Henry as genuine. From Orleans, Toulouse, and Bourges, and from the civilians of Angers, similar decisions were procured, but the theologians of the last city maintained the validity of the existing marriage. The answers from other universities were either not received or were suppressed. The scheme of Cranmer had not worked particularly well; the opinions of the universities were for the most part either adverse, or were forced, and those of learned men more opposed than coinciding. It had been the intention, when these opinions were collected, to lay them before the Pope as the voice of the united Christian world pronouncing in favour of the divorce; but they were not, after all, of a complexion which was likely to do much good. The plan, therefore, was altered, and a letter, subscribed by the lords spiritual and temporal, and by a certain number of the Commons, as the representatives of the nation, was addressed to the Pope, in which it was asked what crime the King of England had committed that he could not obtain what the most learned men and the most famous universities declared to be his right? that the country was threatened with the calamities of a disputed succession, which could only be averted by the king's marriage; and yet that marriage was prevented by the delays of the Papal Court. To this Clement replied that the delay was the king's own, who had neglected to appoint an attorney to plead for him at Rome. Baffled thus by the pertinacity of Clement, backed by the constant vigilance and favour of the emperor, Henry began to lose much of his confidence and overbearing insolence. He complained that he had been assured that nothing would be easier than to procure a divorce, but now he found himself involved in labours and intricacies that threatened to last his life, and even to wear it out. There needed a more determined spirit than that of Cranmer to break the way through the wood of embarrassments in which they were involved, and the right man now stepped forward in Thomas Cromwell, the former secretary of Wolsey. The rise of this man had been extraordinary. He was the son of a blacksmith at Putney, who, as he had acquired capital, became a brewer, or fuller, and could afford to give his son a tolerable education, including some Latin. In early youth he went to the Continent, where, amongst other knowledge, he made himself master of the principal languages. He was, in the commencement of his career on the Continent, a clerk in an English house at Antwerp; after that he went into the army, and was serving under the Duke of Bourbon at the sack of Rome. On the restoration of peace, he again returned to the counting-house, in the employ of a Venetian merchant. At length, stored with knowledge calculated to make him of the most signal service as a politician, he returned to England, and commenced the study of the law. By some means he was brought under the notice of Cardinal Wolsey, who immediately perceived the value of his experience of the world and his accomplishments. Wolsey secured his services, and soon employed him in the great work of dissolving the monasteries, the proceeds of which he destined to the erection and endowment of his colleges. In this employment he gave great satisfaction to his patron, and at the same time is said to have enriched himself. Hated by the clergy, who saw in him a dangerous and able enemy, he was the more strongly supported by the cardinal, who had need of so daring and unscrupulous a man. By his influence he was soon sent to Parliament, where his talents, eloquence, and ready address soon greatly distinguished him. When Wolsey was disgraced, Cromwell showed that there was a strong principle of gratitude and attachment in his soul. He accompanied the fallen minister to the retreat appointed him at Esher. There he seems to have brooded in the solitude on the evil fortunes which had overtaken his master, and in which his own were involved. Cavendish, the secretary of the cardinal, relates this incident :-"It chanced me, upon Allhallow's Day, to come into the great chamber at Esher, in the morning, to give mine attendance; where I found Master Cromwell leaning in the great window with a primer in his hand, saying Our Lady matins, which since had been a strange sight. He prayed not more earnestly than the tears distilled from his eyes. Whom I bade good morrow, and with that I perceived the tears upon his cheeks. whom I said, 'Why, Master Cromwell, what meaneth all this sorrow? Is my lord in any danger, that you lament thus? Or is it for any loss ye have sustained for any misadventure ?' 'Nay, nay,' quoth he, 'it is my unhappy adventure, which am likely to lose all that I have travelled for all the days of my life, for doing my master true and diligent service!'" Cavendish endeavoured to comfort him, but he said, "An ill name once gotten was not likely to be put away." Presently, however, he added, in a more cheerful tone, "But I intend, God willing, this afternoon, when my lord cardinal hath dined, to ride to London, and so to the Court, where I will either make or mar. To Cromwell was intensely ambitious; but with his own aspiring, he-more noble than most courtiers-still desired to unite the interests of his old patron. Wolsey approved of his design to return to the Court, where he could prosecute the advantage of both master and man and it was at this moment that Wolsey addressed those words to his departing servant which have been so beautifully woven into his drama by Shakespeare: "Wolsey. