Six Wives (32 page)

    Catherine ended with her recommendations to Lady Salisbury and signed herself 'Your loving mother, Catherine the Queen'. It is the letter of every mother when her only child first leaves home.
⁹

* * *

But the separation proved less absolute than Catherine feared. By September 1526, Mary was back at Court, where her new entourage made a great impression. 'Her Grace was not only well accompanied with a goodly number', Wolsey's then Court agent, Richard Sampson, reported, 'but also with divers persons of gravity,
venerandam habentibus
canitiem
[having reverend grey hairs]. I saw not the Court, Sir, better furnished with sage personages many days than now.' But Sampson reserved his best superlatives, in two languages, for the Princess herself. In English, she was 'of her age, as goodly a child as ever I have seen'; in Latin, she so behaved herself '
ut splendidius nusquam, decentius, iocundius
videri potest mortale nihil
[that no one, nowhere could seem more distinguished, proper and joyful]'. Neither Featherstone nor Lady Salisbury had let Catherine down.
¹⁰

* * *

    But, within a few months, the advancement of Richmond seemed very small beer. The boy had threatened Mary's position only; now Catherine's own status was at risk. For Henry had decided on a radical solution to the succession. He would no longer tinker with the symptoms, and swing between his bastard and his daughter; instead he would go to the root of the matter and tackle his marriage and his wife.

    Or rather, he would deal with the fact – for such he had persuaded himself it was – that his marriage was not a marriage and that Catherine was not his wife. Indeed (or so he convinced himself), in the sight of God, she never had been. So he was free to marry and have sons by another, younger, more fruitful woman. He had already chosen the girl and plighted his troth. And she, on New Year's Day 1527, had accepted him as her betrothed. It was now just a question of getting the rest of the world to see things as Henry did.

    The King thought that it would be easy. For the facts of the case, as they presented themselves to him, were obvious. Like many others, including Buckingham and Catherine, he had pondered on why 'God would not suffer the King's Grace's issue to prosper'. Unlike the rest, he had come up with an answer from the Word of God.
If a man shall take his
brother's wife
, it states in
Leviticus
20.21,
it is an impurity: he hath uncovered his
brother's nakedness; they shall be childless
. The words struck Henry like a revelation. He had married his brother's wife, and he had been childless or at least son-less, which amounted to the same thing. Clearly, his marriage had transgressed the divine prohibition and had been punished accordingly. It was an 'impurity', a thing accursed and it should be ended forthwith.

    But what of the Papal dispensation which had been obtained for the marriage? Was not that sufficient? Evidently not, said Henry. Indeed, since the dispensation had been powerless to ward off the curse of childlessness, it was clear that the Pope himself had erred in granting it. Everyone agreed that the Pope was empowered to dispense human or ceremonial law. But not even the heir of St Peter could set aside the law of nature and of God. Julius II had sought to do just that when, in defiance of
Leviticus
, he had permitted the marriage of Henry and Catherine. Julius had been wrong. Henry had suffered for that wrong. Now Julius's successor, Clement VII, must right it.

    That, in a nutshell, was Henry's case. Over the next seven years, it underwent innumerable shifts of emphasis. It was infinitely elaborated and refined. Sometimes it was diluted to try to make it possible for the current Pope to undo the error of his predecessor without damaging his own authority. But, from its essence, Henry himself never varied.

    Catherine was just as immovable, matching her husband's commitment with an equal and opposite one of her own. She was as convinced of the rightness of their marriage as her husband was of its wrongness. And, to begin with, her defence was vastly more effective than his attack. For Catherine, though she liked to present herself as a lone woman, had powerful allies. They included public opinion, the great weight of conventional legal and theological authority and, above all, the political and military muscle of her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. Henry, in contrast, had only his own conscience and his own power as King of England. And he was trying to deploy them in areas where the individual conscience (even that of a king) and the power of the State had not hitherto dared to trespass.

    So it was a not unequal struggle: Henry liked to call himself a lion but Catherine fought like a lioness, in defence of herself and of her child.

O
n 18 May 1527, Don Inigo de Mendoza, the new Spanish ambassador in London, made a sensational report to the Emperor. Henry had 'secretly assembled certain bishops and lawyers that they may sign a declaration to the effect that his marriage with the Queen is null and void on account of her having been his brother's wife'. The King was 'bent on this divorce' and Wolsey was 'scheming to bring [it] about'.

    The Queen had been told nothing and feared the worst. 'She is so full of apprehension', Mendoza's report continued, 'that she has not ventured to speak with him [directly].' Instead, she 'communicated by a third person, who pretended not to come from her, though Mendoza suspected that he came with her consent'.
¹

    The Divorce had begun. And, simultaneously, Catherine and her friends had taken their first step to frustrating Henry's wishes. Everything, from Henry's point of view, depended on secrecy and speed. Catherine, with her messenger to the Spanish ambassador, had threatened to make both impossible.

* * *

The day before, on 17 May, Wolsey had opened the court to try the King's marriage. The court met privately, in Wolsey's town palace of York Place. Wolsey sat as judge by virtue of his special ('legatine') powers from the Pope. His fellow-archbishop, Warham of Canterbury, was assessor. The defendant was Henry. And the charge was one of unlawful cohabitation with the wife of his deceased brother, Arthur.

