The advocation of the case by the Pope altered, as was intended, the balance of power sharply in Catherine’s favour. For it meant that, eventually, the Great Matter would have to be tried in Rome, where Catherine was at least as strong as Henry. But first, if due process were followed, there was the ‘citation’ or summons. As soon as the necessary documentation arrived in England, Henry, as the respondent party, would be summoned to appear before the Papal tribunal like any other litigant and with the usual penalties for non-compliance. Now it was one thing for Henry to respond to such a summons as part of a collusive action which he himself had initiated, as in May 1529; it was quite another for it to be served on him against his will and by his wife or her agents. This, Wolsey informed the English ambassadors in Rome, ‘is no more tolerable than the whole amission [loss] of his…estate and dignity Royal’.1
Would Catherine dare to press home her advantage and use a weapon that was guaranteed to humiliate and alienate her husband beyond recall? Henry (in his own words) ‘feared’ that she would.2
He was right to be fearful. During the Blackfriars Trial, Catherine had shown her customary courage. But, in the weeks that followed, her mood turned sour. The trial had ended inconclusively, and still there was no firm news of what had happened to her appeal in Rome. Under the strain, she succumbed to resentment and mistrust. She resented what Henry and Wolsey had done to her, and she was mistrustful of what they might yet do. Her anxieties centred on the Legatine tribunal. This was adjourned rather than dissolved and so might still, she feared, be employed against her.
The man charged with rescuing Henry from the toils of his wife’s ill-feeling was Wolsey himself.
By any standards, Wolsey was a man of extraordinary despatch in the conduct of business: he was able to write for twelve hours, from four in the morning till four in the afternoon, without rising ‘once to piss’, as Cavendish, his Gentleman Usher, reported. But even his fearsome efficiency was at the mercy of the vagaries of contemporary transport. For communications in the sixteenth century could go no faster than a man could ride along potholed roads, through treacherous passes and in the teeth of brigands and customs-and frontier-officials who were scarcely less lawless. In the circumstances, the news of the advocation of the case and citation of Henry to Rome reached England promptly. But the documentation and official notification followed much more slowly. This protracted timetable set the framework for Wolsey’s actions.3
The English ambassadors in Rome wrote to Wolsey on 16 July, to inform him that the advocation had been granted. But they warned him that they were ‘obliged to send this letter by a private courier and by an unsafe route’, since the regular posts had been closed as ‘the Pope does not wish the King to know anything until the advocation is [officially] sent’. Clement himself wrote to Wolsey three days later, on the 19th. He informed him of the advocation, apologised for having to grant it and trusted that Wolsey would take it in good part.4
Despite the fears of the ambassadors, their letter of the 16th made good time to England and was in the King’s hands by Monday, 2 August. In the interim, Henry had at last started to contemplate seriously the possibility of a trial of his marriage at Rome–and what Campeggio’s role in it might be after his return to the Curia. For an unavoidable consequence of Campeggio’s extended stay in England was that he knew where all the bodies were buried. Acting on Henry’s orders, Wolsey tried to tie his fellow legate’s hands by getting him to sign a written undertaking or ‘pollitication’. Wolsey sent the pollitication to Henry by the hands of Brian Tuke, the Master of the Posts, who arrived at Greenwich on Friday, 30 July ‘towards evening’. The pollitication, Tuke reported, was unexpectedly well received. The King was especially pleased with Campeggio’s undertaking that, if Henry objected to the advocation, he (Campeggio) would use his best efforts with the Pope ut nec a serenissma Regina permittat dictam causam prosequi aut tractari (that he shall not permit her Serene Highness the Queen either to pursue or to conduct the case). He was even more satisfied with Campeggio’s assurance that he had ‘no intelligence [understanding] with the Queen’.5
Campeggio’s apparently favourable attitude to Henry made him the King’s first line of defence when, the following Monday morning, the letters from Rome with firm news of the advocation were put in his hands. Immediately, Henry invoked Campeggio’s undertaking in the pollitication. Wolsey was to require Campeggio that, ‘according to his promise’, ‘he will use all ways and means possible that it come into his hands (before) it comes into the Queen’s sight’. ‘For his Highness’, the instructions continued, ‘feareth lest she would not facilely [easily] agree the alteration, but use it as it maketh most to her benefit.’6
The ‘alteration’, to which Henry referred, was the scheme to draw the fangs of the citation by removing the elements most offensive to his royal dignity. Wolsey had earlier listed these as citation of the King to Rome, either in person or by proxy, ‘with any clauses of interdiction, excommunication, incurring into contempt, vel cum invocatione brachii secularis aut poenis pecuniariis [either with the invocation of the secular arm or with financial penalties]’. If these were included, he said, ‘the dignity and prerogative Royal of the King’s crown, whereunto all the nobles and subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, will not tolerate nor suffer that [the citation] be obeyed’. Wolsey was instructed to reiterate these arguments to Campeggio and get him in turn to press them on Catherine: ‘to be content to procure that no such thing be comprised in the said advocation as shall irritate the King’s Highness and his nobles, and say that a King in his own realm may not be violently [compelled]’.7
It is unclear whether Campeggio agreed to undertake the task assigned to him. If so, he failed. There was now nothing for it but to open direct negotiations with the Queen’s counsel in which he, the King, would appear in the unaccustomed role of suitor. Henry finally agreed to this disagreeable expedient during his short visit to Wolsey at his house of Tyttenhanger near St Alban’s on 14–15 August. A few days later Wolsey reported on the progress he had made. He had summoned Catherine’s senior legal adviser, John Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells, to a meeting. Tracking him down had taken some time, since the bishop had left London for his summer retreat at Dogmersfield in Hampshire, where, twenty-eight years previously, Catherine had first met Henry VII and Prince Arthur.