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: Arrived at Court, Cromwell conducted himself with so much address, that he was continued in the stewardship A.D. 1530.] HENRY DECLARES HIMSELF THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 207 of the monastic estates which had fallen into the hands of knew that he was master of the Church. The law Wolsey, and now of the king. This position necessarily which rendered any one guilty of a præmunire who brought him into the frequent presence of Henry, who, received direct favours from the Pope, permitted the like Wolsey, soon discovered the able and accomplished monarch to suspend the action of this statute at his character of the man. When, therefore, Henry expressed discretion. This he had done in the case of Wolsey. his disgust with the obstacles interposed in the way of When he accepted the legative authority, he took care the divorce, and his impatient declaration that he would to obtain a patent under the great seal, authorising now abandon the attempt for ever, had been carried to the exercise of this foreign power. But Wolsey, when Anne Boleyn, and dismay had seized on her and all her he was called in question for the administration of an adherents, the moment was come for a man like Cromwell office thus especially sanctioned by the Crown, neglected to step in, and show the pre-eminence of his own genius to produce this deed of indemnity, hoping still to be and courage. restored to the royal favour, and unwilling to irritate the king by any show of self-defence. There lay the concealed weapon which the shrewd eye of Cromwell had detected, and by which he could overturn the ecclesiastical fabric of ages. He declared, to the consternation of the whole hierarchy, that not only had Wolsey involved himself in all the penalities of a præmunire, but the whole of the clergy with him. They had admitted his exercise of the Papal authority, and thereby were become, in the language of the statute, his fautors and abettors. The day after this declaration of the king's had thrown the whole Court into despair, Cromwell sought an interview with Henry, and, determined, according to his own phrase, "to make or mar," thus addressed him:-"It was not," he observed, "for him to affect to give advice, where so many wise and abler men had failed, but when he saw the anxiety of his sovereign, he could no longer be silent, whatever might be the result. It might appear presumption in him to judge, but he thought the difficulties of His Majesty arose from the timidity of his counsellors, who were deterred by outward appearances, and mislead by the opinions of the vulgar. But what were the real facts? The most famous universities, the most learned men, had pronounced in favour of the divorce. What, then, prevented the divorce? The terrors of the Pope. Now, that might be all very well so far as the Pope was concerned, but that did not concern the real case, or the King of England. Let the Pope guard himself against the resentment of the emperor if he chose, but why should the cowardice of Clement cause Henry to forego his rights? There was a clear and obvious course to pursue. Let the king do just what the princes of Germany had done, throw off the yoke of Rome; and let him, by the authority, declare himself, as he should be, the head of the Church within his own dominions. At present England was a monster with two heads. But let the king assume the authority now usurped by a foreign pontiff, an authority from which so many evils and confusions to this realm had flowed, and the monstrosity would be at an end; all would be simple, harmonious, and devoid of difficulty. The clergy, sensible that their lives and fortunes were in the hands of their own monarch-hands which could be no longer paralysed by alien interference-from haughty antagonists would instantly become the obsequious ministers of his will." Henry listened to this new doctrine with equal wonder and delight, and he thanked Cromwell heartily, and had him instantly sworn of his privy council. No time was lost in trying the efficacy of Cromwell's daring, scheme. It was one at which the stoutest heart and most iron resolution might have trembled, to sever that ancient union which had existed so many ages, and was hallowed in the eyes of the world by so many proud recollections; but Cromwell had taken a profound survey of the region he was about to invade, and had learned its weakest places. He relied on the unscrupulous impetuosity of the king's passion to bear him through; he relied far more on the finesse of his own genius. With the calmest resolution, he laid his finger on one single page of the statute-book, and Dire was the dismay which at this charge seized on the whole body of the clergy. The council ordered the Attorney-General to file an information against the entire ecclesiastical corps. The convocation assembled in haste, and offered, as the price of a full pardon, £100,000. But still greater was the amazement and dismay of the clergy, when they found that this magnificent sum was rejected unless the convocation consented to declare, in the preamble to the grant, that the king was "the protector and only supreme head of the Church of England." The clergy now