Normally, it seems, Anne was still lodged with the Queen’s women on Catherine’s side of the palace. But disease had struck and ‘my lady Princess [Mary] and divers other the Queen’s maidens were sick of the smallpox’. So Anne had moved to a lodging in Tilt-yard Gallery, to the south of the main palace complex. This was remote enough to offer her some protection from infection. It also enabled her to maintain an independent, semi-royal state that would have been quite impossible in the Queen’s lodgings.
And it was in the lodgings in the Tilt-yard Gallery that Foxe found Anne. First, he was ‘admitted unto her presence’; then he gave her a quick summary of the achievements of the Embassy. He told her that the Pope had granted the key documents and agreed to the despatch of a legate. And he gave the credit to Gardiner’s ‘singular fidelity, diligence, and dexterity’. Anne was ecstatic. The only problem was that she found it difficult to distinguish one young, eager, travel-stained cleric from another–‘oftentimes in communication’, Foxe reported to Gardiner, ‘calling me Mr Stephens’ (the name, as we have seen, by which Gardiner was usually known). Finally, she made Gardiner ‘promise of large recompense’.
At this moment, Henry entered unannounced (evidently, ease of access for the King was another advantage of Anne’s present lodgings). Anne withdrew and Henry ordered Foxe to tell him, quam posse brevissime (‘just as briefly as I could’), ‘what was done in his cause’.
Foxe began with the dispensation. As we have seen, this was the document over which Wolsey had launched his bid to regain control of the Great Matter. He had shredded the first version obtained by the now-disgraced Knight. And he had drawn up a new version, incorporating all his criticisms. Gardiner, Foxe reported to Henry, had presented this new dispensation to Clement with a characteristic, hyperbolical flourish–claiming it to be such that, for the peace of Europe, the Pope should ‘grant unto all princes christened the like thereof’. But Clement’s response to a document over which the mountains had laboured had been deflationary. For he had treated it, if not quite as the ridiculous mouse of the proverb, then certainly as something utterly uncontentious, which he could accept on the nod, ‘very promptly and facilely’.
Foxe, in his report to the King, put as good a gloss on this as possible. It was, he said, a mark of Clement’s special favour to Henry that he ‘had passed the same without alteration of any sentence or word and sent the same by me’.
Here Foxe, for all his rhetoric, spoke the literal truth. For Wolsey’s draft of the second dispensation survives in the Vatican archives. This shows that it was used by the Papal Chancery as warrant for the Bull of dispensation, which was copied from it pretty much word for word (Foxe apologised for the bad writing of this transcript, since there were no calligraphically qualified scribes in the skeleton Curia-in-exile). The draft is endorsed: Minuta dispensationis missae per Thadeum cursorem (‘Draft of a Dispensation sent by the courier Thaddeus’), showing that it formed part of the supplementary packet of instructions which, as we have seen, was sent on to Foxe and Gardiner after their departure from London. And the draft is docketed by the Papal secretary, Motta, as having been registered in the Apostolic Chamber.
After describing their (rather too easy) success with the dispensation, Foxe moved to the more delicate matter of their failure to secure the decretal commission. But he put this in a good light too. The general commission, which they had got, contained, he claimed, all but two of the essential points of the decretal commission. The omissions–the Pope’s definition of the law on the case and his promise not to revoke the commission–were, Foxe conceded, important. But Clement, he assured Henry, had faithfully promised to make them good by his subsequent letters.
Henry was persuaded. He ‘made marvellous demonstrations of joy and gladness’ and summoned Anne to join in.
After he had been joined by Anne, the King peppered Foxe with questions about the Pope’s attitude to his case. In his answers Foxe, as he reported to Gardiner, ‘took occasion’ to puff Wolsey’s role. ‘Without [Wolsey’s] letters’, he told Henry and Anne, ‘we should have obtained nothing there’. It was also thanks to Wolsey that Clement had changed his opinion of Anne. The Pope had previously been informed that, in his love for Anne, Henry was driven by privatum aliquem effectum (‘a certain private lust’); that Anne herself ‘was with child, and of no such qualities as should be worthy that majesty’. But, Foxe asserted, thanks–and thanks only–to Wolsey’s testimony to the contrary, Clement had been persuaded of the truth.
