and Gardiner declared that it would be hazardous to rely on powers obtained in so disgraceful a manner. They nevertheless attempted to obtain the Bull, hoping that it might be useful at least for the purposes of intimidation and coercion.

character of an affectionate husband, bewildered in conscience by scruples he was anxious to remove. Nobody could bind him under deeper obligation than by enabling him to live with Catharine undisturbed. As late as the month of May 1529, long after this fiction had become contemptible, Gar- The English envoys found the Pope in diner had the effrontery to say that Heury the dwelling of Cardinal Ridolfi, Bishop of still lived with the Queen on unaltered Orvieto, beneath the shadow of the gorterms.* But Wolsey soon put off this pre-geous cathedral, but surrounded by solitence; for if the only difficulty arose from tude and desolation, occupying a bare una defect in the dispensation, the Pope could furnished chamber, and eating out of earthhave afforded relief, as the Emperor pro- enware. At his first step Gardiner fell into posed, by an act in more ample form. an ambush. Clement inquired after Wolsey, touching a report that he was against the divorce. Gardiner eagerly testified to his zeal in its favour. The Pope replied that, in that case, he would not be accepted as an impartial judge. During two long interviews he met the strenuous exertions of the Englishman with imperturbable temper and dexterity. He was ready to appoint Legates, and to confirm their sentence; but it was impossible to induce him to favour one party to the detriment of the other, in the manner of the proposed Bull. Gardiner plied his arguments with extreme vigour. Addressing the Pope, and the small group gathered round him, he protested that the King of England asked only for light to clear his conscience, and would obey the word of the Church, whatever it might be. He implored them not to repulse the wanderer who came as a suppliant to a guide. If he should appeal in vain to the Holy See, the world would say that they were deprived of wisdom, and that the Canons which were unintelligible to the Pope were only fit for the flames. Pucci and the other prelates listened without emotion, for they were persuaded that Henry had other wishes than to clear up doubts. Clement confessed that he was not a scholar, and that, if it was true, as men averred, that all law was locked in the breast of the Pope, it was a lock to which, unfortunately, he had no key. When Gardiner declared that Henry would help himself, if Rome refused to help him, Clement replied that he heartily wished he had done it. Finding that it was useless to ask for the Bull that Wolsey wanted, Gardiner proposed that an act defining the law as desired should be given privately, for fear of Spain, never to be produced unless Clement refused to confirm the

After the failure of Knight, and of his Italian colleagues, Wolsey's tone became peremptory, and he resolved to make his strong hand felt. He despatched the King's almoner, Fox, with his own sccretary, Gardiner, a man who had been engaged in the hidden work of the preceding May, and who was fitted to encounter the Roman jurists on their ground, unswayed by shame or fear. He charged them to make Clement understand that Henry's determination to put away Catharine was founded on secret causes lying deeper than love for Anne Boleyn, causes which neither the removal of his scruples nor any other remedy could touch; and that it would be executed, if necessary, independently of Rome. That course would imperil the succession, would overthrow Wolsey, and, in the presence of advancing Lutheranism, would ruin the Church in England. It was the Pope's interest, therefore, as much as his own, that the thing which could not be prevented should be done with full religious sanction; that an act of deference on one side should be met on the other by an act of grace. He wrote at the same time to Orvieto that the instruments granted to Knight were little better than a mockery, and that he regarded the hostile influence of the Emperor as the only obstacle he had

to overcome.

Gardiner was charged to obtain a Bull for Wolsey, in conjunction with a Roman Cardinal, directing them to try the cause, and if they should be satisfied of certain facts, which he thought it not difficult to establish, to declare the marriage null and void. Next to this joint commission, he preferred one for a Roman Legate alone. In the last extremity he would accept one for the two English Archbishops; but he would not act by himself. The Bull, as Wolsey drafted it, made a defence impossible, made the trial a mere formality, and virtually dissolved the marriage. Both Fox

*Brewer, iv. 5529.

sentence. To this the Pope replied that if the thing was just it should be done openly; and if unjust, not at all.

