CRISTO RAUL.ORG

READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

CHAPTER XX.

The Divorce of Henry VIII and the English Schism.

The separation of England from the Holy See was not like that of Germany, the result of a combined movement of the common people and the learned classes; it arose rather from the sensual passion and autocratic temper of the sovereign, and consequently for a considerable length of time had a schismatical rather than an heretical character. The separation was favoured by the ecclesiastical and political development of the nation, which since the fourteenth century had begun to slacken its ties with Rome. The dependence of the clergy on the throne had already become close under the first Tudor, Henry VII, whose accession, in 1485, not only put an end to the “War of the Roses” of the houses of York and Lancaster, but was the beginning, especially for England, of a new epoch. Henry VII resembled in character Ferdinand the Catholic. A man with strong gifts of government, imbued with a sense of the prerogatives of the Crown, he let the weight of his authority fall heavily on the nobility and the Church. When he died, on the 21st of April 1509, he had laid deep the foundations of absolute monarchy in England; the Parliament had learned docility, the nobles and church­men submission. His successor, Henry VIII, then in his eighteenth year, determined in these respects to walk firmly in his father’s footsteps. The capricious and despotic side of his character was at first kept in the background; all the more conspicuous was his love of pleasure and enjoyment. Good-looking, expert in all chivalrous accomplishments, the youthful King made a most favourable impression on the people by his spendthrift liberality, his splendid appearance, and the endless succession of festivities at his court. Nor was England long in playing a great and often successful part in the politics of Europe. After the dissolution of Parliament in 1515 the King and his Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, governed without it.

Wolsey’s position, not only as a politician but as an ecclesiastic, was an exceptional one. Since 1518 he had held the rank of Papal Legate; this office had been conferred on him at first for one year, and the tenure of it was afterwards prolonged to three. The extensive faculties thus acquired, and the extraordinary plenary powers, as visitor of monasteries, wrung by him from Leo X in August 1518, gave him an altogether abnormal influence over Church affairs. He made use of it without scruple to gratify his love of power and wealth. Still dissatisfied with what he had already attained, this ambitious man demanded from Adrian VI that his legatine office should be extended to the term of his natural life.

Luther’s new doctrine had found adherents also in England. Wolsey was comparatively lenient in his punishment of such; he indeed threatened them with the laws against heresy, but was restrained from enforcing them by his temperament of man of the world. The Cardinal endeavoured to maintain discipline and order among the clergy. Worthy also of recognition are his benefactions to the University of Oxford, where he raised a lasting memorial to his name in the truly regal foundation of Christ Church. It was characteristic of him that he obtained the necessary means by the dissolution of monasteries, under special powers obtained after a struggle from Clement VII.

The English King, in recompense for his book against Luther, had received from Leo X the title of “Defensor Fidei,” from Clement VII the golden rose, and from Luther, on the other hand, a “counter-reply of unspeakable coarseness and obscenity.” Henry complained of Luther’s insults to the Elector of Saxony, and employed Thomas More and John Fisher to compose fresh refutations of the reformer. Nevertheless, Luther for some time afterwards indulged in the flattering hope that he might make a convert of the King of England, to whom with this object he addressed a very servile letter in September 1525 begging for pardon. But Henry dismissed his approaches with contempt. Ten years later the same King tried by flattery to obtain from the doctor of Wittenberg an opinion favourable to his divorce. Only this one circumstance, only the desire to discard his lawful wife in order to marry a wanton, was the cause that led Henry to rend asunder the links that for nearly a thousand years had bound his kingdom to the See of Peter.

Soon after his accession, Henry VIII had married the widow of his brother Arthur, Catherine of Aragon, who, as a daughter of King Ferdinand the Catholic, was the aunt of Charles V. On the 26th of December 1503 Pope Julius II had issued a Bull granting the necessary dispensation from the obstacle to a valid marriage caused by the first degree of affinity. Catherine was five years older than Henry, but from the first the marriage appeared to be a perfectly happy one. Five children, three boys and two girls, were born, but the only one who lived was Mary, born in 1516. The Queen, as pious and virtuous as she was tender-hearted, bore these successive losses with Christian resignation. Like others of her countrywomen she aged early; she also had frequent illnesses, and the hope of a male heir vanished. Consequently the passionate King turned to other women. As early as 1519 he had adulterous relations with Elizabeth Blount and later with Mary Boleyn. Yet so little did the thought of a divorce occupy his mind that in 1519 he commissioned the Florentine sculptor, Pietro Torregiano, who had also executed the monument of his father, to prepare for him and his wife a common tomb.

That Henry VIII had other mistresses besides the two already named is probable, but not proven. According to his own testimony, conjugal relations between him and the Queen had ceased since 1524. The King, moreover, asseverated that serious scruples had arisen in his mind regarding the validity of his marriage; as the Scripture forbade marriage with a brother’s wife, he feared that he might have been living incestuously with Catherine. It became evident only too soon that this scruple coincided with the passion, amounting almost to ail obsession, which seized him in 1526. A lady of Catherine’s court, Anne Boleyn, had by her attractions aroused the King’s sensual admiration. Her resistance to his unlawful addresses, mingled as it was with coquetry, kindled her suitor’s ardour to the highest pitch. Anne was sister of that Mary Boleyn who had previously been Henry’s mistress. A marriage with her was confronted by exactly the same obstacle, only in an intensified degree, as that which now so grievously troubled the tender conscience of the King with regard to his union with Catherine.

The bold thought of ousting the legitimate Queen and supplanting her could hardly have entered into the head of Anne Boleyn. Behind her stood two members of the great English nobility: her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Duke of Suffolk. For long these two had looked with jealousy and hatred on the position of Cardinal Wolsey in the councils of the King. From this quarter came the notion of a divorce; the idea itself originated in a subtly contrived plan to overthrow the all-powerful Chancellor. Should the divorce and the marriage with Anne succeed, the downfall of the Cardinal would follow upon them; if they did not succeed, then Wolsey would incur the King’s wrath on account of their miscarriage, so that in either case the fall of the hated favourite seemed certain. In entire contradiction to the facts is the theory, at one time often upheld, that Wolsey, who was at first antagonistic, had, against his better conscience, and to his own undoing, consented to become the King’s tool in carrying out the business, and was the originator of the scheme of divorce.

