grounds for unworthy critical occasion by reason of the original obstacles to a union1 upon which the king now claimed to fear that heaven had set a curse. Catherine had already reached an age which precluded the hope of further issue; and besides the fact remained in spite of the feudal rule which did not deny the descent of the crown in the female line - that no queen regnant had ever sat upon the throne of England. Such circumstances as these may well have excited in the king's mind a genuine solicitude as to who should succeed him "in this Imperial dignity." What has overshadowed and belittled the real reasons which might have justified Henry, upon patriotic a divorce grounds, in seeking a divorce, was the impetuous yet charac- belittled by teristic zeal with which he sought it, with the open purpose motives; of hastening his union with a young woman of his court, who for a time goaded his passion by a stiff and obstinate refusal to bow to his will. It is not clear when the king's resolve to obtain a divorce first crystallized into a definite purpose; 2 but certainly not before 1527 did the matter pass as a problem of state into the hands of Wolsey as the highest representative of the only power which, according to then existing theories, was competent to solve it. At an earlier stage of this work the attempt was made to emphasize the fact that it is impossible to grasp the full and true significance of many transactions which occurred between the Christian nations and the position of Roman See, during the existence of the medieval empire, with- final judge out some insight into the structure of that fabric which rested in such upon the magnificent notion of a vast Christian monarchy under the whose sway was absolutely universal. The chiefs of this com- of the prehensive society were the Roman emperor and the Roman empire; pontiff, the one standing at its head in its temporal character as an empire, the other standing at its head in its spiritual character as a church.3 Under this system the Roman pontiff naturally assumed the office of supreme judge of appeals in all causes which arose in the ecclesiastical courts of the Christian I During the negotiations for the marriage of Mary to the son of the king of France (1526-27), the bishop of Tarbes questioned the validity of the dispensation granted for Henry's marriage with Catherine. Lord Herbert, pp. 80, 81. The treaty for the marriage was, however, concluded. For a full discussion of the transaction with the bishop of Tarbes, see Lingard, vol. iv. 2 "The earliest intimation which I 8 See vol. i. pp. 367-371. the pope as matters, theory mediæval Wolsey first at tempts to hear the case as legate; nations under the canon law.1 In a matrimonial cause involving the validity of a royal marriage, where the result might affect the legitimacy of the issue, and in that way the peace of a nation, it was a matter of the last importance to have all questions passed upon by the one authority whose judgment was entitled, in theory at least, to universal acceptance. Instead of submitting the question of the divorce to the pope in the first instance, Wolsey made an abortive attempt to solve it by virtue of his legatine authority. In May, 1527, he opened his court as legate, and, in a collusive action, cited Henry to appear and answer to the charge of cohabiting with his brother's widow. As Catherine refused to admit the facts involved in the accusation, and as her appeal would have at once removed the case to the papal court, the matter was suddenly dropped,2 for in that very month Rome had been surprised and sacked by the imperial forces. The results of the victory of Pavia in 1525 had placed the pope at the emperor's mercy, -the last blow had left him a prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo. And yet, in spite of the attitude in which Clement now stood to Catherine's all-powerful nephew, who never once then refers wavered in his devotion to her cause, Wolsey concurred with the king in the reference of the whole matter to Rome, where successful they hoped to secure a successful conclusion. The details of it to Rome, and guarantees issue; the complicated negotiations which followed are more or less familiar to all readers of English history. If the case could have been adjudged upon its real merits, free from political pressure, the chances all are that Henry would have failed by reason of the fact that the weight of unbiassed opinion among the theologians and canonists seems to have been decidedly against him. But involved as the cause was with political ones of which were that the pope would empower Wolsey or some other to hear the divorce, or that he would so use his dispensing power as to enable Henry to marry a wife who could bear him children. See Knight to Henry, State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 2, 3; Wolsey to Cassalis, Ibid., vol. xii. p. 26; Burnet's Hist. Reform. (Collectanea), vol. ii. pp. vii.-xi. 5 For the history of the appeal to the universities, see Burnet, vol. i. pp. 64-71; Lingard, vol. iv. pp. 84-86, and notes. In motives rassed its tion; ment of motives, at a turning-point in European history, it was impos- conflicting sible that it should have been severed from the extraneous which there forces which dictated everything which actually occurred. As embara devoted son of the church, and as her valiant defender, consideraif was natural that Clement should have been eager to hold Henry at a time when his resentment threatened to sever England from the Roman communion. On the other hand, apart from the emperor's hold upon the papal dominions in Italy, the defection in France and the spread of protestantism in North Germany admonished the pope that a final break with Charles might lose to him a far wider dominion. the midst of such conflicting motives and interests, Clement sought security in a temporizing policy of delay, so designed that no definite result could be reached in favor of either party. As a part of that policy, he issued in the summer of appoint1528 a legatine commission to cardinals Wolsey and Cam- Campeggio peggio for the trial of the case in England.1 Campeggio, who and failure loitered on the way, did not arrive within the realm until Octo- sion; ber; and not until May, 1529, did the two legates open