Tudor Queens of England (19 page)

eed.24 I
f we exclude the possibility of legitimating Henry Fitzroy, the King had only three options. The fi rst was simply to acknowledge Mary as his heir and try to make sure that she eventually married someone who would be acceptable as King Consort. Given the general aversion of the English to the prospect of foreign rule this would not be easy. The second was a variation, whereby Mary would be married as quickly as possible in the hope that she would bear a son to whom the Crown could pass direct. This was to gamble not only on the King’s longevity but also on Mary’s acquiescence in allowing herself to be so passed over. The third option was to repudiate Catherine and start again. At some time during 1525, Henry decided to go for the third option. For the time being, nothing happened. Catherine fretted about her daughter’s health and about her Latin, engaging her countryman Juan Luis Vives to write two works for her instruction,
De Institutione Foeminae Christianae
in 1523 and
De Ratione Studia Puerilis
in 1524. When she went to Wales she was accompanied by Dr Richard Featherstone as schoolmaster and the most elaborate instructions for her life and deportment were drawn up under Catherine’s eye.
25
It is quite possible that Henry’s decision to send his daughter so far away at the age of nine had something to do with lessening her mother’s infl uence but if that was his thinking it did not work. The King, meanwhile, was coming to a resolution of his problem. There had been doubts about the lawfulness of his marriage before it had ever happened, hence the dispensation, but in his enthusiasm at the time, Henry had simply swept them aside. Perhaps he had been wrong to do so. Henry was Bible learned and knew that the Book of Leviticus prohibited a man from marrying his brother’s wife, and pronounced that the couple would be childless. Perhaps that was the Law of God, and could not be dispensed? He became convinced. The facts that he had married his brother’s widow, not his wife, and that he and Catherine were not childless were eased away by linguistic scholarship. The Hebrew had really said ‘they shall be without sons’, which fi tted his situation exactly.
26
By the end of 1526 Henry had convinced himself that his marriage had broken a Divine Law and that he was being punished. It was no true marriage and the woman with whom he had slept for six or seven years and who had endured half a dozen pregnancies at his hands was not really his wife. Catherine seems to have been quite unaware of these thought processes but she was also becoming a liability for more than strictly dynastic reasons. Henry had fallen out with the Emperor to the extent of being theoretically at war with him and Catherine symbolized, even if she no longer represented, the Imperial alliance. Towards the end of 1526 the Imperial ambassador Mendoza wrote that

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‘the principal cause of [her] misfortune is that she identifi es herself entirely with the Emperor’s interests …’ and early in 1527 he repeated the sentiment,

‘she will do her best to restore the old alliance between Spain and England, but though her will is good, her means are small …’ Small indeed; but by 1527

there was more than one reason why Catherine had become an embarrassment. Later there were many stories about how the King’s marriage fi rst came to be called in question. It was alleged (by Catherine, who could not stand him) that Wolsey had planted the seeds of doubt. Another candidate (according to George Cavendish) was the Bishop of Tarbes, who was sent by Francis I to negotiate a possible marriage between Mary and the Duc d’Orleans; but he did not arrive until April, by which time the fi rst moves had already been planned.

27
There is little doubt that the ‘scruple’ came from the King himself or that it antedated any serious involvement with Anne Boleyn, Mary’s sister, whom Henry was pursuing by the later part of 1527.

The chronology of that affair has been much debated, largely because there were always rumours fl ying around the court that Henry was ‘enamoured’ of this or that unnamed damsel and it is diffi cult to know when these stories begin to focus on Anne. Probably a standard courtly fl irtation began to become serious at some time during 1526. By the end of that year the King had almost certainly propositioned her and been rejected. Anne was, by all accounts, no great beauty, but she had been trained at Mechelen at the court of Margaret of Austria and was accomplished in all the wiles of seduction. These were probably second nature to her and it came as something of a surprise when the King was snared. In the light of what happened subsequently her reaction looks calculated but it was probably no such thing at the time. Henry, however, was not inclined to give up, and the sudden weakening of Catherine’s position in the summer of 1527 created a new and exciting possibility.

