to whom he had bequeathed by will his lands and tenements in Suffolk, Middlesex, and Norfolk, not included in the family entails. But the Willoughby settlements were old and intricate, the family having held their lands as barons since the reign of Edward the Second. Christopher, the next male heir, believing that the Spanish lady meant to cheat him, was disposed to fight. The matters in dispute were many-heir-looms, tenements, and manors. As a ward in Chancery, Catharine Willoughby, lay in Wolsey's charge. At first Lady Willoughby was disposed to leave the case with Wolsey, till a doubt arose in her mind as to his fairness, when she broke away and sought her remedy in the courts. Christopher obtained a writ, naming a day for holding a legal inquest on his brother's property; but Lady Willoughby got that writ discharged. If Wolsey chose to storm, he might; the Spanish lady was too proud of nature to abase herself before the Cardinal of York.

7. Wolsey made an order for Lady Willoughby to produce in court such evidence as she had of the conditions under which her husband's property was held. All parties in the suit, he said, should know which lands were settled on the heirs male, which on the heirs general. Lady Willoughby refused to let him see her marriage settlements and her husband's will. She laid a little coffer down in court. That box, she said, contained the only evidence she would show. All other papers in her

keeping touched the lands belonging to her jointure, and the property mentioned in her husband's will. Those papers she would not produce! Two of Wolsey's officers went to the Barbican; but the documents they sought were said to be at Parham. When they rode to Suffolk, they found the Spanish lady had been there before them and had carried them away. A stranger, she was not aware how much she risked by this defiance of the Chancellor ; and but for Catharine's kindness Lady Willoughby would have been committed to the Fleet.

8. A treaty was at length devised in vague and general terms. By the fourth article Mary was to marry either François or his son Orleans, and the two kings were to meet at Calais and renew their personal ties. Norfolk, Suffolk, Rochford, More, and Fitzwilliam, were the King's commissioners. As soon as this treaty was made known, England and Spain would be at war. The treaty was to be an instrument in Wolsey's hands.

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CHAPTER VI.

DIVORCE.

1527.

1. A TIME had come when Catharine could no longer be deceived with words. Gramont may have raised the question as a means of putting the affair before the public and the Queen herself. This method suited Wolsey's plans. On hearing that the matter was before his Holiness in order to confirm her marriage and her daughter's birth, Catharine might be induced to shut her eyes and wait for news. If time were gained, men's minds might be prepared. But Catharine caught a whisper of his doings, ere the Cardinal was ready with his case. Who told her that his object was to cast her off and marry Henry to a French princess, he could never learn, but he was soon involved by her impetuous pride in all the passion of a matrimonial war.

2. Surprised by Catharine's questions as to what his agents were about, Henry pretended that his object was to learn the truth only, that nothing had been done except in answer to the Bishop of Tarbes. Catharine was not induced to wait. She sent a

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messenger to Fisher, her confessor, and to other persons; telling them, in downright words, what she had heard, and what the King had said; and casting all the blame on Wolsey, as a man who for his worldly ends was bringing her to public shame. The news soon spread from town to town, and princes who had treated the affair with great reserve, began to talk of the divorce as something nigh at hand. Then Wolsey spoke to her, and Sampson, Dean of Windsor, spoke to her, in their most soothing tones; but Catharine met their blandness with a towering pride of speech. The case was put to her as one of fact, and law depending closely on that fact. She was Prince Arthur's widow, said these priests; and being his widow, could she be truly married to the King? Gramont, they said, had seen the dispensation, and this eminent foreign prelate had denied its virtue, as against the text of Holy Writ. The Cardinal of York, Longland the King's confessor, and other learned men, she was informed, were of opinion that her marriage with the King was null and void. Catharine took her stand on facts. They might be right or wrong about their law. She was no canonist; but she knew her own estate. Their case of fact and law was not her case; for she had never been Prince Arthur's wife, except in name. She was the King's wife; she had never been his brother's wife.

3. They read to her the papal bull, in which the facts were all set forth. That instrument described

It was a

her as wife and widow of the Prince. question whether, being a widow, Julius had the power to grant a license for her marriage; but the fact of her being the Prince's widow was stated in the bull itself, and was not, they conceived, a matter of debate. But Catharine held her ground. That statement in the document was false. She had not been Prince Arthur's wife. She came to Henry free from their canonical flaws. What proof had she? A breve, in which the truth was told. A breve; a papal breve, she said, which had accompanied the bull. Where was that breve? the Cardinal asked. In Spain, she said; the document was safe in Spain.

4. That such a paper, if it were in being, should be out of England, seemed incredible to men of business. Nearly all the councillors thought the Queen was trying to mislead them, with a view to gaining time, and sending to her nephew for advice. A search was made among the records, but without success; no trace of such a document was found, nor had the statesmen who conducted the affair with Rome a recollection of that breve. If it existed anywhere, it should be found in the King's chancery. It was not there. If it were now in Spain, as Catharine alleged, who had stolen it? Puebla was so strange a fellow, that the theft would not have seemed to him a great offence. His son, Gonsalvo, had a heap of papers, and instead of coming back to London, where he held a post as precentor of St.