At length, when the final conference had lasted during many weary hours, Gardiner, believing that he had lost his cause, kindled into anger. Gambara and Stafileo were

During the summer he was separated from Anne by the sweating sickness. She was taken ill. The King, in great alarm, made ready for the prospect of immediate death. He resorted with fervour to works of religion. He confessed frequently, and practised constant penance for his sins. But his treatment of Catharine was not among the sins of which he was taught to repent. He hailed the Legate's arrival as the signal of his approaching deliverance, and made open preparation for an early marriage. At Campeggio's endeavours to change his purpose by urging the danger of offending Cæsar, he became indignant and vociferous; and the Legate could do nothing, for his hands were tied by the secret Bull.

When the King and Wolsey saw that document, they insisted that it should be shown to the Council. In their hands it would have served to settle the controversy. It decided the point of law in the manner desired by Henry. The Pope having declared the law, they could judge of the fact without him. They had got from Rome all that they absolutely required; and the object of Wolsey's policy was attained. To apply to the case in dispute the principle laid down by the supreme ecclesiastical authority, an inferior authority might suffice. Protected by the Bull, they would incur little danger in following Clement's unwelcome counsel to help themselves. The credit of Julius, the consistency of the See of Rome, were sufficiently guarded, when Clement determined under what conditions his predecessor's act was legal, and Wolsey determined, on evidence unattainable at Rome, whether the conditions of legality were fulfilled.

and accomplish their purpose themselves, without involving Rome. The Bull ought to have been destroyed, and he would cut off a finger to be able to recall it.

Clement at once despatched an envoy to make sure that the perilous document should. remain no longer exposed to accident or treachery. For this important mission he selected Francisco Campana, a man who long enjoyed the confidence of his family, who, after the fall of Florence, proclaimed to the people the will of the conqueror, that the Medici should reign over the republican city, and who, as Secretary of State, gave efficient aid in building up the intelligent despotism of Cosmo. Campana travelled slowly; and when he reached London with the order to burn the Decretal, Clement was reported to be dying. To destroy such a document in obedience to a pontiff who was probably dead, on the eve of a conclave, would have been the height of folly. Campeggio resolved to disobey. In the spring, when Clement had recovered, Campana brought the news that the Legate had yielded, and the most memorable writing in the history of the Divorce disappeared for ever.

*

But Henry had seen, under the Pope's sign and seal, that he had never been Catharine's lawful husband. For it was now admitted that, if Julius was deceived, the dispensation was void. No attainable evidence could demonstrate that he was not deceived or could resist the strong presumption in favour of the allegation on which Henry's scruple rested. The uncertainty lay in the legal element of the case, and that uncertainty was now removed. The Pope had been consulted, and the answer he had given was against the Queen. Henry might be right in his facts, or honestly mistaken, or altogether insincere; but right or wrong, true or false, he could not, consistently with his previous conduct, hold himself free to live with Catharine. The nullity of his marriage still required to be publicly declared; but in strictness he was unmarried. It followed that he must consider himself free to marry Anne. Apart from the public sentence, the religious obstacle to the second marriage was

Wolsey sent to Rome to require that Campeggio should give up the decretal. If it had been produced and acted on, the Pope could expect nothing but ruin. The responsibility of the Divorce and the wrath of the dreaded Spaniard would have fallen not on those who applied the law, and were inaccessible, but on him who had laid down the law, and who was within his reach. Clement understood his danger. He lost the self-command which had not deserted him in the most distressing emergencies. Laying his hand on Casale's arm, he told him to be silent, and then burst forth in Varchi, who had means of informing himreproaches against the perfidy of Wolsey, at self about Campana's journey, says that he whose urgent prayer and for whose sake brought the Decretal back with him to Rome. But Mr. Stevenson has discovered, and Mr. alone he had granted the secret Bull. IIe Gardiner has deciphered two very curious detected their object. With the Bull be- letters of Campeggio, in one of which he says: fore them, even those who thought the mar-Per questo fu mandato il Campano, il quale, riage valid would give it up on the Pope's due cose: l'una fu de la decretale, di che è seultra alia, quanto a questo proposito mi disse responsibility. Let them dismiss Campeg-guito quanto vostra Signoria da lui hara inteso.' gio, on the plea that he was slow to act, -Brewer, Introduction, delxxi.

removed when Campeggio exhibited the [lected no chance; and relied with signal secret Bull.