opened their eyes to the real and unexampled fact before them. They were called on to renounce the supremacy of the Holy See-to throw down an authority which their ancestors for a thousand years had held to be sacred and inviolable. The convocation, in this unprecedented dilemma, debated the matter for three days, without coming any nearer to a solution of the difficulty. They then held conferences with Cromwell and the Royal Commissioners, in which various expedients werǝ proposed and rejected, until there came a peremptory message from the king, by the Earl of Wiltshire, that he would accept of no qualification of the sentence proposed, except the addition of the words "under God." Henry had so greedily imbibed the incense offered him in the proposal of Cromwell, that he already began to talk loftily of having no superior but God, and grew furious with Cromwell for not carrying the thing he had promised off-hand, without any regard to its transcendent difficulty. "Mother of God!" he exclaimed, in a towering passion, to Cromwell and the commissioners for the business, "you have played me a shrewd turn. I thought to have made fools of those prelates, and now you have so ordered the business that they are likely to make a fool of me, as they have done of you already. What is this 'quantum per legem Christi liceat ?' Go to them again, and let me have the business passed without any 'quantums' or 'tantums.' I will have no quantum' nor no 'tantum' in the matter, but let it be done out of hand.” In the end, however, Henry consented to the " quantums" and the "tantums." By his permission, the venerable Archbishop Warham introduced and carried an amendment in the convocation, by which the grant was voted with this clause in the preamble:-" Of which Church and clergy we acknowledge His Majesty to be the chief protector, the only and supreme lord, and, as far as the law of God will allow, the supreme head." The wedge was introduced; the severance was certain: the perfect accomplishment of it only awaited another opportunity for an easier issue. The northern convocation adopted the same language, and voted a grant of £18,840. Meantime, every effort had been made to bend the Pope to Henry's view of the case; every opportunity had been seized to that end. Early in 1530 an embassy had been sent to Italy to take advantage of an interview about to be had betwixt the Pope and the Emperor at Bologna. The chief envoy on this occasion was the Earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne Boleyn, accompanied by Stokesley, Bishop of London, Lee, the king's almoner, and Bennet, doctor of laws. To these were added several clergymen, at the head of whom was Cranmer. Henry declared to those about him that this was his last effort, and that, if it failed, he would withdraw from Clement, as a pontiff unfit for his office through ignorance, and still more unfit through simony. On the other hand, the emperor, still pressing the Pope, obtained from him a "breve," forbidding Henry to marry before the publication of his sentence. Whilst things were in this position, Henry's ambassadors arrived. The Pope still declared he would do all that he possibly could for Henry. But the emperor received them in a very different humour. As soon as the Earl of Wiltshire began to speak, he interrupted him, saying, "Stop, sir! allow your colleagues to speak. You are a party in the cause." The earl, undeterred by this, answered boldly that he stood not there as a father defending the interests of his child, but as a minister representing his sovereign; that if Charles would comply with the wish of Henry, he would be quiet, if not, he would proceed without his permission; and that he now offered him, as the price of his acquiescence, 300,000 crowns, the restoration of the marriage portion of Catherine, and security for her maintenance suitable to her high birth during her life. Charles declared, in reply, that he was not going to sell the honour of his aunt, and that he would support her cause by the means at his disposal. This being the position of things, Cranmer challenged all the learned men of the Papal Court to dispute the question of the king's marriage, but none of them accepted the challenge. The proposal was a very safe one, for the Pope was not likely to permit such a discussion in the very face of the emperor; but it answered Cranmer's object: it highly delighted Henry, who made him ambassador to the emperor; and the Pope, to conciliate Henry, also made him his plenipotentiary in England. thither a box containing the decrees of the universities and the opinions of learned men, which he placed on the table; whereupon Sir Bryan Tuke opened the box, and took out twelve writings sealed, the decrees of the twelve universities, which he read, translated into English. There were, besides, above 100 books and writings, which there was no time to read; and the speaker bade the members, on their return to their several counties and towns, show to all their neighbours that the king had not done these things for his own will and pleasure, but only for the discharge of his conscience and the security of the succession of the realm. Parliament being prorogued, the king, on the 31st of May, sent a deputation of peers to communicate to the queen the decrees of the universities and the dicta of the learned, and to entreat her to quiet the king's