It is impossible to say precisely at what moment the thought of divorce in order to remarry with Anne Boleyn took possession of Henry, at first as a secret between him and his advisers of the Norfolk party, and without Wolsey’s previous knowledge; the scheme can be traced back as far as the spring of 1527, when Henry took the first steps towards its realization. With a cunning dishonesty he managed at first to conceal the design lurking in his heart from those who were not initiated, even from Wolsey. The strange circumstance that, all at once, after eighteen years’ marriage with Catherine, conscientious objections to the validity of that union should have arisen within him, he explained by referring to expressions used by the French Bishop, Gramont of Tarbes, who, in March and April 1527, stayed in England as head of an embassy to the English court, and then discussed a proposal of marriage between Mary, Henry’s daughter, and Francis I or one of his sons. The Bishop, so Henry asserted at a later date, had given utterance to suspicions of the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, as the marriage of Henry and Catherine had not been valid. There can be no doubt that the words attributed to the Bishop of Tarbes were a pure invention and Henry’s pretended scruples sheer hypocrisy.

On the day after the departure of the French Ambassador (May 8th) Wolsey appears to have been initiated, for the first time, into the secret of the divorce, but not in any way into the ulterior object, the fresh marriage with Anne Boleyn. If at first he made objections and pointed out difficulties, later events showed that his opposition could not have lasted very long nor have been of great importance; for on the 17th of May he was already holding, after previous arrangement with Henry, as Apostolic Legate, with Archbishop Warham of Canterbury as assessor, a Court of Justice before which the King was cited “to answer for eighteen years’ sinful cohabitation with Catherine.” The whole business had been preconcerted; by means of this farce a sentence of divorce in Henry’s favour was to be concocted, so that the King, by contracting a fresh marriage, might establish as soon as possible an accomplished fact. After two further sittings, on the 20th and 31st of May, it became evident that this was not the way by which the desired end was to be reached. It was now determined to try to obtain, as far as possible, episcopal sanction for the divorce. Opinions were invited from bishops and canonists, but not with the wished for result; the reply of Bishop Fisher in particular—and he did not stand alone among the rulers of the Church—was unconditionally in favour of the validity of the marriage. This probably caused Wolsey to reflect; but the Cardinal had taken the first fatal step, and he could now withdraw only with the greatest difficulty. As he allowed the whole month of June to go by without carrying the matter any further, Henry showed him clear signs of his dissatisfaction, so that he thought it well henceforward to beat down all objections and pursue the business with the utmost energy.

The Cardinal had now come to be pointed at generally as the originator of the whole affair, and his enemies lost no time in spreading this report in all directions. In reality Wolsey had entered only with great reluctance into a matter which appeared to him almost hopeless. As he knew the King’s obstinate will, he held that no other choice was possible for him than to maintain his position. On former occasions he had always bowed before Henry’s expressed wishes, and only ruled his master by convincing him that in a given case the conduct of his servant was the means most suitable for attaining the royal end. Confronted with the fierce passion of the King it now never entered his mind to offer a direct opposition ; and to exhibit negligence seemed a course full of danger.

On the 22nd of June 1527, Henry, in a brutal manner, ordered Catherine to separate from him; he told the unhappy woman in plain words that after questioning various theologians and canonists he had become certain that during the whole of their married life she had been living in mortal sin. Catherine refused with determination to admit the charge, and in her rejoinder she brought into prominence a point which hitherto had been over­looked. Even if it were granted that serious objections might be raised against the Papal dispensation permitting a marriage with the wife of a deceased brother, yet in her case they could not apply, for, as her husband well knew, she had been Arthur’s wife only in name, for their marriage had never been consummated.

For this disclosure Wolsey and the other advisers of the King were not prepared. They consulted as to what should now be done. On the 1st of July, just as the Cardinal was on the point of starting for France, the King caused him to be told that he was no longer deceived, that he, the Cardinal, seemed to be calling in question the justice of the King’s “secret business.” Wolsey at once replied with the assurance that this was not the case. Even on the assumption that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated, the fact still remained that he and Catherine had been married “in facie ecclesiae”; this established the impediment of open wedlock from which the Papal Bull gave no dispensation. Therefore the invalidity of the King’s marriage could be asserted as much as ever, for the dispensation had been insufficient.

After Wolsey had thus completely identified himself with the King’s cause he started on his journey to France on the 3rd of July, in order to meet Francis I. at Amiens, and as representative of his master conclude the treaty with the French King. On his way from Westminster to Dover he made an attempt to win over, or rather to circumvent, Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher. To the latter he alleged, with total want of truthfulness, that the recent steps had been taken only in order to refute the objections to the validity of the marriage. He had another object in view as well: to blacken Catherine in the eyes of Fisher, who possessed the Queen’s confidence, by suggesting that it was a totally unjust supposition on her part that Henry was aiming at a divorce, and that by her violence and impatience she was thwarting the good intentions of the King. Wolsey, in acting thus dishonestly, had not the least suspicion that he himself throughout the whole affair was playing the part of the duper duped; he was still in entire ignorance of Henry’s ulterior aims and of the sordid character of the business of which he had made himself an agent. He therefore believed that he would achieve a masterpiece of political ability if, when in France, where his mission, besides its main and avowed task, had also the secret object of cautiously initiating Francis into the scheme of divorce, he were to pursue, on his own responsibility, the project of preparing the way for a second marriage at some future time between Henry and a French Princess, Renee, the daughter of Louis XII. As he remained in France after the conclusion of the treaty with Francis (16th of August 1527) up to the middle of September, it is presumable that during that month he set his plan in motion. He believed that under the circumstances of the hour he could carry the divorce through before the Pope became aware of it. His ambitious scheme was nothing less than this: he wished during the continuance of the imprisonment of Clement VII. to be appointed Papal Vicar-General, with the fullest conceivable powers, and by means of this delegated authority to settle the marriage question in Henry’s favour. To secure this appointment he sent, on the 15th of September 1527, the Protonotary Uberto da Gambara to the Pope.

Meanwhile Henry VIII himself was about to take steps totally destructive of the schemes of the Cardinal, who hitherto was under the belief that he held in his hands the conduct of the whole affair. In the beginning of September Wolsey was informed that Henry was on the point of sending his secretary Knight to Rome. Anticipating mischief, he wrote on the 5th of September to the King dissuading him from this step; nevertheless Knight arrived at Compiegne on the 10th of September. As Wolsey himself had despatched agents to Rome on the King’s behalf, he hoped that Knight’s mission would be regarded as superfluous, and that the next King’s messenger, Christopher Mores, would bring with him his recall. In order to avoid suspicion, Knight consented to wait for Mores’ arrival; as the latter did not bring with him Knight’s recall, the Cardinal had, on the 13th of September, to allow the latter to continue his journey to Rome. To deceive Wolsey, Knight was enjoined to take instructions from him; therefore the Cardinal gave the King’s secretary the draft of a Bull conferring on him the appointment of Vicar-General of the Pope. But Wolsey was carefully kept in ignorance of the real object of Knight's mission. Henry, in fact, had given the latter a draft of a Bull by which the King should obtain a dispensation to contract a fresh marriage, and that too either without a dissolution of his marriage with Catherine—in other words, to commit bigamy—or after a legal divorce.

Knight’s mission must have convinced Wolsey that the intention now was to take the management of the whole affair out of his hands. Now for the first time the suspicion arose that Anne Boleyn was the person designed to supplant the Queen. Accordingly he changed his plans and determined to return to England as quickly as possible, in order to regain that place in the King’s confidence now imperilled by the secret intrigues of his enemies. Before leaving Compiegne he addressed, on the 16th of September, together with four other Cardinals, a letter to the Pope praying him to delegate his authority during the period of his captivity; then, on the following day, he began his journey to England. On his first reception at court he at once perceived what a recognized position Anne Boleyn now held with the King. The Cardinal’s eyes were at last opened to the real state of things. Then it was that he remained upon his knees long imploring Henry to depart from his resolution. Bitterly he repented the willingness with which he had flung himself from the first, under mistaken suppositions and unconditionally, into the scheme of divorce; but now it was too late to draw back; he saw that his position and his life depended on this issue.

The only point on which Wolsey was able to move Henry was that the latter should at least at first abstain from the scandalous demand for a dispensation involving bigamy, to which the Pope, even if he were in the last extremity, could not be expected to consent. Consequently the King agreed to send Knight a fresh draft of a dispensation to take the place of that previously given him. But even now the King was again deceiving Wolsey. While Henry and Wolsey between them drew up a new draft of dispensation, destined for Knight, the King had already secretly despatched another draft, of the contents of which Wolsey knew nothing; moreover, Knight had received a strictly confidential intimation not to make use of the draft concocted with Wolsey until the secret draft should prove impracticable. The Bull of dispensation which Henry asked for in order to contract marriage with Anne Boleyn after divorce from Catherine, was to contain a clause dispensing from the impediment of affinity in the first degree caused by his previous illicit and adulterous intercourse with Anne Boleyn’s sister.

Knight reached Rome in November 1527, but owing to the Pope’s confinement in St. Angelo he could not gain access to him. Through intermediaries, however, he received Clement’s assurance that, if he would withdraw from Rome and wait at Narni, he should obtain all that he asked for. After the Pope’s liberation Knight went with him to Orvieto, and here he actually obtained, after some hesitation, the Bull desired by Henry. It certainly had been revised in form by the Pope and the Grand Penitentiary Pucci, but in substance was in agreement with Henry’s draft. The Bull was drawn up on the 17th of December 1527 and sent off on the 23rd. It was only a conditional Bull dependent on the proof of the invalidity of the marriage with Catherine. Before this proof was clearly established, the Bull was absolutely valueless. Its contents were unimpeachable. The only evil results that might follow from it were that it tended to harden the King’s determination to procure a divorce, and gave him a hope that Clement would be ready to give a prompt adhesion to his wishes. The King was all the more prone to indulge in such expectations as the political situation was highly favourable to him.

The Pope, smarting from the deep injuries inflicted on him by the Emperor, was, together with Francis I, still his ally. The material and moral support guaranteed to him by France was subsequently of still greater importance. On his journey home Knight met, near Bologna, an English courier carrying fresh instructions for him, Gregorio Casale, and the Protonotary Gambara. He was therefore obliged to return to Orvieto.

The instructions contained the above-mentioned draft of dispensation, as jointly composed by the King and Wolsey, but also a document of much greater importance, by which Wolsey, in accordance with an original plan of his own, sought to intervene decisively in the whole train of circumstances. This was the draft of a Decretal Bull to be signed by the Pope, transferring to Wolsey the entire adjudication of the case. On the English side five points were raised to invalidate the dispensation of Julius II of the 26th of December 1503 :—

1. The Bull states falsely that Henry VIII wished for the marriage with Catherine, whereas his father, Henry VII, without his son’s knowledge, had procured the Bull.

2. The reason adduced for the issue of the dispensation, the maintenance of peace between England and Spain, was null or at least insufficient, as the two States had not been previously at war.

3. Henry VIII was at the time (1503) only just twelve years old, and therefore not yet capable of a marriage dispensation.

4. The dispensation had lapsed, for at the time of the consummation of the marriage one of the persons, between whom peace was to be maintained by this alliance, Isabella, Queen of Castille, was dead.

5. Henry VIII had protested against the marriage with Catherine before its consummation, and thereby had renounced the benefits of the dispensation.

In the Decretal Bull which Wolsey asked Clement to publish, the Pope was to declare that these five points, if capable of substantiation, were sufficient to invalidate the dispensation of Julius II and therewith the marriage itself. Nothing therefore now remained to be done but to test the soundness of these five points, and if their validity were established in one single instance only, then Wolsey, either alone or along with the Illyrian prelate Stafileo, was to have full powers given him to declare null and void the dispensation of Julius II, and therewith the marriage of Henry and Catherine; for this decision, placed in Wolsey’s hands, the Papal ratification was to be guaranteed unconditionally and irrevocably. Never before had such a demand as this of Henry’s been submitted to a Pope and his spiritual authority.

The draft of this decretal commission was laid by Knight and Gregorio Casale before the Pope at Orvieto at the end of December. They appealed to the King’s submissiveness towards the Church and urged that if the doubt concerning the dispensation of Julius II were not laid to rest there was the greatest danger in England of a contested succession. Greatly as Clement appreciated the dangers that threatened England from the failure of a male succession to the crown, yet it appeared to him impossible to accede to the immoderate demands of the English envoys. He first of all referred them to Cardinal Pucci, who was charged with the management of this affair. The envoys had no greater success in this quarter; an attempt to bribe Pucci failed. The latter moreover declared, after an examination of the draft, that the Bull as it then stood could not be granted without bringing indelible disgrace on the Pope as well as on Henry VIII and Wolsey. The envoys obtained instead a commission for Wolsey and Stafileo, drawn up by Pucci, from which the very point was omitted on which Wolsey set the greatest value, namely, the declaration that the five points laid down, if substantiated, would suffice to annul the marriage, so that he was also deprived of the wished-for possibility of a final decision being given in England. As a matter of fact the plenary powers conferred on Wolsey were thus made worthless.