their court in the great hall of the Blackfriars in order to summon the king and queen to appear before them on the 18th of June, at which time Catherine protested against the judges and appealed to a higher jurisdiction. During that very month the destruction of the last remnant of the French army resulted in an open alliance between Charles and Clement, upon which soon followed the revocation of the legatine commission and the removal of the cause to Rome. The failure of Wolsey's Wolsey's efforts resulted at once in his overthrow, an event which last of the' marks the termination of the rule of the great ecclesiastics great ecclewho, since the accession of Henry VII., had dominated at the statesmen; council board. When at a little later day the cardinal was actually stripped of his office, the vast powers which had been 1 See Burnet, vol. i. pp. 38, 39, and vol. ii. (Collectanea) p. xv. 2 See Cavendish, pp. 423-428. As to the speeches attributed to Catherine and Henry, which Burnet has treated as fictitious, see Lingard, vol. iv. p. 71, note 3. Notwithstanding the queen's appeal, she was pronounced contumacious, and the trial was continued in her absence until the 23d of July, when the whole matter was adjourned in order that it might be laid before the pon- 3 See Burnet, vol. i. p. 57, and vol. ii. 4 In October, 1529, the attorney-general filed two bills against him, charging him with having violated as legate the Statute of Præmunire (16th of Rich. II.). He pleaded guilty and threw himself upon the king's mercy. Cavendish, p. 250. of his mis overthrow; siastical distribu tion of his powers; of Henry VIII. concentrated in his hands were distributed. The seals were given to Sir Thomas More, while the real direction of affairs passed into the hands of the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, — to the former as president of the council, to the latter, the his portrait uncle of Anne Boleyn, as lord treasurer. As Wolsey lay dying, he drew a pathetic picture of the infinite ruthlessness and selfishness which twenty years of despotic power had developed in the breast of a master whom he had served before God and country, when he said to Kyngston: "He is a prince of most royal courage; rather than miss any part of his will, he will endanger one half of his kingdom; and I do assure you, I have often kneeled before him, sometimes for three hours together, to persuade him from his appetite, and could not prevail." It was this uncontrollable and stubborn temper, this unbending courage and unreasoning appetite, which became under the manipulation of Cromwell, during the ten years which followed Wolsey's fall, the mainspring of a system of despotism which has no parallel in English history. Cromwell, 1529-40: his early life; 5. About the time the cardinal obtained from Rome permission to suppress the smaller monasteries, whose revenues he diverted to his foundations at Ipswich and Oxford, he took into his service a middle-aged man of business, of whose history prior to that event we know little that is clear and definite. It is reasonably certain, however, that about the year 1490 Thomas Cromwell was born near Putney, the son of an iron-worker, and that his earlier years were passed in roving adventure.2 He must still have been in his teens when he made his way to Italy, where, according to the popular story, he enlisted in the wars as a common soldier, and where he imbibed in the most unscrupulous school the world ever saw those views of Italian statecraft which were destined to mould his after-history.3 It was in the land of the Borgias and the Medici that Wolsey's successor became the disciple of disciple of Machiavelli, whose "Prince" he dared to commend as a political guide-book to Reginald Pole while he was still in Wolsey's Machia velli; ment of him in the of monas service.1 After his career as a soldier had ended, Cromwell turned his hand to commercial pursuits, and as early as 1512 we find him back in England practising as a scrivener, a combination of attorney and money-lender. In 1523 he appears member of the parliaas an active and influential member of the parliament which met in that year, and two years later we find him engaged in 1523; the unpopular task of suppressing the lesser monasteries, a work which he executed with a ruthless severity that involved him in the hate then gathering around his master. But when his fidelity to Wolsey, the end came, when that master had been convicted in the who had king's bench, plundered of his fortune,2 and deserted by the employed crowd that had fed upon his bounty, Cromwell alone was faith- suppression ful in his adversity. As an intermediary he undertook to buy teries; off the hostility of the courtiers who had fallen heir to Wolsey's possessions by procuring from him confirmations of their grants; as a fearless friend he defeated in the parliament of 15293 a bill, driven through the lords but rejected in the commons, designed to fix upon the cardinal the crime of high treason. In the course of this business it was that Cromwell, whose fidelity had attracted attention, found access to the king in order to negotiate for Wolsey's pensions. By his "witty demeanor" he so impressed himself upon his sovereign that he was soon able to obtain a private audience, in which he dis- after Wolclosed a daring policy, which he said would at once free Henry suggests to from all the difficulties by which he was surrounded. The the king a substance of his suggestion was that the king should solve the policy; problem of the divorce by disavowing the papal supremacy, and by declaring himself the head of the church in England,5 a position which would leave him free to apply for relief to his own ecclesiastical tribunals. In order to attain the end in view it was suggested that the clergy- the only order in the 1 Pole, pp. 133-136. 2 Legrand, vol. iii. pp. 377, 379; Fædera, vol. iv. p. 375. * After an interval of about six years, the seven years' parliament met in November, 1529. 4 Cavendish, p. 463; Lingard, vol. iv. p. 536, and note 2. Pole (Apologia, pp. 121-123) gives the account of what occurred upon the authority of Cromwell and others who were present. Cromwell is reported to have said to Henry in conclusion: "Vindices ergo quod est proprium Re- sey's fall he new line of |