without further delay to assist his Majesty's just CH. 4. and reasonable desires. We entreat you to confirm A.D. 1531. the judgment of these learned men; and for the July 13. sake of that love and fatherly affection which your office requires you to show towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion against us, your most dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The cause of his Majesty is the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot suffer, but the members must bear a part. We have all our common share in the pain and in the injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of your Holiness, so does the duty of your fatherly office require you to administer it. If, however, your Holiness will not do this, or if you choose longer to delay to do it, our condition hitherto will have been so much the more wretched, that we have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable us to endure it. you are treat his consider their 'These things we beseech your Holiness, in They enthe name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to consider Holiness to with yourself. You profess that on earth His vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself words, so to be, by pronouncing your sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation confirmed by the CH. 4. most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray the all-good God, whom we know And mean- by most sure testimony to be truth itself, that A.D. 1531. while they for him. will pray He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness, that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be spared from seeking it by other more painful methods.' The right and the Henry's conduct. Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification of the demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was acted out with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication, interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country's interests, as well as his own, required. It would have been well if his private beha viour as a man had been as unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in the same household with the state of a princess,* and needlessly wounded feel * Mademoiselle de Boleyn est fort beau logis; et qu'il a faict venue; et l'a le Roy logée en bien accoustrer tout auprés du The cir A.D. 1531. ings which he was bound to have spared to the CH. 4. utmost which his duty permitted. cumstances of the case, if they were known to us, though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided with an establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour? A deputa But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change. In June, 1531, June. two months after the prorogation of parliament, tion from a deputation of the privy council went to the the privy apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and lay- Queen ing before her the papers which had been read by Catherine. Sir Thomas More to the two Houses, demanded Toutefois il sien. Et luy est la cour faicte | trouve si estrange. council wait on A.D. 1531. CH. 4. formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom. It was, probably, but an official request, proposed without After rejectexpectation that she would yield. quest her to with draw her appeal, which she refuses. ing a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she *HALL, p. 781. A.D. 1531. She leaves the last herself, a retirement from the court was now to CH. 4. be forced upon her. her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king to Windsor; in the middle of June. July he left her there, and never saw her again. the king for She was removed to the More, a house in Hertford- time. shire, which had been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.* Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those whom sympathy or policy attached comes the lic party, to her cause. The court, though keeping a par- She betial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict nucleus of her liberty; and as the measures against the the Catho church became more stringent, and a separation from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of the pope; and this dubious position. gave her an advantage which she was not slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who *It seems to have been his favourite place of retirement. The gardens and fishponds were peculiarly elaborate and beautiful. |