Two fresh envoys were therefore sent to Orvieto, Dr. Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey’s chief secretary and one of the most gifted canonists in England, and Dr. Edward Fox, with instructions to obtain the decretal commission in its original form, only, this was no longer to be drawn up for Wolsey alone or in conjunction with Stafileo, but a Papal Legate, if possible Campeggio, was to be sent in order to decide the case together with Wolsey. In the case of the decretal commission being unobtainable, the envoys were instructed at least to secure a general commission of the most comprehensive character possible for Wolsey and Campeggio, or even for Wolsey alone, or for him and Archbishop Warham of Canterbury. Gardiner and Fox left London on the nth of February 1528, and on the 21st of March, at Orvieto, met the Pope, now stripped of every vestige of temporal power. The negotiations began on the 23rd of March and lasted until the 13th of April. During their progress the English envoys were unceasing in their efforts to wring from Clement the plenary powers as specified in the English drafts. Almost daily the Pope and Cardinals held discussions of from three to four hours’ duration, and on one occasion a conference of five hours lasted until one in the morning. According to his own reports, Gardiner, even if he exaggerated a good deal in order to emphasize his own zeal, displayed towards the Pope the most unblushing arrogance; but he did not succeed thus in extorting a full consent to the English demands.

The Pope and the Cardinals were on their guard, and met the importunity of the English officials with great calmness and self-control. In spite of the insolence of Gardiner’s demands, Clement never for a moment allowed himself to give way to a hasty expression. He as well as the Cardinals were firm in their rejection of terms which they could not and dared not concede.

The Pope was not shaken even by the intervention of Francis I, who, in a special letter, gave his advice on the affair of Henry VIII. There is no justification for the charge then brought against Clement by the English party, and renewed in our own days by recent historians, that throughout the whole matter he was actuated entirely by political motives, that fear of the Emperor was the only ground on which he resisted the claims of England. The fear of the Emperor was a catchword constantly in men’s mouths, and it was often used by the Pope himself as an excuse for his lack of acquiescence in the English demands. But in this particular case this was not the ruling motive ; that was to be found in his conscientious regard for the duty of the chief ruler of the Church. What Gardiner had at last perforce to content himself with were the Bulls of commission of the 13th of April and the 8th of June 1528 respectively, which, in order to leave an opening for two possibilities, were drawn up in similar terms for Wolsey and Warham as well as for Wolsey and Campeggio. The first Bull was despatched at once on the 13th of April, the second, also dated from Orvieto, the 13th of April, with the commission for the two Cardinals, was not officially executed until the 8th of June, at Viterbo. As the mission of Campeggio to England was a certainty, the second Bull only was made use of. By this Bull the Cardinals received full powers thoroughly to examine whatever could be brought forward for or against the marriage of Henry and Catherine, and especially for or against the dispensation of Julius II.; then, after hearing both sides, to take summary proceedings, to declare the dispensation and the marriage severally, according to the just circumstances of the case and their convictions, to be valid and legal, or invalid and null, if judgment should be called for by one of the parties. In case of invalidity, in the same summary proceedings, the decree of divorce was to be declared and liberty be given to the King and Queen to contract a fresh marriage, but in such wise that, if it seemed good to the Cardinals, the children of the first marriage, as well as those of the second, should be declared legitimate, and their legitimacy protected from all question under the usual punishments and censures of the Church.

The two Cardinals were jointly delegated for this examination and adjudication; the English envoys, however, had carried the clause that either of the two would be justified in carrying on the proceedings alone, if the other were either unwilling or prevented by death or by some other just cause. Against the procedure of the Cardinals no objection, no appeal would be admissible; on the contrary, they were the representatives of the full and unlimited Papal authority. But the Bull did not contain that which for Wolsey had become the essential thing. There was no guarantee that the Pope would confirm the decision of the Cardinals; there was no specification of the ground on which the invalidity of the dispensation and of the marriage in the given instances was to be pronounced.

When Fox returned to England with these results he was received on the 3rd of May by Henry and Anne Boleyn with great delight; it seems that both were of opinion that the goal was now almost reached. Wolsey, on the contrary, who saw deeper, knew that from the results brought back by Fox nothing was gained for the final decision of the case in England; but on closer re­flection he concealed his dissatisfaction in order at least to gain time and postpone as far as possible the downfall that he knew to be inevitable. He therefore immediately made a last effort to obtain the Decretal Bull by means of Gardiner, who had remained behind in Italy. In connection with this scheme Wolsey, on the 10th of May 1528, arranged a curious scene.

In the presence of Henry VIII, Fox, and several of the King’s procurators, he gave utterance to the solemn declaration : Although no other subject was so devoted to his prince as he was to his King, and though, on that account, his obedience, truth, and loyalty to Henry were so steadfast that he would willingly sacrifice goods, blood, and life to satisfy his “just desires,” yet he felt that his duty towards his God was greater, before whom he must once for all give an account of his actions, and therefore in this matter he would rather incur the King’s gravest displeasure, rather allow himself to be torn limb from limb, than do any act of injustice, or that the King should demand of him in this question anything that justice could not sanction. On the contrary, if the Bull (of Julius II) should be pronounced sufficient, he would declare it so to be. It was a pure piece of acting, got up simply in order that Fox, who was taken in by it, and on the following day was to send Wolsey’s new instructions to Gardiner, should send an account of it to the latter, who would in turn relate the incident to the Pope. In this way Clement would be brought round to such an assurance of Wolsey’s conscientiousness and love of justice that he could have no further objections to granting him the Decretal Bull.

The instructions sent by Fox to Gardiner on the nth of May were to the effect that he must carry through in any possible way the secret execution of the Decretal Bull. It must be represented to the Pope that Wolsey’s esteem and influence with the King, and therewith the esteem attaching to the Holy See itself, are greatly dependent on the granting of such a Bull. In order to remove the Pope’s objections Gardiner and Casale were instructed solemnly to declare and swear in Wolsey’s name that the latter would never on the ground of this Bull begin the process of divorce, nor show the document to a single person or in any way make use of it so as to expose the Holy See to the least prejudice or scandal. He would only show it to the King, and then keep it in his own private custody simply as a pledge of the Pope’s fatherly disposition towards Henry, as a token of personal confidence in himself, as a means of maintaining and strengthening his position in the King’s esteem with a view to the best interests of the Pope. There is no doubt that these solemn promises were only attempts to deceive, and that they would not have been kept if the Pope had committed the blunder of placing unreservedly such a compromising document in the hands of so unscrupulous a diplomatist as Wolsey; for, if the promised secrecy were observed, the Bull, on the whole, would be useless.

