The Divorce

Skilful as had been Wolsey's diplomacy, the cardinal had really gained little for his master, and had not a large amount to his credit when he was confronted with a situation as unexpected as it was serious.

In 1525 Charles V had captured Francis I at Pavia, and instead of allowing Henry VIII to share in this advantage, had come to terms with the French king and let him go. Shortly afterward the emperor repudiated Princess Mary, Henry's daughter, and married a Portuguese infanta. These acts were construed as insults by the English king. Finally, in 1527, Charles allowed Rome to be sacked, and the pope, Clement VII, who was secretly an ally of France, to be captured and shut up in the castle of St. Angelo. This act convinced Henry that Charles V was becoming too important in Europe, and that the Tudor house had no further advantages to gain from a continuance of the alliance with him. Henry determined, therefore, to break with the emperor, and was urged to do this by Wolsey, who in despair of help from Charles V, advocated an alliance with France in order to rescue the pope from prison.

But Henry had in mind another scheme, which did not originate with Wolsey. He wished to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, who was, as we know, the aunt of Charles V. He had no son, and feared lest in the event of the death of his daughter, Mary, there might be a struggle for the throne. But a more potent cause lay in the king's passion for one of the maids of honor of his court, Anne Boleyn, an attractive Irish beauty of twenty, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, and granddaughter, on her mother's side, of the earl of Surrey, who had won the battle of Flodden.

But how could this be done? A dispensation of Julius II, twenty years before, had legalized Henry's marriage with Catherine, and it seemed unlikely that the present pope would declare the act of his predecessor void. Wolsey at first knew nothing of Henry's desire to marry Anne Boleyn and was willing to obtain, if he could, the pope's consent to the divorce, hoping that Henry would strengthen the alliance with France by marrying Renee, daughter of Louis XII. But Wolsey was soon undeceived. Henry wished no marriage with a princess of France; he wished a divorce from Catherine that he might marry Anne Boleyn, and no other. From November, 1527, when the pope escaped from St. Angelo, to the following June, Henry, through others than Wolsey, made every effort to get the dispensation of Pope Julius declared ineffective. Finally, in June, 1528, Clement issued a commission authorizing Cardinal Campeggio and Cardinal Wolsey to hold a legatine court in England, to inquire into the facts, and to pronounce judgment. Campeggio, delayed by sickness, did not reach England till the end of September, and then his first endeavor was to dissuade Henry and Wolsey from their course. But Henry would not yield, and at last, on June 18, 1529, the court was opened. For a month evidence was taken, and on July 23 Campeggio, following the practice of the court of Rome, adjourned the case till October. But during the summer the pope, influenced by an appeal of Queen Catherine, took the case out of the hands of the legatine court and removed it to Rome. This change of jurisdiction meant indefinite delay.

Fall of Wolsey

Henry was enraged. Influenced by Anne Boleyn, whose position at court had made possible the return to power of Wolsey's enemies (the duke of Norfolk, son of the earl of Surrey and Anne Boleyn's uncle, and the duke of Suffolk, who hated Wolsey), he determined on the cardinal's downfall. Wolsey had known from the first that whichever way the divorce suit was decided, the end was likely to be fatal to himself ; for if he failed, Henry was bound to be angry and to withdraw his favor, while if he succeeded, the elevation of Anne Boleyn and the return to power of her party would mean his ruin. Before the end of 1529 the blow fell. Wolsey, charged with acting as papal legate in England contrary to the statute of Pr munire, was convicted and deprived of nearly all his honors and goods. The archbishopric of York alone was left to him. Later, charged with treason, he was summoned to London, but died at Leicester Abbey, November 29, 1530. Ah! Master Kingston," he said upon his deathbed to the lieutenant of the Tower, "if I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.

Thomas Cromwell and his Policy

Thus far Henry had failed in his dealings with Rome. After Wolsey's downfall, the duke of Norfolk, coming to power with More as chancellor, continued the negotiations, but in vain. Then Henry began to listen to a new adviser, and to consider the adoption of a new policy. The man who now gained the king's ear was Thomas Cromwell, a layman of low birth, but a bold and original statesman, a follower of Machiavelli and of Italian statecraft, and a man well tried in Wolsey's service. He pointed out to Henry the needlessness of papal decrees and the desirability of throwing off entirely the papal yoke. Henry was not willing to proceed to extremes at once, but determined to take such steps as would force the pope to come to a decision on the divorce question; or, if that were impossible, such steps as would prepare the way for a final separation from Rome. In this determination Henry was influenced not only by his desire to marry Anne Boleyn, but by his greedy longing for the wealth of the ecclesiastics and the monasteries, and his eagerness to increase his power over the English church.

First, in 1530 and 1531, Henry charged the entire body of the clergy with having violated the statute of Pr munire, because they had recognized Wolsey's authority as papal legate. This act rendered the clergy liable to a confiscation of all their goods. Though the convocations of Canterbury and York offered to buy the king's pardon with 1,000,000 sterling, Henry refused, consenting to grant pardon only in case they recognized him as the Protector and Supreme Head of the Church." The clergy finally yielded in 1531; and furthermore, the next year agreed that they would not meet in convocation or adopt any ecclesiastical ordinances without the royal consent. This attack on the church led to Sir Thomas More's resignation as chancellor. More saw the coming revolution, and, wholly out of sympathy with the new policy, refused to have any part in it. In the same year the high-minded archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, died, and in his place was called Thomas Cranmer, a scholar and theologian of Cambridge, and a churchman likely to be useful to the king.