paris to continue her education, where she entered first the court of Queen Claude and then that of Marguerite of Navarre, and perhaps closeness to Marguerite inclined her to Protestantism. Henry had met her at the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," when she was a lively, nimble girl of thirteen. At fifteen she returned to England (1522) and became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine. Small and slight, swarthy, wide-mouthed and long-necked, she lacked conventional beauty, but her piercing black eyes, auburn hair, kindness, gaiety and wit made Henry, like other men, fall for her. Notable men, the poet Thomas Wyatt and Henry Percy (later Earl of Northumberland), were her ardent suitors. Her enemies spread the story that she had married Percy before she drew close to the king, but there is no evidence for it. We do not know exactly when Henry fell in love with her. The earliest of his surviving love letters to her is dated July 1527.
Was it attachment to Anne that made Henry leave Catherine? Surely since 1514, when Anne was no more than seven, Henry had had in mind to divorce Catherine. But he put off the idea until 1524, when by his own account he broke off marital relations with her. By the evidence, in March 1527, long after he had met Anne, the king resolved to find a way of annulling his marriage to Catherine. When Wolsey went to Paris in July 1527 to bring Renée, daughter of Louis XII, close to Henry, he apparently did not know Henry's intention to marry Anne. The first document of this intention is a letter of the Spanish ambassador to Charles V on 16 August 1527 reporting that in London it was said that if the king divorced Catherine he would marry Sir Thomas Boleyn's daughter. It is unlikely that the ambassador meant Mary, since by the end of 1527 Henry and Anne lived at Greenwich in two adjoining apartments under one roof. Possibly his acquaintance with Anne made him hasten to carry out his purpose. What chiefly led Henry to think of parting from Catherine was the desire for a son who should be undisputed heir to the English throne. The English, who had not forgotten the bitter memory of the strife of York and Lancaster for the crown (1454–1485), wanted nothing else. Forty-two years of Tudor rule had now passed, and the dynasty's continuing without quarrel and bloodshed required Henry to have a son by a lawful wife. So even had he not met and fallen for Anne, Henry would have left Catherine, hoping for a male heir by a future wife.
The Pope in Charles's Hands
Wolsey agreed with the king on the need for separation from Catherine and assured him the pope would confirm it. The pope was competent to annul a marriage where reasons of state required, and annulments by popes were not unprecedented. But the busy cardinal had forgotten two possible factors: he did not know that Henry would marry Anne instead of Renée, and he did not remember that the pope who was to allow Henry's separation was now the prisoner of an emperor who bore Henry a grudge. Probably Charles, so long as his aunt would not agree to the separation, and more so if a new marriage as Wolsey planned would join England with France, would keep the pope from confirming it. The beginning of the English Reformation was owed less to Henry's attachment to Anne than to the stubborn opposition of Catherine and Charles to Henry's lawful wish for a male heir. The Catholic queen of England and the Catholic emperor drove the pope to part England from the Roman Catholic Church. Yet the chief cause of the English Reformation was the growing power of England's ruler, who could no longer overlook papal interference in his country's affairs. This factor, more than Henry's insistence on leaving Catherine, fueled the Reformation in England.
Henry said that the visit of Gabriel de Grammont to England strengthened his resolve to leave Catherine. Grammont, who went to England in February 1527 to discuss Princess Mary's marriage to the French king's son, raised the question of Mary's legitimacy, believing Henry's marriage to Catherine was inconsistent with Scripture and that even the pope had no power to override it. Some thought the story Henry's own invention, but Wolsey told it too, and the conversation was reported to the French government (1528); so far as we know Grammont did not deny it and tried to persuade Pope Clement that Henry's insistence on annulment was lawful and fitting. Charles informed his ambassador in England (29 July 1527) that he would not let Clement grant Henry's request.
Wolsey was still in France when he heard that Henry had resolved to marry Anne instead of Renée. Though he did not hide his dismay at the king's decision, he did not stop working for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine.