conscience by consenting to the divorce. But Catherine was firm as ever. She said:-"I pray God send his grace a quiet conscience; and this shall be your answer-That I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, and by the order of the Holy Church I was to him espoused as his true wife, although not so worthy; and by that point I will abide, till the Court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, have made thereof a determination and final ending." The king was so enraged at this answer that he never saw her again; and in the month of July she was ordered to quit Windsor. "Go where I may,” she said, on receiving this harsh command, "I am still his lawful wife, and will pray for him." No woman ever maintained her just rights with more firmness and true dignity than Catherine of Arragon. She retired first to the Moore in Hertfordshire, then to Easthampstead, and finally to Ampthill, where she continued to reside. After the prorogation of Parliament, Sir Thomas More, who was sincerely attached to the Catholic religion, begged to be permitted to resign the great seal. He saw that a thorough breach with Rome was inevitable, and he desired to have no hand it. Indeed, Sir Thomas had allowed the spirit of the times already too much to influence his nobler nature. He was one of the most learned, witty, and light-hearted of men. In the silence of his closet he had arrived at the most admirable ideas of the rights of conscience, and in his celebrated work, the "Utopia," he had tolerated all religious opinions in his imaginary kingdom. But on being raised to power he forgot the liberality of his sentiments, and was seized with that very persecuting spirit which he had in his writings so entirely condemned. His treatment of one man is peculiarly disgraceful to a writer who knew so much better. This was James Bainham, a gentleman of the Temple, who was accused of the new opinions, and whom More had taken to his own house, where he ordered him to be whipped in his presence, and then sent him to the Tower, and put him to the torture. This unfortunate gentleman was induced by the force of agonies to abjure his opinions; but returning to them, and openly advocating them, was condemned and burnt in Smithfield, a fate which soon became common to those who denied the dogmas of the Church, against which Henry himself was in arms. In January, 1531, the brief forbidding Henry to proceed to a marriage with Anne Boleyn, which the Pope had signed, was published by the emperor in Flanders. Henry, to neutralise the effect of this, sent down Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, attended by twelve peers spiritual and temporal, to the House of Commons, to explain all that the king had done towards the dis- Well had it been for More had he sooner retired from a charge of his conscience and the safety of the realm here-position which so lamentably injured his spirit and his after, in regard to the divorce. Sir Thomas carried fame. But having made up his mind to it, he descended A.D. 1532.) MARRIAGE OF THE KING TO ANNE BOLEYN. to a private station in May, 1532, with the utmost gaiety and contentment, though his family were extremely averse to what they deemed a needless and mortifying sacrifice. The king accepted his resignation with great reluctance, and transferred the great seal to Sir Thomas Audley. Henry, under the guidance of Cromwell, made progressive steps towards this separation which More feared. He now procured an act to be passed by Parliament, abolishing the annats, or first-fruits, which furnished a considerable annual income to the Pope, and another abrogating the authority of the clergy in convocation, and attaching that authority to the Crown. Feeling that in this struggle he should need the friendship of Francis, he proposed a new treaty with France, which was signed in London on the 23rd of June; and, the more to strengthen the alliance, the two monarchs proposed a meeting between Calais and Boulogne. Great preparations were made on both sides, and Henry begged Francis to bring his favourite mistress with him. This was as an excuse for Henry to bring Anne Boleyn, who was now created the Marchioness of Pembroke, and without whom he could go nowhere. Francis did not bring his fair friend to the royal meeting, but Henry paraded his new marchioness in great state before the world. He issued orders for a great train of noblemen, prelates, and gentlemen to assemble at Canterbury on the 26th of September, to attend him to the Continent, and he embarked at Dover on the 11th of October, and landed at Calais the same afternoon. The two kings met in a valley near the marches, on the 21st, and proceeded to Boulogne, where Francis entertained the king and Court of England in the most magnificent manner for four days; and on the fifth the two kings, with their attendants, set out for Calais, where Henry entertained the king and Court of France with equally royal hospitality for the same period of time. On the Sunday evening, Anne got up a masque for the pleasure of the French guests. She came in after supper with seven ladies in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold, slashed with crimson tinsel satin, with tabards of fine cypress. Then the lady marchioness took the French king, the Countess of Derby the King of Navarre, and every lady took a lord. In dancing, King Henry