    Henry, of course, was not in the dock; indeed he sat on Wolsey's right hand. And the proceedings began with Wolsey asking Henry's permission to cite him to answer the charge. Henry graciously agreed. Wolsey then put the facts of his marriage to him. Henry concurred. Then the King appointed his proctor, or counsel, and withdrew. Here we enter a looking-glass world. Since the proceedings were inquisitorial, it was the task of Henry's counsel to argue the
opposite
of what his master wanted, and to defend the marriage. The case against was presented by the promoter or, as we might say, the counsel for the enquiry.
²

    He was Dr Richard Wolman and he had done his job thoroughly. Over a month previously he had interrogated Bishop Fox of Winchester at his episcopal palace at Winchester. Fox was the sole surviving member of the government who had been intimately involved with the negotiations for both of Catherine's marriages. He was now old and blind. But his memory was sharp and, prodded by Wolman's questions, his answers supplied a full picture of the circumstances. One exchange in particular stands out. Had the marriage between Arthur and Catherine been consummated? Fox testified that the couple had lived together in both London and Ludlow and that he believed consummation had followed this cohabitation. Using Henry's arguments and Fox's evidence, Wolman built up an impressive case against Pope Julius II's dispensation, which he presented on 31 May. Wolman then requested Wolsey to weigh his arguments, test his evidence and arrive at judgement.
³

    So far, things were running strongly in Henry's direction. Catherine had received neither official notification of the trial, nor a summons to it, nor had she any opportunity to put her side. All was set for a snap decision, which could only be for Henry.

    But, at the eleventh hour, something happened. Instead of proceeding to judgement on the 31st, as Wolman demanded, Wolsey pronounced the case to be so difficult that he was referring it to a panel of learned theologians and lawyers for elucidation. With that, the court rose, never to reconvene. Catherine could breathe again.

* * *

What had gone wrong (from Henry's point of view) or right (from Catherine's)? We shall never know for certain. But, most probably, Wolsey, for once, was telling the plain truth when he had pronounced the case too difficult for summary judgement.

    For there was more than one Biblical text dealing with the question. And if
Leviticus
forbade marriage with a brother's widow, then the other text, in
Deuteronomy
, appeared, in certain circumstances, to require it:
When brethren dwell together
, it declared,
and one of them dieth without children,
the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another; but his brother shall take her, and
raise up seed for his brother
. There were two ways to resolve the contradiction. The first, preferred by Henry, dismissed
Deuteronomy
out of hand. It belonged, it was argued, to the ceremonial law, which applied only to Jews, not Christians. And even the Jews themselves had ceased to conform to it. The other solution effected a partial reconciliation of the texts. It followed
Leviticus
in acknowledging the general principle that marriage with a brother's widow was prohibited. But it made a single exception for the circumstances envisaged by
Deuteronomy
: that is to say, when the dead brother was childless. A respectable body of opinion, especially the Early Fathers of the Church, had agreed with Henry in dismissing
Deuteronomy
and applying the prohibition in
Leviticus
strictly as a matter of divine law. But the development of later medieval canon law had been towards the 'compromise' position, which generally forbade marriage with a brother's widow,
except when the deceased was childless
.

    And, unfortunately for Henry, the facts of his case fitted the exception perfectly.

    Wolsey probably knew all this already. In any case, he was forcibly reminded of it when, in the last days of the trial, he consulted Bishop Fisher of Rochester, who was one of the proposed panel of experts. The consultation was an informal one, and Wolsey carefully omitted the names of the parties. But the signs are that Fisher guessed the truth. Worse, from Henry's point of view, he came out strongly for the 'compromise' position and hence for the right of the Pope to adjudicate the case. 'Otherwise', Fisher noted, 'it is in vain that Christ has said [to St Peter]: "whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven".'
⁴

    Wolsey forwarded Fisher's opinion to the King on 2 June, with a covering letter of his own in which he did his best to soften the blow for Henry. He hinted that Fisher's judgement had been warped by his partiality for Catherine: 'that, having some conjecture or smelling of the matter, his said opinion proceedeth rather of affection, than of sincerity of his learning or Scripture'. He also suggested that Fisher had 'extorted' or twisted Christ's words to Peter beyond the limits of reason. But, whatever palliatives Wolsey might apply, Henry now knew the worst: the weight of expert opinion was against him and for Catherine.
⁵

    But that was not the only bad news contained in Wolsey's letter. The Cardinal enclosed other reports, from France and Italy, 'confirming the piteous and lamentable spoils, pillages, with most cruel murders, committed by the Imperials in the City of Rome'. An Imperial army, led by the Duke of Bourbon, had mutinied for lack of pay and seized and sacked Rome. Bourbon had been killed and Pope Clement had taken refuge in the Castel di Sant'Angelo, where he was effectively a prisoner. The Emperor Charles V piously disavowed the actions of his troops but was happy to exploit the consequences, which were so advantageous to him.

    For Henry, on the other hand, the consequences of the Sack of Rome, as it became known, were little short of disastrous. The aborting of Wolsey's tribunal meant that Henry's Divorce could not be settled unilaterally in England; instead it would have to be referred to Rome. But the news in Wolsey's package told Henry that both the city of Rome and its Pope were now in the hands of Charles V. And Charles, Henry needed no reminding, was Catherine's nephew.

    In three days, between 31 May, when Wolman had presented his carefully crafted case against the dispensation, and 2 June, when Wolsey wrote his letter, the world had been turned upside-down. Henry had had certain victory snatched from his hands; Catherine had been rescued from the jaws of defeat.

    It took Henry another three weeks to summon up courage to broach matters directly with his wife. He found her in no mood to compromise. There were tears, then tantrums and finally an ultimatum.

    The confrontation took place on 22 June. There are two versions of what happened. The first comes from Catherine herself, via the Spanish ambassador. Henry had told her