In autumn 1527 Henry sent his secretary William Knight to the captive pope with two requests. One was that Clement, given the invalidity of his marriage and Catherine's unwillingness to part, allow the king of England to have two wives at once. At the last moment Henry kept his envoy from presenting this request to the pope. Apparently Henry had given up the idea then. We are therefore surprised that three years later the king received from one of his agents in Rome, Giovanni Casale, a letter dated 18 September 1530: "The pope told me in confidence three days ago that your Majesty may have two wives." Henry's second request is astonishing, for it asked leave to marry a woman whose sister he had been intimate with (I soften the wording). The pope granted this request too, on condition that the marriage with Catherine be annulled. Even so the pope could not himself annul Henry's marriage. Clement feared Charles and did not wish to admit that his predecessor had made a mistake. At the end of 1527 Henry asked Clement to let Wolsey and another papal representative try the validity of his marriage in England. Clement agreed (13 April 1528), sent Cardinal Campeggio to England as his legate, and in a secret letter assured Wolsey and Henry that he would treat his legates' verdict as valid. Apparently after the English king joined Francis (January 1528), declared war on Charles and undertook to free the pope from the emperor's captivity, Clement became friendly to Henry.
Learning of it, Charles protested and, apparently, sent Clement from the Spanish archives a document in which Julius II had declared valid the marriage of Henry and Catherine that Henry and Wolsey now wished to discredit. Clement, who had no strength left, at once sent Campeggio an order not to give a final verdict "without prior consultation ... If so great an injury is done the emperor, all hope of world peace will vanish and the Church, now in the hands of the emperor's agents, will be destroyed forever ... delay the final verdict as long as possible." Arriving in England (October 1528), Campeggio tried to persuade Catherine to retire to a convent. Catherine agreed on condition that Henry in turn take monastic vows. For Henry nothing was harder or more unpleasant than poverty, obedience and chastity. Even so Henry was ready to take the vow, provided the pope promised to release him from it whenever he asked. Campeggio refused to pass this proposal to the pope and instead reported to him (February 1529) that Henry meant to marry Anne. He wrote the pope, "His burning love for Anne is beyond description. Henry sees nothing but her and thinks of nothing else. He cannot bear to be parted from her for even an hour. Knowing that the king's life and his country's fate hang on this fiery love makes me sad and sorrowful."
With the victories of the imperial armies, the pope began to oppose Henry's proposal. French troops, whose cost Henry provided, were beaten in the Italian war, and their defeat made the pope still more subject to the emperor. Florence drove out the Medici rulers, with whose family Clement was closely bound, and Venice, taking advantage of the pope's weakness, detached Ravenna from the Papal States. The pope's fate was now entirely in the emperor's hands. Clement knew it himself, saying on 7 June 1529, "I have firmly resolved to support the emperor till I die." On 29 June of that year he signed the Treaty of Barcelona with the emperor, in which Charles promised to restore Florence to the Medici and Ravenna to the pope and to leave him free. But the treaty provided that the pope was not to annul Henry's marriage against Catherine's wishes. On 5 August Francis I signed the Treaty of Cambrai (the book's date; earlier I gave 3 August), which in effect made Italy and the pope subject to the emperor.
The Trial at Blackfriars
On 31 May, Campeggio, who had put off the matter too long, convened with Wolsey a court to hear the king's suit. Catherine, who had already appealed to Rome, objected to the court's competence. Even so, on 21 June both king and queen appeared. Catherine threw herself at the king's feet and pleaded tearfully that he give up divorcing her. She reminded Henry of their shared pains, her complete loyalty to him and her patience when he spent his time in sports away from town, called God to witness that she had come to the marriage a virgin, and then asked the king how she had ever offended him. Henry raised her from the ground and said he wished only the happiness and well-being of his family and that what now led him to think of parting was merely the interest of the royal house and the nation. Henry then called Catherine's appeal to the pope unjust and intolerable, since Clement was a puppet without will in the emperor's hands. Catherine went out in tears and never attended the court again. Bishop Fisher angered the king by defending the queen's right. The king asked the court to give its verdict as soon as possible; Campeggio adroitly stalled and then, on the pretext of the court's summer recess, left (23 July 1529). To escape giving a verdict, Clement called the case to Rome. Henry, who now hated Catherine more than ever, broke with her and openly took his pleasure with Anne. Apparently more than seventeen love letters sent out of England by Campeggio and now in the Vatican library belong to this period. Anne, who knew the nature of men and kings, had until then apparently tried to content the king with coquetry. But now she began to complain that her youth was passing and that the cardinals, ignoring a girl's wish to marry a happy man, were neglecting the king's lawful right. She accused Wolsey above all of slowness and failure, and the king agreed with her.