After repeated and lengthy negotiations and much pressure from the English envoys, Gardiner was at last able, on the nth of June 1528, to report to Henry VIII that Campeggio’s mission to England was settled and that the Pope had promised to send the Decretal Bull by him. In granting the Bull, Clement had carried consideration for Henry and Wolsey to its furthest limits, but he had taken the precaution to do so under such conditions that in reality it could never be anything more than what Wolsey, in asking for it, had pretended it to be. The latter saw to his great disgust that he had, in the strictest sense of the words, been taken in. The object, put forward by Wolsey as a pretext, that the Decretal Bull was only a means of protecting his position as much as possible and proving to the King that he had done all that lay in his power to carry out his wishes, was attained when Campeggio showed the document and read it aloud to the King and Chancellor. But the misuse of the Bull, in spite of all Wolsey’s promises, could only be prevented by Campeggio keeping the document in his own hands and destroying it at the right moment. The contents of this document can only be conjectured, but it must have been of such a character as to have made the divorce between Henry and Catherine possible and even an accomplished fact, had not the Pope entirely withheld it from the free disposal of Henry and Wolsey. Even if Clement, in granting this illusory document, which confirmed the demands of Henry to their full extent, was guilty of incredible weakness, yet he was acting under the belief that the grievous blunder thus committed could be repaired by depriving the Bull of any possible practical use, and that he could avoid all difficulties and misunderstandings, by declaring firmly and clearly that he could never have allowed it to be put into execution, since, as the guardian of faith and truth, he must have repudiated its contents.

Campeggio, who entered on his mission in July 1528, was instructed to prolong his journey as much as possible, to defer crossing the channel as long as he could, and even when in England to do his utmost to protract the process of the divorce, and if possible to bring about a reconciliation between the King and Queen, but in no case was he to pronounce a final verdict without fresh and express faculties from the Pope; for it was hoped that in the meantime God’s saving grace would perhaps incline the heart of the King to abstain from asking the Pope to grant what could only be granted with injustice, danger, and scandal. Campeggio reached London on the 7th of October, suffering severely from gout. Although the court rejoiced, his reception by the people was cold and even unfriendly. He appeared, among other aspects, to be the harbinger of a closer approximation to France. Men said openly that he came to be the ruin of England and to complete a deed of injustice. After several interviews with Wolsey he had his first audience of Henry on the 22nd of October. On the very next day the King in his impatience came to Campeggio, and in a long conversation announced his inflexible resolve to separate from Catherine. He urged strongly that in order to facili­tate this step the Queen should spontaneously renounce her rights and retire into a convent. Campeggio and Wolsey were on the following day to begin to use all their arts of persuasion on the unfortunate woman. Before seeing her they were both received by the King; in this audience, held on the 24th of October, Campeggio read both the Bulls, of the 13th of April and the 8th of June respectively, in which the examination of the case was entrusted to the two Cardinals. Afterwards Henry expressed a wish to see the Decretal Bull; Campeggio showed it to him and read it aloud, but did not let it leave his hands, nor did anyone see it except the King and Wolsey. If no other order came from the Pope the document, after it had achieved its object, was to disappear. After this the Cardinals repaired to the Queen, who received them with deep distrust; the proposal that she should betake herself to a cloister was refused decisively on this as well as on a second occasion on the 27th of October. Nothing would have been gained even if she had consented, for the question of the validity of the marriage was still open. That Catherine should have clung to her rights is quite intelligible. A Spaniard, a daughter of the Catholic King, she certainly could not have admitted to all the world that she had been anointed and crowned unlawfully, that for four-and-twenty years she had been her husband’s concubine, while in her inmost heart she believed in the validity of her marriage. She therefore was convinced that she durst not endanger, by an act of surrender, the right of her only child to the succession to the throne.

Wolsey, much dissatisfied with the course things had taken up to this time, made yet another attempt to obtain the Pope’s permission that the Decretal Bull should be shown also to the King’s advisers, for in the instructions to Gregorio Casale of the 1st of November 1528 he wrote down the deliberate falsehood that it was the Pope’s intention that the Bull should be used for the information of Cardinal Campeggio and the King’s councillors. The Pope, who now clearly perceived how imminent the danger was that the English double-dealing might lead to some misuse of the Bull, bitterly bewailed, when Casale presented to him Wolsey’s demands, his previous complaisance, accused the English Cardinal of falsehood, and declared that if it were possible he would willingly lose a finger of his hand to undo what he had done. All Casale’s further representations were useless, even his suggestion of the evil results which would follow on the Pope’s refusal, the apostasy of the King and with him that of the country. But Clement now stood firm and disclaimed the responsibility for the effects upon England of Henry’s action; he had done all that he could do, reconcilable with his conscience, to serve the King. According to a later report from Casale to Wolsey of the 17th of December 1528, he repeatedly declared that he had drawn up the Decretal Bull in order that it might be shown to the King and after that burned forthwith.

If from the date of Campeggio’s arrival in October 1528 until far on in the following year nothing essential was done, not even the Court of Justice itself being constituted, this delay was certainly in correspondence with the Legate’s intentions. It was, however, on the whole, occasioned by Wolsey’s persevering efforts to guard the decision to be given in England from any uncertainty regarding its legality and to be forearmed against any appeal, before the suit began. In order to secure this he was bent either on obtaining the Papal confirmation beforehand or on so tying the Pope’s hands that it would be impossible for him to refuse his ratification.

An incident highly unfavourable to Henry’s case and at the same time the cause of further delays was the sudden appearance in England of a hitherto unknown Brief of Dispensation of the 26th of December 1503, a copy of which Catherine had procured from Spain from Charles . and produced, probably, in November 1528. By this document Henry’s plea against the validity of the dispensation resting on the phraseology of the Bull of Dispensation was shaken. This Brief, auxiliary to the Bull of Dispensation, differed from the latter in certain particulars. In the Bull the actual consummation of the marriage of Catherine with Arthur was left open to doubt, by the addition of the word “perhaps,” while in the Brief this word was absent, the consummation of the marriage thus being taken for granted; again, in the Brief, after stating the grounds on which the dispensation was given, the words were also added, “and on other definite grounds.” Wolsey exerted himself to render the Brief innocuous in two ways. He first tried to obtain possession of the original, the Queen herself being treacherously induced, as though it were in her own interest, to obtain this from the Emperor. As this attempt failed, an endeavour was then made to get the Pope to declare that the Brief was a forgery; this was the main object of the mission of Bryan and Vannes at the end of November 1528, who were followed by Knight and Bennet on the same errand. The dangerous illness of Clement VII in the beginning of 1529, when his death seemed not improbable, once more aroused Wolsey’s longing for the tiara and in Henry the hope that all he wished for might be obtained without trouble; but the progress of negotiations was thereby suspended. On his recovery the Pope declared definitely that he could not pronounce the Brief to be a forgery.