Wolsey put the case to Clerk with his accustomed forcefulness. Thus far, he began, Henry ‘had never showed himself as a party’ to the suit, since the procedure had been ex officio or inquisitorial. In the circumstances, it was highly undesirable for ‘the Queen [now] to show or make herself a party against the King’ or to have a citation, with all the offending clauses, served on him ‘at her suit’. This, Clerk was bluntly warned, would ‘irritate and exasperate [the King] against her’–with consequences that Wolsey laid on with a trowel. ‘Great danger…may arise to the Queen…if the King is cited.’ Likewise, Catherine would be personally blamed if the citation led to a breach of the peace between Henry VIII and Charles V, and ‘she would incur the indignation of all the nobles and people of the realm’. But the greatest risk, Wolsey pointed out with relish, was run, not by the Queen, but by the Queen’s counsellors: if Catherine pushed things, as was feared, it was they who would bear the brunt of Henry’s wrath and face ‘extreme undoing’.
Since Clerk himself was Catherine’s leading counsellor, the tactic was none too subtle. But it had its desired effect. Quickly, the bishop protested his agreement. Now that the legates’ ‘hands are closed by the…advocation of the cause’, Clerk acknowledged, the Queen should go no further. Instead, he proposed a mutual suspension of legal hostilities: ‘the Queen ought to be content to proceed no further in the process at Rome, like as the King will nothing attempt by way of law’. And he undertook to try to get the agreement of Catherine’s other principal counsel and of the Queen herself.
Clerk returned to London and met his colleagues, including Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of London, and Catherine’s Almoner, Dr Shorton. They came up with a scheme by which the letters of advocation and citation would not be served on Henry but only ‘secretly notified’ to the two legates. This seemed to square the circle. It would spare Henry’s pride but, at the same time, it would still be effective in extinguishing finally the authority of the Legatine Court, which was Catherine’s minimum requirement. Clerk wrote to this effect to Wolsey who forwarded his letters to Court.8
Henry replied by his new Secretary, Stephen Gardiner. He thanked Wolsey for his ‘pains, letters and study’. But he was by no means satisfied. For Clerk’s letters had revealed new details about the citation. It now required Henry’s response, it appeared, ‘under pain of 10,000 ducats [£2,500]’. Henry was ‘not the best content and marvelleth much de adjectione poenae pecuniariae [about the addition of a monetary penalty]’. This, Henry felt, was so ‘prejudicial to his person and royal estate’, that he could not consent to the citation being formally ‘showed to his subject [Wolsey], within his own realm’. Instead, he suggested another device. Clement’s Brief of 19 July, in which he informed Wolsey of the advocation of the case, had finally arrived. Would not the formal exhibition of the Brief to the legates suffice to extinguish the jurisdiction of their Court?9
Gardiner’s letter reached Wolsey at 11 p.m. on 4 September. By this time, Wolsey’s guests at The Moor included not only Clerk but Campeggio himself. The following morning, Campeggio eagerly endorsed Henry’s suggestion ‘that the execution of the brief to me (Wolsey) directed…shall be sufficient’. He also agreed to help persuade Clerk. Clerk finally conceded, ‘albeit after good and long debating’. But the obstacle, he feared, would be Catherine herself. ‘Considering her stiff heart, replenished with great mistrust…he doubted what she would do’. At any rate, it would take more than him to convince her.
Clerk’s anxieties about Catherine’s reaction were evidently shared by Wolsey. Aware that he would have one chance only, he decided to get Henry’s direct endorsement first. He sent two distinguished canon lawyers to Court to explain in detail what was proposed ‘without that any overture shall be made to the Queen thereof till I may be advertised how the King’s Highness and ye of his counsel do like of the same’. Henry was happy to give his seal of approval. But he too feared the worst: ‘In case omnibus tentatis, hoc non successerit [having tried everything, this should not succeed]’, he was prepared to make a choice of evils (de duobus malis). ‘Rather the [advocation and citation] should be privily execute upon [Wolsey] and the Cardinal Campeggio, than the same with rumour to be divulged in Flanders’.10
Armed now with Henry’s agreement, Wolsey got to work on Catherine’s full counsel. They were no pushover. ‘They make much sticking as yet,’ he reported, ‘alleging that in the…brief there be none effectual and express words whereby the Queen might be sured of the effectual closing of the judges’ hands; and that she, being full of mistrust, shall be with great difficulty induced thereto.’11
Somehow, Wolsey pulled off the trick. And on 11 September the two Cardinals came to London for the formal renunciation of their powers. This too had been the subject of much debate ‘both on the King’s part and on the Queen’s’. ‘At length the form of intimation was agreed on,’ Campeggio reported, ‘and it was made to us by a proctor of the Queen’s, who announced that we had no powers, and that neither of us could proceed any further.’ Wolsey and Campeggio then signed a declaration to this effect, which was embodied in ‘a public deed’.