Proceedings commenced with a secret court convened by Wolsey at Westminster, wherein the King was charged with having co-habited for 18 years with a woman who was not his wife. Several sessions were held in the latter part of May, but no conclusion was reached. Henry then, overcome by his conscience (or possibly by desire for Anne), took matters into his own hands, and on 22 June confronted Catherine with the news that they were not, and never had been, married. The Queen appears to have had no inkling of what was afoot and was totally astound

ed.28 N
ot only had she never entertained a moment’s doubt about the lawfulness of her marriage but she was, as we have seen, quite convinced that God had decreed it. Her reaction was highly emotional but also extremely pragmatic. Realizing that her husband would have to resort to Rome for a decision, she immediately despatched her steward, a Spaniard named Francisco Felipez, with a message to 102

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her nephew the Emperor in Valladolid, warning him what was afoot and soliciting his immediate aid. Charles, goaded by this insult to his family honour, reacted immediately. He wrote to Catherine, pledging his full support, to Henry, begging him to desist from so dishonourable a course, and to the Pope to forestall any resulting proceedings in the Curia. Clement, meanwhile, had been terrorized and imprisoned by a mutinous army operating under the Emperor’s banner, but without his knowledge, who in May 1527 had sacked the Imperial City and confi ned the Pope to the Castel de St Angelo. By the time that Charles’s message arrived the siege had been lifted but Clement was in no position to refuse any request that the Emperor might make, irrespective of its justice. Henry had therefore lost his case in the one place where it mattered, even before it had begun.

29

Thereafter it was a case of irresistible force and immoveable matter, because the belligerent positions taken up in the summer of 1527 did not change signifi cantly for the next fi ve-and-a-half years. It used to be argued that Henry’s position was purely selfi sh, whereas Catherine’s was one of principle – ‘the king wanted to change his woman’ as Robert Bolt put it, paraphrasing some contemporary opinions. However, in terms of moral altitude, there was nothing to chose between them. By the autumn of that year the King knew that he wanted Anne Boleyn – no doubt for personal gratifi cation but also because the country needed a legitimate male heir. It is usually believed that Anne held out on him, demanding marriage as the price of complaisance, but that is not necessarily what happened. He could have taken her by force without risk of serious consequences and she must have known that. On the other hand, another bastard would be no use to him. He needed a son born in recognized wedlock and that could not happen unless or until he managed to get rid of Catherine. So it is more likely that he was the one holding back from intercourse. The Queen, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that she would never be able to give Henry the son that he needed. She seems to have believed, perhaps from the example of her own mother, that there was no reason why a woman should not rule a kingdom but that was to fl y in the face of English opinion, which was not reconciled to such an eventuality. Moreover there was a possibility of escape, which perhaps a loving and dutiful wife should have grasped. If she had taken the veil, her marriage would automatically have been dissolved without impugning either its original legitimacy or the status of their daughter. This option was offered to her on at least two occasions and rejected with scorn. However, given the circumstances and her almost obsessive piety, it was a perfectly reasonable suggestion to make. Two factors contributed to the actual impasse. The fi rst was Henry’s incredible clumsiness. Had he approached her gently, explaining the problem (if it needed explaining) and appealed to her good nature or sense of duty, she might have

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agreed to withdraw gracefully. She would, after all, have had relatively little to lose and quite a lot to gain. However, that did not happen and his method of broaching the matter aroused all her fi ghting instincts. The second was the fact that Catherine came to realize that she had been supplanted in her husband’s affections by one of her own women – and a mere gentlewoman into the bargain. Once she had grasped this fact, it is not surprising that surrender was not an option. Both Henry and Catherine were being selfi sh – and very human – but the one incontrovertible fact is that Henry needed a lawful son and in that respect the interests of the kingdom were at stake.