Even Campeggio felt so certain of the reports from various quarters of the Pope’s death that on the 4th of February 1529 he discontinued his despatch of reports to Rome. He did not again resume them until the 18^th when he addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, Jacopo Salviati. This document, written for the most part in cipher, is in many respects of great importance and throws a very interesting light on the “whole tragic wretchedness of the subject.” It relates how Wolsey with clasped hands adjured the Legate to co-operate with him so that the Pope, at any price, might give a decision favourable to the King, as in no other way could the impending calamities be kept back. “And in fact,” Campeggio continues, “so far as I can see this passion of the King’s is a most extraordinary thing. He sees nothing, he thinks of nothing but his Anne; he cannot be without her for an hour, and it moves one to pity to see how the King’s life, the stability and downfall of the whole country, hang upon this one question.”

Wolsey made through Gardiner one more attempt to obtain from the Pope an extension of the legatine powers so as to include absolute power of decision; but Clement now stood firm against any further concessions. In the meantime also Charles V. had intervened at Rome on behalf of Catherine, with such success that already in April the question had arisen of revoking the powers given to the Legates in England, and transferring the whole case to Rome. In presence of this danger Wolsey found it advisable to abstain from pushing any further his unattainable demands, and to open the suit and bring it as quickly as possible to an end.

On the 31st of May the court of the two Legates was constituted, and the King and Queen were cited to appear on the 18th of June. Catherine appeared on the first summons only in order to protest against the tribunal. At the next sitting, on the 21st of June, at which the King and Queen were present, the latter repeated her protest, threw herself at the King’s feet to entreat him once more to have compassion, declared that she would lodge an appeal with the Pope, and withdrew, never to appear again before the Legates’ court. She was consequently declared to have acted in contumaciam, and the case proceeded without her with great rapidity and on the pleading of one side only. In a cipher despatch to Salviati, Campeggio complained : “In the house of a foreigner one cannot do all one wishes; the case has no defence. A king, especially in his own house, has no lack of procurators, attornies, witnesses, and even laity who are hankering after his grace and favour. The Bishops of Rochester and St. Asaph have spoken and written in support of the marriage, also some men of learning have done the same, but in fear and on their own responsibility; no one comes forward any longer in the Queen’s name.” The only person who championed the unhappy princess with unfaltering courage was John Fisher, the saintly Bishop of Rochester. The marriage of Henry and Catherine, so he declared in the fifth sitting, on the 28th of June, was indissoluble, no power could break their union; for this truth he was ready, like John the Baptist, to lay down his life. Contrasted with the diplomacy and temporizing of almost all the rest, this declaration roused twofold sympathy. But all Fisher’s determination was powerless to effect anything. Notwithstanding Campeggio’s objections, the case was hurried on with precipitate speed and the decision was already looked for on the 23rd of July. This, however, Campeggio prevented, for in the sitting of that date he adjourned the court during the Roman law vacations until the 1st of October. The sittings were never resumed, and in this way Wolsey was defeated.

It was high time for the case to be transferred to Rome; there had been too much delay. Not until Clement VII felt that he was strongly backed by his alliance with Charles V did he urge him to take decided steps. A Consistory of the 16th of July 1529 determined that on the ground of the Queen’s appeal the case should be brought before the judicial court of the Rota at Rome. This did away with the powers of the English Legates. On the 19th of September Campeggio had his farewell audience of Henry and took leave of him on friendly terms. His journey was delayed by an attack of gout; he had intended to leave Dover, where he had been since the 8th of October, on the 26th of that month, but before he could do so he had to submit to treatment of a most disrespectful kind; his luggage was searched on the pretext that he might be taking to Rome treasure and compromising letters from Wolsey; the real reason, at all events, was that it was hoped in this way still to get possession of the Decretal Bull. As this, however, had been long since destroyed, this inquisition was without result.

Before Campeggio left, the news of Wolsey’s downfall had already reached him. The latter was now paying for the miscarriage of the divorce suit; by the 9th of October the proceedings against him had begun; on the 16th he was called on to deliver up the Great Seal. Robbed of his property and forbidden the court, again for a brief moment appearing to be restored to his sovereign’s favour, he was finally charged with high treason. Arrested at Cawood on the 4th of November 1530, he died on the 29th of that month at Leicester Abbey, a house of Augustinian canons, on his way to London, where, it may well be, the supreme penalty awaited him.

Together with Henry VIII, whose adulterous passion would submit to no check, Wolsey, by his base servility to the King, undoubtedly shares a great portion of the guilt of the severance of England from the Church. He himself passed judgment on his conduct in the words spoken shortly before his death: “If I had served God as diligently as I have done my King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive, for in my diligent pains and studies to serve the King, I looked not to my duty towards God, but only to the gratification of the King’s wishes.”

In the light of history Wolsey stands out as the powerful statesman to whom the England of Henry VIII was indebted for her greatness and importance, but also as the pliant and unconscientious prelate who, by his unworthy obsequiousness in subserving the King’s shameful desires, became in a degree responsible for the unhappy rupture in the Church which he wished to avoid. Too willing courtiers and servile diplomatists, even when clothed in ecclesiastical garb, have in all ages only been a cause of misfortune to the Church.

After Wolsey’s fall, Anne Boleyn, as the French Ambassador clearly pointed out, wielded through her uncle and father an influence in the Cabinet as unlimited as that which she had hitherto for long held over her suitor, the King. There now appeared gradually on the scene another counsellor not less ambitious and not less unscrupulous than Wolsey, who was ready to shrink from nothing that could serve the purposes of the lustful king. This was Thomas Cranmer, the domestic chaplain of the Boleyns. He eagerly pursued the scheme of procuring from the most famous universities of Europe opinions favourable to the divorce. In England the same attempt was made by the issue from the press of writings unfit for publication. In France and Italy recourse was had to bribery.

At the same time Henry made a fresh effort to win over to his side the Emperor as well as the Pope. In the beginning of 1530 he sent Anne Boleyn’s father, recently raised to the earldom of Wiltshire, to Bologna with the ostensible mission of conferring with the Pope and Emperor on the general peace and confederation against the Turks; in reality he was sent in the interests of the divorce. He was to lay before the Emperor strong arguments against the validity of Henry’s marriage with Catherine, but Charles made short work of his representations. He was not more successful with the Pope, who eight days before Wiltshire’s arrival had, by a Brief of the 7th of March 1530, transferred the matter of the English marriage to Capisucchi, Auditor of the Rota. A Brief of the 21st of March prohibited anything being said or written against the validity of the marriage. The presence of the English Ambassador was made use of to deliver to him the citation summoning Henry to appear at Rome before the tribunal of the Rota. Yet the Pope consented to a postponement of the case, if Henry would promise in the meantime not to make any alteration in the state of things in England, and the King accepted the offer upon this condition.