At this point, Foxe must have turned to Anne, who had of course been present throughout this extraordinary recital. Was she properly grateful to Wolsey? Or outraged at the impertinence of his agent, Foxe?
Finally, Henry asked Foxe about the issue of ‘recusation and appellation’–that is, refusal of jurisdiction by one of the parties and appeal. This matter loomed large because it was already clear that Catherine intended to resort to these devices to abort any trial in England–as indeed she was to do. Once again Foxe had his answer ready. These cases were covered by the new commission, he claimed, ‘so far as the law would suffer and might be expressed by words’. He then quoted the relevant clause of the commission. But, faced by this technicality, Henry remitted the matter to Wolsey. ‘He said he would by my lord Grace’s judgement’ and ordered Foxe to go immediately to Wolsey that night.
For the moment, Wolsey’s own town-palace of York Place was uninhabitable, since he was rebuilding the Hall and other chambers ‘most sumptuously and gorgeously’. Instead, he was staying at Durham House on the Strand. By the time Foxe arrived there it was past 10 o’clock at night and Wolsey had gone to bed. Foxe was admitted nonetheless and explained what had happened. Wolsey’s first reaction was unfavourable. He was ‘marvellously perplexed, thinking this Commission to be of no better value than that was sent by Gambara’ and obtained by the despised Knight. But he decided to sleep on the matter.
By the following afternoon, he had changed his mind. He summoned a high-powered delegation, consisting of Foxe, Dr Bell (Henry’s first and most trusted adviser on the Divorce), and Anne’s father, Lord Rochford, and told them that he was fully satisfied with the commission. Other experts concurred and sang Gardiner’s praises: O! non aestimandum thesaurum, Margaritumque regni nostri (‘O inestimable treasure and pearl of our realm’). Which was, Foxe reported to the subject of these extravagances, ‘to the great comfort and rejoice of us your poor friends here’.
But, despite these outpourings, Wolsey wavered again. Finally, he decided he must have a decretal commission. It would settle his conscience and defend him against his detractors. It would deal with the possibility that Clement might die before a verdict was reached–or that he might change his mind. Above all, it would protect Wolsey’s own political position.
Here Wolsey got carried away. He spoke with extraordinary bluntness and gave Foxe a complete rhetorical question-and-answer script for Gardiner to use with Clement. What, Gardiner was to ask, would most conduce to the recovery of Papal authority? Surely, he was to answer his own question, it would be to render Wolsey impregnably secure in Henry’s favour? So ‘that what his Grace [Wolsey] should advise…his Highness [Henry] should…facilely condescend…unto’. ‘And by what means’, Gardiner was to continue, ‘may that be so perfectly attained?’ By Clement’s granting a decretal commission, he was to reply, ‘only at the contemplation (petition) of my lord’s Grace’.1
It was A. F. Pollard who, almost a hundred years ago, observed that for Wolsey ‘the Divorce was…a means not an end’. The point has been played down by Wolsey’s apologists. But it seems to me to be no more than the truth. For from the moment he found out about Knight’s secret mission, Wolsey had a single aim. It was not to get the Divorce for Henry. Instead, it was to recover control of the Great Matter for himself. He pursued this objective with single-mindedness and–it would seem from his words to Foxe–self-awareness also.2
But were Wolsey’s objectives in the Great Matter compatible with Henry’s and Anne’s? In other words, were Wolsey’s policies as effective in procuring the Divorce as they were, for the time being, in bolstering Wolsey’s own position? Only time, once again, would tell.
Barlow rode off, yet again, to Orvieto with Foxe’s letter and Wolsey’s instructions. And Gardiner, once more, had to lay siege to Pope Clement. At first he failed and his golden reputation risked crumbling to dust. The only thing that would recover it, Foxe reported to his friend, would be for him to secure Legate Campeggio’s despatch with the decretal commission. ‘And in case he never come, ye never to return.’ It was the fate of exile, which Wolsey had visited on the wretched Knight.3
Gardiner fought tooth and nail to avoid it. Finally, he was successful. On 11 June he wrote to Henry in triumph: Campeggio was en route for England with the decretal commission. On 28 June, Wolsey received the news. Gardiner’s triumph was his triumph. He had got what Henry wanted; now, surely, he was impregnable.4
Less than a week before, Anne had been at death’s door.