The English trials of Catherine’s marriage were over.12
Henry was delighted, and hoped to extract the maximum advantage from Catherine’s reluctance to press home her advantage. Even if Catherine wanted to ‘resile [withdraw] and go back’, he trusted that Wolsey had so arranged matters that ‘it should not be in her power so to do’. He also hoped that ‘this act, done before [Wolsey] and the Cardinal Campeggio’ would prejudice her future chances of legal action, ‘by the letting and impeaching of further prosecution, and of any citation or process’ whether ‘here, at Rome or elsewhere’. It was a characteristically grasping and mean-spirited response.
But why had Catherine given in? Was it gratuitous generosity? Her early mood hardly points to that. Had her counsel been panicked by Wolsey’s threats into pressurising her? If so, it is difficult to understand why the negotiations were so long and so tough. Catherine herself offered a more straightforward explanation.
The Queen [she was reported as saying] had at one time resolved to be herself the bearer of the inhibition, and, since there was no one to execute [it], to present the same to the King; but on the latter representing that it would be quite sufficient that the two Cardinals should resign, and exhorting her not to take such a step, she [the Queen] agreed to desist, on condition of her counsel declaring that no harm or detriment should ensue to her interests, and that the inhibition to the Cardinals should be considered sufficient.
Which indeed seems to be what happened.13
Once again, therefore, Catherine was one step ahead of Henry. Before she agreed to the form of Wolsey and Campeggio’s renunciation, she had made sure that she would do no damage to her legal position. But even after the renunciation, Henry was still nursing the hope (which his wife already knew to be delusory) that her action would be ‘prejudicial’ to her. As so often, Henry had been too clever by half–and too devious. But it was Catherine who scored the solid points.
Why? Was it that Catherine’s legal advice, for which indeed she paid dearly (£514 in 1527–8 and £704 in 1528–9), was better than Henry’s? Rather the difference lay in the King and Queen themselves. Catherine was a good client, who was prepared to take advice. Henry was an impossible one, who always thought he knew better than his lawyers. He paid the price–until he could change the law to fit his notions.14
The agreement of the ‘alteration’ with Catherine and her counsel was Wolsey’s last service for Henry. In the immediate aftermath of the Blackfriars Tribunal, Catherine herself had prophesied that its failure would mean Wolsey’s ruin:
The Queen [Mendoza reported] writes that such are the King’s disappointment and passion at not being able to carry out his purpose that the Cardinal will inevitably be the victim of his rage.
The Queen spoke true. On 19 September, with the ‘alteration’ safely concluded, Henry relented and allowed Wolsey to come to Grafton where the King was enjoying the hunting. But the circumstances were designed to humiliate: the man who had ruled the roost so long was not even given a room of his own where he could change his riding clothes.15
A fortnight later the blow fell. On 9 October, as Wolsey presided in the Court of Chancery, he was himself indicted in the Common Law Court of King’s Bench. The charge was one of Praemunire: that is, the illegal exercise of Papal authority in England in his capacity as legate. The penalty was the confiscation of all property and imprisonment at the King’s pleasure. On the 22nd, Wolsey anticipated the inevitable verdict by acknowledging his offences and surrendering himself and his vast possessions into the King’s hands. On the 30th, his person was placed outside the King’s protection and his property declared forfeit. Meanwhile, on the 17th, he had been forced to surrender the Chancellorship.
Wolsey was the man Catherine blamed for putting the idea of the Divorce in the King’s head. For fifteen years, he had come between Catherine and her husband. Now he was gone.
On 3 November, Henry opened the fifth Parliament of his reign, later known as the ‘Reformation’ Parliament. It was immediately ‘prorogued’ or adjourned to Westminster. For Henry now had a new palace to replace Bridewell of baleful memory.16
A few days previously, on 24 October, Henry had gone by boat from Greenwich to Wolsey’s former town-palace of York Place in Westminster. The King was accompanied only by his mistress, her mother and Henry Norris, the Groom of the Stool and, as head of the Privy Chamber, the King’s principal body servant. This select party inspected both the building and Wolsey’s treasures, which had been laid out for them like the goods in a Harrods’ sale. They were mightily impressed: ‘it is added’, the Imperial ambassador reported, ‘that the King was much gratified and found [them] more valuable even than he expected’. On the evening of 2 November, Henry left Greenwich to take up residence in the splendidly equipped palace.17
He and Anne Boleyn were setting up house together.
It was a new world. It was unclear what place, if any, there was in it for Catherine. Certainly there was none at York Place, which had no apartment for the Queen.