In the meantime the opinions of the universities, extorted by force and cunning, were coming in. Henry’s delight at the favourable replies, many of which he was particularly successful in obtaining from French seats of learning, was diminished by the fact that other universities declared that the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine was only justifiable on the ground of the consummation of her marriage with Arthur, which the Queen denied on oath and the King was unable to prove. The hope also that the favourable opinions of the universities would move the Pope to give way proved idle. It now occurred to Henry VIII that a meeting of Parliament might bring pressure to bear on the Holy See. On the 13th of July 1530 an address to the Pope, composed at Henry’s instigation, was issued by the English prelates and nobles. In it, with a reference to the opinions of the universities, the demand was put forward that Clement without delay should pronounce the dissolution of the King’s marriage; with this was coupled the threat that otherwise England would settle the question unaided. The Pope’s answer, of the 27th of September, was a calm refusal of this demand. His decision would be given with such speed as was consonant with justice; neither the King nor his subjects could demand any other treatment.

About this time the English envoys seem again to have importuned the Pope with a demand for his sanction of a double marriage. Gregorio Casale, on the 18th of September 1530, sent a report on the matter giving the impression that the proposal had come from the Pope, and that the latter was inclined towards such a solution of the difficulty. Casale represents himself as having, “with an astonishing semblance of sanctimoniousness,” replied that he durst not write in such terms to the King, as he feared that the Royal conscience, which it was the main object in this whole affair to pacify, would not consent to such an issue.

How unreliable this account was is shown by the despatch of William Bennet, in any case a more trustworthy man, sent to Henry on the 27th of October 1530. Soon after his arrival Clement had engaged him in conversation on the subject of a dispensation to have two wives, but his remarks were so ambiguous that Bennet suspected that the Pope either intended to draw from Henry a recognition of the unlimited nature of the dispensing power—since a dispensation to contract a bigamous marriage was at least no easier matter than the previous one for the marriage with Catherine—or that he wished in this way to keep the King in check in order to gain time. “I asked Clement VII,” Bennet continued, “if he were certain that such a dispensation was admissible, and he answered that he was not; but he added that a distinguished theologian had told him that in his opinion the Pope might in this case dispense in order to avert a greater evil; he intended, however, to go into the matter more fully with his council. And indeed the Pope has just now informed me that his council (known as the Consistory of Cardinals) had declared to him plainly that such a dispensation was not possible.” If Clement had thus really hesitated for a time over the possibility of a dispensation for a dual marriage, his uncertainty was soon brought to an end by this categorical denial of its admissibility, and there are not the remotest grounds for speaking of a parallel between Clement’s attitude and that of Luther towards double wedlock.

On the 6th of December 1530 Henry VIII wrote a letter to the Pope containing violent complaints and taunting him with complete subserviency to the Emperor. Cardinal Accolti was instructed to send a reply. “As,” said Clement, “we stand between the Defender of the Faith on one hand and the Advocate of the Church on the other, no suspicion of partiality ought to be raised against us, since we are governed by the same sentiment of affection towards the one as towards the other. Besides, we call on God as our witness and give the surety of our pontifical word that the Emperor has never asked of us anything except simple justice. For he said to us that if the Queen’s cause was unjust it was not his intention to uphold it, rather must he in that case cast the burden of the matter on those who were the means of bringing such a marriage about. But if the Queen was in the right he would then be doing shameful despite to his honour if he allowed her to be unlawfully oppressed. Whether the English envoys have demanded justice from us in like way is a matter of which the King cannot be ignorant.” The Pope protested that his decision would be given only in accordance with justice.

A Papal Brief of the 5th of January 1531 renewed the edict of the 7th of March 1530 containing the threat of ecclesiastical punishments and censures for Henry VIII and any female who should contract marriage with him while the case was under adjudication by the Rota. Henry, who had now no further hope of bending Clement to his will, took, without further delay, the first step on the road leading inevitably to the total separation of Englandfrom the Holy See. A general convocation of the English clergy, held in the middle of January 1531, was called upon to acknowledge the King as supreme head of the Church and clergy of England, to which declaration con­vocation, now forced to abandon their previous opposition, added at least the clause “so far as the law of Christ permits.”

The inquiry set on foot in Rome made no advance of any importance in the year 153I. Henry neither appeared in person on his citation nor did he send a representative, but he protested through his Ambassador and Dr. Carne, who had been sent to Rome as “Excusator” for his non-appearance and to demand that the case should again be remitted to England. The proposal, by way of compromise, emanating from Rome that the case should be transferred to some neutral locality, such as Cambrai, was rejected both by the English King and by the Emperor as Catherine’s representative. Henry then proceeded to discontinue the recognition of Catherine as Queen de facto, for in August 1531 he banished her from court, while the apartments formerly belonging to her were occupied by Anne Boleyn.

On the 25th of January 1532, Clement, according to an agreement with the Emperor, addressed a Brief to Henry containing earnest but temperate remonstrances against his course of action and exhorting him to recognize Catherine as his lawful wife and to dismiss Anne Boleyn until the decision in the case was given. This Brief was delivered to the King on the 13th of May, but produced no effect. On the contrary, in the spring of this year he took another and more important step hostile to the Holy See, for he carried an Act of Parliament abolishing annates, the execution of which was left to the King’s discretion. At the end of October 1532 a meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I took place at Boulogne. The former hoped at that time that Francis would succeed in inducing the Pope to lay aside his opposition to the divorce. France in that case might depend on the support of England in the event of a war with the Emperor.

Francis entered into this plan. He sent Cardinals Gramont and Tournon to Rome with instructions to threaten the apostasy of the Kings of France and England if the Pope did not assist the one in his schemes for the acquisition of the Duchy of Milan and the other in his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In consequence, however, of Charles’s successful campaign against the Turks, the terms of this message were considerably toned down. Before leaving Bologna the Pope once more addressed an admonition to Henry which was also couched throughout in gentle language. This was occasioned by the elevation of Anne Boleyn on the 1st of September 1532 to the rank of Marchioness of Pembroke, and her journey in company with Henry to Calais in October, when she was presented to Francis I as the future Queen. The Pope threatened the adulterous couple with excommunication if they did not separate before the expiration of a month and Henry did not return to his legitimate consort; at the same time he renewed all former enactments against attempts to procure a divorce in England and the marriage with Anne Boleyn, and declared afresh the nullity of all such proceedings. Henry retorted by the strict prohibition “of the publication of anything whatever against the Royal authority if coming from Rome, or any attempts to hinder the execution of those Acts passed in the last Parliament for the removal of abuses abounding among the clergy.”

On the 25th of January 1533 Henry VIII was secretly married to Anne Boleyn, whose pregnancy as affecting the future child’s right of succession made further delay impossible, although of the final decision regarding the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine not a syllable had hitherto been uttered. On the 12th of April (Easter) Anne Boleyn appeared publicly for the first time as his consort.

In the meantime the death of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury, in August 1532, was of great advantage to Henry, for he was thus enabled to appoint a successor to the see on whose entire subserviency he could depend. His choice fell on Thomas Cranmer, who had become his secretary through Anne Boleyn’s influence. He was “an obsequious servant and an intriguer, fertile in ideas, whose services were also at the disposal of his master’s wishes.” Although for long alienated at heart from the Church, this immoral priest succeeded in deceiving the Pope as to his position, so that after receiving the confirmation of his appointment on the 30th of March 1533, he was able to be consecrated. In him Henry and Anne found a worthy instrument ready to carry out all their wishes. Henry, in previous collusion with Cranmer, went through the farce of a judgment on his marriage. Cranmer cited Henry and Catherine before his court at Dunstable, where the proceedings began on the 10th of May. Catherine, however, only signed two protests, for she refused to recognize Cranmer as judge, and took no further notice of his proceedings. On the 23rd of May Cranmer pronounced the marriage of Henry with Catherine null and void, and on the 28th he declared the marriage with Anne Boleyn valid. Thereupon the latter was, on June the 1st, crowned with great pomp as Queen.

On being informed of these proceedings, Clement VII hesitated in characteristic fashion for some time, and then at last, on the nth of July 1533, he gave sentence against Henry, pronounced the marriage with Anne Boleyn null and void, and the offspring, if any, of the union illegitimate, and laid the King under the greater excommunication. But even yet a time of grace was given him up to the end of September. The excommunication was not to take full effect until he showed his final disobedience in retaining Anne Boleyn and refusing to restore Catherine to her rightful place as Queen and wife. Cardinal Tournon succeeded in obtaining from Clement a further respite of a month from the 26th of September. The latter hoped, it would seem, that a reconciliation might be brought about, although all hope of one had for long been abandoned, and consented, on his meeting Francis I at Marseilles, to a yet further postponement to the end of November at that King’s request and out of regard for the new English envoys whose arrival was expected. The mission, headed by Gardiner, treated Clement, to the great disgust of Francis, with extreme insolence and demanded the withdrawal of the sentence against Henry. To the Pope’s friendly proposal that the whole case should be reheard at Avignon by special Legates, on condition that Henry recognized the Papal authority and promised to accept the final decision, Gardiner replied that he had no powers. On the 7th of November 1533 the English envoys presented to the Pope Henry’s appeal to a council.

In the session of Parliament opened on the 15th of January 1534 Henry passed a series of resolutions of an anti-Papal tendency; the annates and other payments to Rome were finally abolished; the power of jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Pope was transferred to the King; the bishoprics were to be filled by capitular election, which, however, was to be determined in favour of the person chosen by the King. A further Act contained a declaration against the “usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome,” as the Pope henceforward was to be designated. By the Act of Royal Succession the marriage with Catherine also was declared null from the beginning and the Princess Mary illegitimate, while on the other hand the children of Anne alone were in the rightful succession to the throne. The sanguinary measures against the opponents of Henry’s policy began with the trial of the “Maid of Kent”; the execution of this nun and her fellow-sufferers opened up a period which lasted throughout the following thirteen years of Henry’s reign and may well be described  as a “reign of terror.”

Almost simultaneously with Henry’s last step, so long dreaded by the Roman Curia, towards severing the bonds which for a thousand years had linked England with the Church and the Papal authority, came the final decision in the Rota on the question of the divorce. If the Pope, hoping that the King’s passion would cool down with time, had previously carried compliance to too great a length and repeatedly arrested the course of true justice, while also exposing himself by his imperturbable silence to the unjust reproaches of the English envoys, there was one thing still remaining which he would not sacrifice at any cost, namely, the sanctity of the marriage bond. Even at the risk of losing England to the Church he withstood the tyrannical king on this point from the consciousness of a higher duty. After long and thorough deliberation Clement, on the 24th of March 1534, pronounced in secret Consistory the final sentence, in which the marriage with Catherine was declared valid and lawful and the King bound in duty again to receive and honour the unhappy woman as his wife. As a rejoinder thereto Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell now proceeded to carry out without scruple the recent Parliamentary enactments. Those who, like Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, refused the new oath of the Royal succession, containing by tacit implication a recognition of the King’s supremacy over the Church, fell victims to the tyrant’s wrath. The severity of Henry’s action surprised his people, who had not anticipated so extreme a crisis, and in a credulous optimism had hoped that the storm would soon pass over. In addition there was the unfortunate circumstance that the exceptional position long held by Wolsey as Chancellor and Legate had habituated men’s minds to the combination in one person of the highest temporal and spiritual power.

The boundless pusillanimity of the majority of the clergy was fatal. The full significance was now made clear of the principle of the supreme authority of the English Crown in matters spiritual which was involved in the so-called statute of Praemunire passed as long ago as 1365. If so learned a man as Thomas More held erroneous and perverted views on the Primacy until closer study brought him to the light, we can measure the extent to which such views were current among the majority of Englishmen. The oppressive measures of Henry, unflinchingly carried out, did the rest. When, in the summer of 1534, the oath was tendered to the whole of the secular and regular clergy, abjuring the Papal and acknowledging the Royal supremacy over the Church, almost all submitted. The Observants of the Franciscan Order were conspicuous in their resistance, but among the secular clergy the threat of the confiscation of their benefices had for the most part the desired effect.

When Clement VII died on the 25th of September 1534, the English schism had become an accomplished fact. The Parliament and most of the clergy were in complete subjection to the King, who now held the temporal and spiritual authority combined, and had raised his mistress to the throne. If Henry, in dragging down the English Church to a state of schism in an outburst of despotic caprice and adulterous passion, had not at first thought of more inward revolutions in faith and worship, yet assuredly it was only a matter of time that by the further exercise of the arbitrary power of the sovereign, that Church should be transformed into a community based on principles of Protestantism.