Henry’s wrath fell at once on Wolsey. Whatever furtherance or hinderance the Cardinal had given to his remarriage, it was Wolsey who had dissuaded him from acting on his own.
Continuing The English Reformation and Wolsey’s Fall,
our selection from A Short History of the English People by John Richard Green published in 1874. The selection is presented in seven easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.
Previously in The English Reformation and Wolsey’s Fall.
Time: 1529
King and Queen were cited to appear before them when the court again met on June 18th. Henry briefly announced his resolve to live no longer in mortal sin. The Queen offered an appeal to Clement, and on the refusal of the legates to admit it flung herself at Henry’s feet. “Sire,” said Catharine,
I beseech you to pity me, a woman and a stranger, without an assured friend and without an indifferent counsellor. I take God to witness that I have always been to you a true and loyal wife, that I have made it my constant duty to seek your pleasure, that I have loved all whom you loved, whether I have reason or not, whether they are friends to me or foes. I have been your wife for years; I have brought you many children. God knows that when I came to your bed I was a virgin, and I put it to your own conscience to say whether it was not so. If there be any offence which can be alleged against me I consent to depart with infamy; if not, then I pray you to do me justice.”
The piteous appeal was wasted on a king who was already entertaining Anne Boleyn with royal state in his own palace; the trial proceeded, and on July 23rd the court assembled to pronounce sentence. Henry’s hopes were at their highest when they were suddenly dashed to the ground. At the opening of the proceedings Campeggio rose to declare the court adjourned to the following October. The adjournment was a mere evasion. The pressure of the imperialists had at last forced Clement to summon the cause to his own tribunal at Rome and the jurisdiction of the legates was at an end.
“Now see I,” cried the Duke of Suffolk as he dashed his hand on the table, “that the old saw is true, that there was never legate or cardinal that did good to England!” The Duke only echoed his master’s wrath. Through the twenty years of his reign Henry had known nothing of opposition to his will. His imperious temper had chafed at the weary negotiations, the subterfuges and perfidies of the Pope. Though the commission was his own device, his pride must have been sorely galled by the summons to the legates’ court. The warmest adherents of the older faith revolted against the degradation of the Crown. “It was the strangest and newest sight and device,” says Cavendish, “that ever we read or heard of in any history or chronicle in any region that a king and queen should be convented and constrained by process compellatory to appear in any court as common persons, within their own realm and dominion, to abide the judgment and decree of their own subjects, having the royal diadem and prerogative thereof.”
Even this degradation had been borne in vain. Foreign and papal tribunal as that of the legates really was, it lay within Henry’s kingdom and had the air of an English court. But the citation to Rome was a summons to the King to plead in a court without his realm. Wolsey had himself warned Clement of the hopelessness of expecting Henry to submit to such humiliation as this. “If the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate the insult. To cite the King to Rome, to threaten him with excommunication, is no more tolerable than to deprive him of his royal dignity. If he were to appear in Italy it would be at the head of a formidable army.” But Clement had been deaf to the warning, and the case had been avoked out of the realm.
Henry’s wrath fell at once on Wolsey. Whatever furtherance or hinderance the Cardinal had given to his remarriage, it was Wolsey who had dissuaded him from acting, at the first, independently; from conducting the cause in his own courts and acting on the sentence of his own judges. Whether to secure the succession by a more indisputable decision or to preserve uninjured the prerogatives of the papal see, it was Wolsey who had counselled him to seek a divorce from Rome and promised him success in his suit. And in this counsel Wolsey stood alone. Even Clement had urged the King to carry out his original purpose when it was too late. All that the Pope sought was to be freed from the necessity of meddling in the matter at all. It was Wolsey who had forced papal intervention on him, as he had forced it on Henry, and the failure of his plans was fatal to him. From the close of the legatine court Henry would see him no more, and his favorite, Stephen Gardiner, who had become chief secretary of state, succeeded him in the King’s confidence.
If Wolsey still remained minister for a while, it was because the thread of the complex foreign negotiations which he was conducting could not be roughly broken. Here too, however, failure awaited him. His diplomacy sought to bring fresh pressure on the Pope and to provide a fresh check on the Emperor by a closer alliance with France. But Francis was anxious to recover his children who had remained as hostages for his return; he was weary of the long struggle, and hopeless of aid from his Italian allies. At this crisis of his fate therefore Wolsey saw himself deceived and outwitted by the conclusion of peace between France and the Emperor in a new treaty at Cambray. Not only was his French policy no longer possible, but a reconciliation with Charles was absolutely needful, and such a reconciliation could only be brought about by Wolsey’s fall. In October, on the very day that the Cardinal took his place with a haughty countenance and all his former pomp in the court of chancery an indictment was preferred against him by the King’s attorney for receiving bulls from Rome in violation of the Statute of Provisors.
A few days later he was deprived of the seals. Wolsey was prostrated by the blow. In a series of abject appeals he offered to give up everything that he possessed if the King would but cease from his displeasure. “His face,” wrote the French ambassador, “is dwindled to half its natural size. In truth his misery is such that his enemies, Englishmen as they are, cannot help pitying him.” For the moment Henry seemed contented with his disgrace. A thousand boats full of Londoners covered the Thames to see the Cardinal’s barge pass to the Tower, but he was permitted to retire to Esher.
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