Mr. Brewer signifies his disbelief in the improbable story which began to be told in Mary's reign, that Rowland Lee solemnised the marriage of Henry with Anne Boleyn at dead of night in November, 1532, in a secret chamber at Whitehall, on being assured that a permission, which could not be fetched at that hour, had arrived from Rome. We trust that, in his next volume, he will determine the true date, and the influence of the Decretal on the event. At Campeggio's coming Anne Boleyn was kept out of the way. She now came to Court, and was treated in public as if she had been Henry's wife. Charles the Fifth afterwards said to Campeggio that even the death of Catharine would be no deliverance, as the harm was done when Henry got possession of his divorce. Elizabeth assured Parker that her mother's marriage had received the papal approbation. Three Popes offered to acknowledge her title if she would profess Catholicism, at least, in secret. The secret Bull of Clement the Seventh made it optional to disregard the claims of Mary Stuart.

composure on the Emperor alone. Her friends among the common people murmured loudly, and attended her in such crowds that the gates of the palace were closed against them. She acknowledged their cheers with a graciousness she had never shown, and asked for their prayers. Her evident popularity led Catharine into her only serious error. She believed that the Catholic spirit of the country could be roused in her favour, and she forced the Pope, by her importunity and her reproaches, to resort to those extreme measures which, in the end, were fatal to her church.

To gain Campeggio she took the bold. step of asking him to hear her confession, when, relieving him of the obligation of secrecy, she declared that her first marriage had never been consummated. Campeggio could not disbelieve her, and the judgment of history, differing somewhat in the estimate of evidence from the judgment of law, must, we think, accept her word.* Wolsey was so apprehensive of the effect of such a declaration made upon oath, that he proposed to assail the dispensation on totally different grounds. But Mendoza deemed it a dangerous plea, and difficult to sustain at law. He recommended a safer defence, and he possessed a weapon keen enough to defeat all the art of Wolsey and his master.

Early in the year he had received from Spain a copy of a dispensation in the form of a brief, which expressly excluded the doubt as to the nature of the first marriage. Soon after Campeggio's arrival Catharine sent this paper to the Legates. It contradicted her own statement, and she protested that she had had nothing to do with obtaining it. But it avoided the reproach which had been so damaging to the Bull. Wolsey was taken by surprise. The plan on which he had pursued his operations so long was overthrown in an instant. He could not abandon his system and attack the dispensing power itself. He confessed that the objections taken to the former document did not here apply; but he declared that the Brief was

Failing to make an impression on Henry, Campeggio addressed himself to the Queen. The Roman divines were, he told her, dubious as to the merits of her cause; the future was uncertain; and the Pope consequently desired that she would close her life in a convent. The English Bishops recommended the same easy solution. Henry eagerly adopted it, affirming with gross exaggeration, that the Pope had already pronounced against her. Then Catharine tasted the bitterness of the trial that was to come. Had she yielded, as the injured Queen of France had done, she might have averted the schism, until the genuine wave of Protestant thought struck England, when the daughter of her rival had sat for a generation on the throne. But she had no thought of yielding, and displayed, in the evil days that remained to her, the stern and tranquil courage of Isabella. She was alone, for she could not trust her counsel, and a watch was set on her intercourse with Mendoza. No Spaniard was allowed to approach her. The Belgian lawyers were sent out of the country. The messenger who had apprised Charles of her trouble was dismissed. Vives was put under arrest. Fisher refused to advise her without the King's command. Warham and Tunstall Quarto nititur probare virginitatem ex confescalled on her to confess whether she had sione Henrici Octavi; circa eandem confessionnot practised against her husband's life. In em possint eadem dici quæ dicta sunt circa confessionem Catharinæ, videlicet quod testes sunt all her solitude and misery she never singulares, et quod confessio omnino est extradoubted that her cause was just; she neg-judicialis et parte absente.'

in Maurenbrecher's Lectures on the English To the excellent summary of the evidence Reformation, and to the ingenious inquiries of Lorentz, must be added the significant fact that Henry did not persistently deny that he affirmation. In the Articuli in Causa Matrihad formerly admitted the truth of the Queen's monii Regii this point is virtually given up: