II. 1522, Afterwards 22, 1522. Scotland, BOOK afterwards upon the King's confederating with the Emperor against France, and a new match agreed and sworn to between the Emperor and the King at Windto the Em- sor the twenty-second of June, 1522, the Emperor beperor, June ing present in person. This being afterwards neglected and broken by the Emperor, by the advice of his cortes and states, as was formerly related, there followed some Offered to overtures of a marriage with Scotland. But those also Sept. 1524. vanished; and there was a second treaty begun with France, the King offering his daughter to Francis himself, which he gladly accepting, a match was treated: and on the last of April it was agreed, that the Lady For King Mary should be given in marriage either to Francis himself, or himself, or to his second son the Duke of Orleance; and the Duke of that alternative was to be determined by the two Kings, at an interview that was to be between them soon after. at Calais, with forfeitures on both sides if the match went not on. Again to France, 1527. Francis for his son Orleance. The King's marriage ers. But while this was in agitation, the Bishop of Tarbe, questioned the French ambassador, made a great demur about the by foreign- Princess Mary's being illegitimate, as begotten in a marriage that was contracted against a divine precept, with which no human authority could dispense. How far this was secretly concerted between the French. court and ours, or between the Cardinal and the Ambassador, is not known. It is surmised that the King or the Cardinal set on the French to make this exception publicly, that so the King might have a better colour to justify his suit of divorce, since other princes were already questioning it. For if, upon a marriage proposed of such infinite advantage to France, as that would be with the heir of the crown of England, they nevertheless made exceptions, and proceeded but coldly in it; it was very reasonable to expect that, after the King's death, other pretenders would have disputed her title in another manner. II. 1527. To some it seemed strange that the King did offer BOOK his daughter to such great princes as the Emperor and the King of France, to whom if England had fallen in her right, it must have been a province: for though, in the last treaty with France, she was offered either to the King, or his second son; by which either the children which the King might have by her, or the children of the Duke of Orleance, should have been heirs to the crown of England, and thereby it would still have continued divided from France; yet this was full of hazard for if the Duke of Orleance by his brother's death should become King of France, as it afterwards fell out; or if the King of France had been once possessed of England, then, according to the maxim of the French government, that whatever their king acquires, he holds it in the right of his crown, England was still to be a province to France, unless they freed themselves by arms. Others judged that the King intended to marry her to France, the more effectually to seclude her from the succession, considering the aversion his subjects had to a French government, that so he might more easily settle his bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, in the succession of the crown. While this treaty went on, the King's scruples about The King his marriage began to take vent. It is said that the scruples it. Cardinal did first infuse them into him, and made Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, that was the King's Con-Sanderus fessor, possess the King's mind with them in confession. Angl. If it was so, the King had, according to the religion of that time, very just cause of scruple, when his Confessor judged his marriage sinful, and the Pope's legate was of the same mind. It is also said that the Cardinal, being alienated from the Emperor, that he might irreparably embroil the King and him, and unite the King to the French interests, designed this out of spite; and that he was also dissatisfied toward the Queen, who hated himself De Schism. BOOK him for his lewd and dissolute life, and had oft admoII. nished and checked him for it: and that he therefore, 1527. designing to engage the King to marry the French King's sister, the Duchess of Alenson, did (to make way for that) set this matter on foot: but as I see no good authority for all this, except the Queen's suspicions, who did afterwards charge the Cardinal as the cause of all her trouble; so I am inclined to think the King's scruples were much ancienter; for the King de In his letter clared to Simon Grineus, four years after this, that for seven years he had abstained from the Queen upon these scruples, so that by that it seems they had been received into the King's mind three years before this time. to Bucer, Sept. 10, 1531. in MSS. R. Smith. The grounds of his What were the King's secret motives, and the true grounds of his aversion to the Queen, is only known to scruples. God; and till the discovery of all secrets at the day of judgment, must lie hid. But the reasons which he always owned, of which all human judicatories must only take notice, shall be now fully opened. He found by the law of Moses, if a man took his brother's wife, they should die childless. This made him reflect on the death of his children, which he now looked on as a curse from God for that unlawful marriage. Upon this he set himself to study the case, and called for the judgments of the best divines and canonists. For his own inquiry, Thomas Aquinas being the writer in whose works he took most pleasure, and to whose judg ment he submitted most, did decide it clearly against him. For he both concluded, that the laws in Leviticus about the forbidden degrees of marriage were moral and eternal, such as obliged all Christians; and that the Pope could only dispense with the laws of the church, but could not dispense with the laws of God; upon this reason, that no law can be dispensed with by any authority but that which is equal to the autho II. shops, ex unlawful. his Life of rity that enacted it. Therefore he infers, that the Pope BOOK can indeed dispense with all the laws of the church, but not with the laws of God, to whose authority he 1527. could not pretend to be equal. But as the King found this from his own private study; so having commanded the Archbishop of Canterbury to require the opinions of the bishops of England, they all, in a writing under All his bitheir hands and seals, declared they judged it an un-cept Fisher, lawful marriage. Only the Bishop of Rochester refused declare it to set his hand to it; and, though the Archbishop pressed him most earnestly to it, yet he persisted in his refusal, saying, that it was against his conscience. Upon which the Archbishop made another write down Cavendish his name, and set his seal to the resolution of the rest Wolsey. of the bishops. But this being afterwards questioned, the Bishop of Rochester denied it was his hand, and the Archbishop pretended that he had leave given him by the Bishop to put his hand to it; which the other denied. Nor was it likely that Fisher, who scrupled in conscience to subscribe it himself, would have consented to such a weak artifice. But all the other bishops did declare against the marriage; and as the King himself said afterwards in the Legantine court, neither the Cardinal nor the Bishop of Lincoln did first suggest these scruples; but the King, being possessed with them, did in confession propose them to that Bishop; and added, that the Cardinal was so far from cherishing them, that he did all he could to stifle them. were like to The King was now convinced that his marriage was The danunlawful, both by his own study, and the resolution ofgers that his divines. And as the point of conscience wrought follow on him, so the interest of the kingdom required, that there should be no doubting about the succession to the crown: lest, as the long civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster had been buried with his father, so a new one should rise up at his death. 11. 1527. BOOK The King of Scotland was the next heir to the crown after his daughter. And if he married his daughter to any out of France, then he had reason to judge, that the French, upon their ancient alliance with Scotland, and that they might divide and distract England, would be ready to assist the King of Scotland in his pretensions or if he married her in France, then all those in England to whom the French government was hateful, and the Emperor, and other princes, to whom the French power grew formidable, would have been as ready to support the pretensions of Scotland: or if he should either set up his bastard son, or the children which his sister bore to Charles Brandon, there was still cause to fear a bloody decision of a title that was so doubtful. And though this may seem a consideration too politic and foreign to a matter of that nature, yet the obligation that lies on a prince to provide for the happiness and quiet of his subjects, was so weighty a thing, that it might well come in, among other motives, to incline the King much to have this matter determined. At this time the Cardinal went over into France, under colour to conclude a league between the two crowns, and to treat about the means of setting the Pope at liberty, who was then the Emperor's prisoner at Rome; and also for a project of peace between Francis and the Emperor. But his chief business was to require Francis to declare his resolutions concerning that alternative about the Lady Mary. To which it was answered, that the Duke of Orleance, as a fitter match in years, was the French King's choice; but this matter fell to the ground upon the process that followed soon after. Wolsey went into France, July 11, 1527. The King's fears and The King did much apprehend the opposition the hopes about Emperor was like to make to his designs, either out of a principle of nature and honour to protect his aunt, or out of a maxim of state, to raise his enemy all the it. |