At fi rst it seems that no one understood the full nature of the King’s intentions. Wolsey was still thinking of a French princess to replace Catherine while he dealt with Henry’s scruple. When he discovered the truth in 1528, he was not happy but had no option but to continue pressing the King’s case at Rome. He got nowhere, and nor did the numerous special missions that Henry sent between 1527 and 1532. Clement shifted and prevaricated but would not budge. This intransigence had two main causes. One was obviously the political pressure of the Emperor, but the other was his extreme reluctance to admit that Julius II’s dispensation might have been

ultra vires
, in pretending to dispense with a Divine Law which was not amenable to such treatment.
30
Henry’s case was not strong in canon law, and would have needed skill and good luck to have prevailed, but it was much better than it was made to appear, both at the time and since. The nearest the King came to success was the Legatine Court, which assembled at Blackfriars in July 1529, but that was little better than a sham. Catherine duly appeared and (as had no doubt been expected) immediately appealed her cause to Rome. The Court was adjourned and the appeal stood. By this time the Queen had very strong support. In England Bishop John Fisher led a powerful legal and canonical team, which conducted her defence, and she enjoyed the strong (if surreptitious) backing of all those aristocratic families who hated and feared the rise of the Boleyns. Her image as a ‘wronged woman’ appealed to other women up and down the land. Abroad, her nephew continued to promote her cause in Rome and his newly arrived ambassador in England, Eustace Chapuys, immediately constituted himself as her prime champion and protector. Henry only tolerated his blatant interference because he had no desire to sever diplomatic relations with the Emperor, being uncertain of the friendship of the French. Wolsey fell from favour in the autumn of 1529, having failed to give the King what he both wanted and needed. He died in November 1530 facing charges of treason but his disappearance did nothing to resolve what was by that time known as ‘the King’s great matter’. Meanwhile, Catherine remained at Court, in a kind of
ménage a trois
with Anne Boleyn, discharging her formal duties 104

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and still recognized as Queen, but clearly out of the King’s bed and favour. Finally, in an attempt to break the deadlock and perhaps in an effort to stave off the radical action that he was then contemplating, on 31 July 1531 the King caused a delegation of about 30 councillors and peers to wait upon the Queen at Greenwich and plead with her in the name of the King and kingdom. They were wasting their time and breath. Catherine merely reaffi rmed her position and her willingness to abide by the papal decision, which she knew perfectly well would be in her favour. Exasperated, Henry left the court, taking Anne with him, and a few days later, on 14 August, went to Woodstock, ordering the Queen to remain at Windsor. With a kind of heroic innocence, Catherine complained that this was no way for Henry to treat his wife, whereupon he exploded with wrath, declaring that he would receive no more messages from her – and never wished to see her again. That was the end of the

ménage a trois
, and also of any talk of a reconciliation. Anne had, in a sense, seen off her rival, but legally nothing had changed. Whether he chose to acknowledge the fact or not, he was still married to Catherine, and Anne had, and could have, no status.

Over the previous two years Henry had tried numerous ways to extract a favourable decision from Rome. He had tried browbeating his own Church with charges of praemunire; he had tried claiming that papal jurisdiction did not extend to matrimony; he had tried pleading the ancient rights of England. Nothing worked, and all that he achieved was the interminable delay in the delivery of the papal sentence, which was driving Catherine and her supporters mad.

31
After the summer of 1531, the emphasis changed. Catherine now kept her own court, separate from that of the King, Chapuys visited her regularly and she became increasingly a focus for opposition, not only to the Boleyn ascendancy but also to the King. By the Christmas of 1531 the political nation was becoming increasingly divided and Henry rejected Catherine’s proffered New Year gift. The King later alleged that his strong-minded wife could have raised a rebellion against him, such was her support, and waged a war ‘as fi erce as any her mother Isabella had waged in Spain’
.32 That ma
y or may not have been true but the Queen had no such intention. Her sole purpose was to force Henry to drop his annulment petition. The King was now on his metal and by the beginning of 1532 had become convinced (or had convinced himself) that the Pope was claiming jurisdiction to which he had no right. In other words that the papacy was merely a human institution that was usurping upon the authority of kings. Although he would never have admitted it, this was dangerously close to the heretical position taken up by Martin Luther and his followers a few years earlier. By March 1532 his new chief adviser, the self-taught lawyer Thomas Cromwell, had worked out a way to turn this conviction into law by using the ancient and