removed the ladies' visors, so that their beauties were shown. The French king then discovered that he had been dancing with an old acquaintance, the lovely English maid of honour to his first queen. He conversed with her awhile apart, and the next morning sent her a jewel worth 15,000 crowns. On the 30th of the month, the two kings mounted their horses, and Henry conducted the French king to the border of his dominions, where they took leave of each other with many protestations of perpetual friendship, as they had done at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The two monarchs had proclaimed with great diligence that the object of their meeting was to concert an expedition against the Turks, but it is more probable that Henry sought to induce Francis to co-operate with him, and withdraw from the Court of Rome a circumstance which would have been equally detrimental to the Pope and the emperor; but Francis was not prepared for so violent a measure-in fact, he had no stubborn desire to spur him on to it. It is said that Francis, during the interview, had urged Henry to wait no longer for the 209 permission of the Pope, but to marry the Marchioness of Pembroke without further delay; but it is quite certain that another counsellor was more urgent, and that was— Time. It was high time, indeed, that the marriage should take place, if they meant to legitimate his child, for Anne Boleyn was far advanced in her pregnancy. Accordingly, the marriage took place some time about now, but there are various accounts of the time and place of this event. Some authors affirm that she was privately married to the king at Dover, the same day as they returned from France; others that the nuptials were secretly performed in the presence of her father and mother, and of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, in the chapel of Sopewell Nunnery. To that nunnery, Anne, indeed, retired for some purpose immediately on her return from France, and Henry, who could not visit her in the nunnery, is said by tradition to have met her, occasionally, at a yew-tree, about a mile from that convent. There is also a tradition that she was married at Blickling Hall, in Norfolk; but Wyatt, her great admirer, as well as Stowe and Godwin, with far more probability, assert that this event took place in the following manner and place, on St. Paul's day, January 25th, 1533. "On the morning of that day," says a contemporary, "at a very early hour, Dr. Rowland Lee, one of the royal chaplains, received the unwonted order to celebrate mass in an unfrequented attic in the west turret of Whitehall. There he found the king, attended by Norris and Heneage, two of the grooms of the chamber, and the Marchioness of Pembroke, attended by her train-bearer, Anne Saville, afterwards Lady Berkeley. On being requested to perform the nuptial rite between his sovereign and the marchioness in the presence of the three witnesses assembled, the chaplain hesitated; but Henry is said to have assured him that the Pope had pronounced in favour of the divorce, and that he had the dispensation for a second marriage in his possession. As soon as the marriage ceremony had been performed, the parties separated in silence before it was light; and Viscount Rochford, the brother of the bride, was dispatched to announce the event in confidence to Francis I." This marriage was kept so secret that it was not even communicated to Cranmer, who had just returned from Germany, and taken up his abode in the family of Anne Boleyn. Cranmer whilst in Germany had married, Catholic priest as he was, the niece of Osiander, the Protestant minister of Nuremberg. This lady he had brought secretly to England, and was now living a married priest, in direct violation of the Church that he belonged to. Archbishop Warham was now dead, and Henry nominated Cranmer to the vacant primacy. He was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the 30th of March, 1533, and he was immediately ordered to proceed with the divorces. The new primate, therefore, wrote on the 11th of April, a formal letter to the king, soliciting the issue of a commission to try that cause, and pronounce a definite sentence. This was immediately done; and Cranmer, as the head of this commission, accompanied by Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, Bath and Wells, with many other divines and canonists, opened their court at Dunstable, now openly-solemnised his marriage with Anne Boleyn. ing as the devoted instrument of a monarch who had de- | husband. On the 12th of April, Henry again-and clared, in a letter to those very judges, that he, their sovereign, recognised no superior on earth, but only God, and was not subject to the laws of any earthly creature. All officers and institutions-the Church itself-had now shown that it was scarcely influenced by any law or motive but the will and fear of this self-inflated king. Parliament and convocation had heaped fresh insults upon Catherine before proceeding to try her. Parlia Dr. Lee, the same clergyman who had married Henry to Anne, was sent to cite Catherine to appear. Every precaution was used to prevent Catherine knowing that it was intended by this court to proceed to a final judgment; but that mattered little; for, from first to last, she disallowed the authority of any trial by the king's subjects. On the 12th of May Cranmer pronounced |