The Fall of Wolsey
Although Wolsey was not pleased with the king's wish to marry Anne, he spared no effort to satisfy Henry's desire. He sent large sums to Rome to bribe the cardinals, but Charles sent, besides money, an army to Rome. To satisfy the king Wolsey even proposed that he marry two wives, as Luther would do a few years later. Even so Wolsey knew that Anne and her powerful relatives were working to bring him down. So he tried to win her over with costly gifts, but the delay in annulling Henry's marriage to Catherine made Anne angrier at Wolsey. He spoke of Anne as an enemy who thought day and night of destroying him. He saw that once Henry's marriage to Catherine was annulled Anne would become queen of England and destroy him; and that if his efforts failed the king would remove him for slowness and failure and demand a strict audit of his chancellorship.
The king's discontent with his chancellor was not without cause. Wolsey's foreign policy had come to nothing, and his turn away from Charles and tie with France had brought England very heavy losses. Now few in England spoke kindly of the cardinal who had once been the country's powerful man. The clergy hated his arbitrary rule; the monks feared more monasteries would be dissolved by him; the people, who had lost children and property in useless, fruitless wars, loathed him; the merchants, whose trade with Flanders his enmity with Charles had disrupted, bore him a grudge; and the nobles, offended by Wolsey's extortion, galling arrogance and growing wealth, were his enemies. The French ambassador wrote (17 October 1529) that some of the country's nobles "intend after Wolsey's death or fall to free themselves from the Church's rule and seize the Church's property and Wolsey's wealth." The clothworkers of Kent said the cardinal should be put in a leaking boat and sent out to sea.
Henry was shrewder than that. On 9 October 1529 one of the king's lawyers drew up a bill of indictment against Wolsey, charging that in exercising his powers as papal legate he had violated the Statute of Praemunire (1392), which condemned to forfeiture of property subjects of England who brought papal bulls into England; and he summoned him to answer in the king's court. Wolsey, though appointed papal legate in England at the king's own request and using his powers in that office mostly for the king's benefit, knew that if he appeared the king's judges would convict him. So he wrote a petition of obedience and devotion to the king, confessed his faults and asked that the king not forget his faithful service. Then he left London by the Thames. At Putney a friendly message from the king reached him. On receiving it Wolsey fell to the ground and thanked God. Henry seized Wolsey's costly palace at Whitehall but left him the archbishopric of York and so many belongings that moving them to his new archiepiscopal seat took 160 horses and 72 wagons. After Wolsey's fall the Duke of Norfolk became prime minister, and Thomas More chancellor of England (November 1529).
Death at Leicester
For about a year the unlucky cardinal took on his new duties with admirable piety and conscientiousness. He regularly visited churches, took pains to repair them, and judged people's disputes as a trusted arbiter. His popularity in the north of England grew so great that a man of Yorkshire said, "Was anyone ever so loved as his Grace the Cardinal before he came to you, and is anyone now more beloved than he?" But as the fear of death faded, Wolsey's ambition returned. He began writing to Eustace Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador in England. These letters are lost, but a report from Chapuys to Charles says, "I had a letter from the cardinal's physician writing that the cardinal expects the pope to tighten his censures and resort to force," meaning excommunication, interdict and civil war. The Duke of Norfolk, who got wind of this correspondence, arrested Wolsey's physician and, by means unknown, got from him a confession that the cardinal had been urging the pope to excommunicate Henry. It is unclear whether the letters ascribed to the emperor's ambassador and Wolsey's physician were genuine and how far the physician, if he wrote such a letter, reflected Wolsey's view. At all events an order for Wolsey's arrest was issued by Henry or his prime minister.
Wolsey, without protesting his arrest, took leave of his household and set out for London (4 November 1530). Dysentery put him to bed at Sheffield Park, where the king's soldiers, sent to arrest him, found him. He set out with the soldiers, but after two days' march such weakness took him that his guards let him lie down at Leicester Abbey. There he said to the commander of the king's soldiers, Sir William Kingston, words that Cavendish recorded and Shakespeare took up: "If I had served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me over in my gray hairs." On 29 November 1530, at fifty-five, Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey.