Unknown to anyone but the king and Wolsey, Campeggio brought with him a document prejudicing the impartiality of the legatine court beyond recall. It was a secret commission which in essence weighed the legalities of both sides in advance and affirmed Henry's cause to be the stronger. This "decretal commission" would seem to have reduced the entire proceeding to a dishonorable pretense, except for two things. First, it might never be needed, and second, it rounded out a papal strategy in which each of the parties affected by the suit was given an equal measure of false hope. Henry and Wolsey had reason to expect that the court would rule in their favor. Anne had Henry's reassurance, if she did not share his exact knowledge, that his cause and hers would prevail. Katherine could console herself that a learned, ethical man was to preside over the case in the pope's name. And all the imperialists, from Charles V on down, could take comfort from the continually delayed settlement and the discomfiture of the English king.
Campeggio took in Henry's mood of excessive eagerness at once. His desire for a settlement was "most ardent," the legate wrote a week after his arrival. No argument could dislodge his feeling of certainty about the nullity of his union with Katherine. After four hours of conversation with the king Campeggio was stunned by his erudition. "His majesty has so diligently studied this matter," he concluded, "that I believe in this case he knows more than a great theologian or jurist." (Du Bellay confirmed Campeggio's judgment. "He talked to me at great length about the matter," he said of Henry, "and I promise you he requires no advocate, he understands it so well.")
Henry had begun to train all the faculties of his powerful intellect on the nullity suit—an effort which greatly reinforced his certainty. Self-confidence, logic and learning all convinced him that he was in the right. "I believe that an angel descending from heaven would be unable to persuade him otherwise," Campeggio wrote, and despaired of shifting the king's judgments by reason alone.®
Meanwhile Henry was at work trying to muster support for his position among his subjects. He drew up a document indicating assent to the nullity suit and had it circulated among his courtiers and the other "principal men" of the kingdom, expecting to find their signatures ap-
pended to it. To his dismay only three men lent their names in support— Anne's father and brother and her uncle the duke of Norfolk. ^^ Among the common people opinion ran even more heavily to Katherine. Some favored a compromise—bigamy—but many, particularly the women, blamed Henry vociferously for following lust instead of duty. "The king would for his own pleasure have another wife," they said loudly whenever any defense of the divorce was offered. They gathered outside the palace and cheered lustily for Katherine whenever she appeared, shouting messages of encouragement and wishing her victory over her enemies. Campeggio had encountered a group of these women as he made his way to London. Accusing him of opposing the queen, they hurled abuse at Anne, chanting "No Nan Bullen for us! No Nan Bullen for us!" until the old man was out of sight.
The popular view was in fact not far from that of the Spanish ambassador Mendoza, who saw in Henry a lovesick fool led astray completely by his passions. According to Mendoza, the month after Campeggio arrived Henry abandoned all propriety and rode off into the countryside to be with Anne, intending never to return. He came to his senses again, the ambassador said, but not before he had sent Katherine away to another palace and dispersed his household to an unprecedented extent. "He is so blindly in love with that lady that he cannot see his way clearly," Mendoza concluded, "and though the connection is so abominable that it may lead to the worst consequences, he is so determined upon this divorce that all his subjects are greatly afraid of his ultimately carrying his plans into execution."^^
Mendoza was not the best judge of the king's feelings or intentions, and where he saw in Henry a man of unbridled willfulness and dangerous appetites, "fond of extreme measures," others perceived a more temperate personality. "His majesty will not go to extremes," Campeggio wrote when the nullity suit was first opened, "but act considerately in this matter, as he is accustomed to do in all his actions."^^
More significant than Henry's self-indulgence or moderation was the arresting authority he communicated in his first public speech on the divorce in November of 1528. Henry had always been an imposing figure in large-scale settings, and at thirty-nine he was at the height of his heroic good looks. "In this eighth Henry God has combined such corporeal and intellectual beauty as not merely to surprise but to astound all men," the Venetian ambassador Falier wrote. "His face is angelic, rather than handsome, his head imperial and bold, and he wears a beard, contrary to English custom." Falier's secretary was even more impressed. Seeing the king in his presence chamber, regally posed under his canopy of cloth of gold and wearing a gown of gold brocade trimmed with lynx's skins, the secretary found Henry quite simply the handsomest man he had ever seen, "a perfect model of manly beauty in these times." To judge from his looks alone he was "in favor both with God and man," and as he addressed the assembled Londoners his compelling beauty added weight to his words.^^
"Our trusty and wellbeloved subjects," he began, "both you of the
nobility and you of the meaner sort, it is not unknown to you how that we, both by God's provision and true and lawful inheritance, have reigned over this realm of England almost the term of twenty years." He reminded them of the peace they had known under his rule, undisturbed by invasion or conquest, and of the "victory and honor" he had brought to England in his two decades as king. "But when we remember our mortality and that we must die," he went on, "then we think that all our doings in our liftetime are clearly defaced and worthy of no memory if we leave you in trouble at the time of our death." Without a true heir to succeed him, he said, he would fail in his duty toward them. Thus when he found that, in the opinion of the "greatest clerks in Christendom," his marriage was wrong in God's eyes and his child a bastard, his distress was unbearable.
"Think you my lords that these words touch not my body and soul?" he asked his subjects. "Think you that these doings do not daily and houriy trouble my conscience and vex my spirits?" Knowing the devotion his hearers felt to Katherine, he praised her good qualities at length, calling her "a woman of most gentleness, of most humility and buxomness"—in short a peerless wife, if only their union were valid. As it was, he was forced to depart from her, and to lament not only his long adultery with her but the divine displeasure that adultery had occasioned. "These be the sores that vex my mind," the king confided to his subjects in conclusion. "These be the pangs that trouble my conscience, and for these greves I seek a remedy."^*
It was an effective speech, and one that foreshadowed a new and powerful political alliance between the king and his subjects. It failed to satisfy the queen's partisans, however, who knew full well that Katherine was no longer the cherished partner the king described, but a misused woman sinking under the weight of her sorrows.
Queen Katherine was forty-three when Campeggio came to England, but to him at least she looked much older—"nearly fifty"—and others noticed that the lines on her face had deepened and her eyes had grown more careworn in recent months. Even now her everpresent smile did not desert her. save when she sat with the theologians and legists concerned with her case, consulting with them in grave earnest as Henry did with his advisers. She had put on weight; her face had become fleshy and jowly, and her figure stout. Beside the spirited Anne Boleyn Katherine was almost grotesque, and by keeping both women near him Henry invited the unflattering comparison.
Katherine's depression deepened as. one by one, those who supported her showed how little they were willing or able to do. Warham deserted her out of fear of the king; Vives left England, insulted by Wolsey and dismayed by Katherine's evident self-reliance. Mendoza tried to obtain imperialist lawyers from Flanders to argue for her, but they never arrived. Bishop Fisher was infinitely helpful and resourceful, though a sole champion could do little against the forces ranked on the king's side. Charles V promised the greatest assistance.
In letters he swore that he considered Katherine's cause his own, and assured her that "everything in his power
would be most willingly done." Yet he preferred to use his influence indirectly, relying on Clement VIFs fear and Campeggio's sense of justice to rescue Katherine from an unjust fate. And Campeggio, the queen feared, had been so led astray by lies that he could not be relied on to help her. Her informants told her that the legate had been misled into thinking the divorce would be accepted by everyone concerned—the emperor, Katherine herself, even the English people. This misinformation, coupled with pressure from Henry and Wolsey, might make the difference between justice and inequity.^^
Katherine's determined cheerfulness and Henry's bluff insouciance hid the sordidness of their domestic life. "Looking at the two together," Du Bellay wrote, "one could perceive nothing, and to this hour they have but one bed and one table." The royal couple continued to keep up appearances even after Katherine was ordered to leave Greenwich so that Anne could take up residence there in luxurious apartments adjoining Henry's. In private, though, their sharing of bed and board had become a painful ordeal for the queen. Henry had made it known that, "for marvellous great and secret" reasons, he was "utterly resolved and determined" never to sleep with Katherine again.^^
Yet he continued to give every appearance of cohabiting with her, having been advised by his lawyers that to do otherwise would be to give occasion for a countersuit; if he neglected her her lawyers, it seemed, could allege that he was acting in defiance of her conjugal rights.^^ The tension caused by this pretense was made worse by Henry's continual suggestion that out of misplaced loyalty one of Katherine's Spanish servants might try to do him harm, and by the even more outrageous insinuation that Katherine herself had been plotting to kill him.
Was it true she had attempted the king's life in order to free herself and her daughter to marry whomever they pleased? Tunstall and Warham asked the queen in November. Aghast at the suggestion, Katherine managed to stammer out a denial. She could not believe that the king, her lord, had said such a thing; he knew full well that she valued his life more than her own. Well, then, the prelates said, if she was not conspiring against the king, others in the kingdom were, and should they attempt anything against him she would be punished along with them. They stopped just short of warning Katherine that in case of rebellion she would be executed as a traitor, but the meaning behind their words was clear.^^
Warham and Tunstall were not the only royal envoys sent to pressure Katherine and wear her down in the months after the legate's arrival. Wolsey, Campeggio, and the king himself all confronted her, now pleading with her and appealing to her piety and compassion, now assaulting her dignity, now resorting to blunt language and threats. In each case the result was the same. The queen refused to pave the way for Henry's marriage to Anne by entering a convent, giving her tormentors "to understand that all efforts to move her from her purpose will be in vain." In desperation Henry used the sharpest weapons at his disposal. He accused Katherine of heartlessness and hatred, and threatened to keep her away from their daughter. Tunstall and Warham were instructed to
226 " GREAT HARRY
tell Katherine that Henry could no longer persuade himself that she loved him. She appeared rather to despise him, and since it was not safe for him to come into the presence of such animosity he would see little of her in the future, and would keep the princess away, too, for the same reason.•^
Henry's attitude to Katherine had more behind it than his impatient desire to begin a new life with Anne. Katherine deserved punishment, for she had done the unforgivable: she had gotten the better of Henry by means of a legal stratagem. Soon after Campeggio arrived she announced that she possessed a document overturning all of the king's arguments against the validity of their marriage and establishing once and for all that they were man and wife. Henry's case turned on the terminology and legal arguments made in the papal bull of dispensation; the document Katherine now produced, a papal brief supplementing the bull, made good many of the defects in the bull and contained language the king's lawyers were hard put to assault. The royal forces tried their best to invalidate the brief, insisting that the copy in Katherine's possession counted for nothing, and that only the original in Spain could be considered seriously. Besides, the brief contained errors, they claimed, and was probably a forgery; imprecise legal formulas, an unusual computation of the date and "false latinities" suggested deception.
Finally after much wrangling efforts to bring the original of the brief to England ceased, but not before the issue had caused months of delay. Another unforeseen occasion of delay was the fragile health of the pope. Early in the new year of 1529 Clement became violently ill, with a raging fever, severe head pains and stomach cramps. He vomited up all of the medicines his physicians gave him, until he grew so thin there were "great apprehensions" about his recovery. One night he lapsed into a comatose state and his anxious attendants, unable to find his pulse, gave him up for dead. By the time he opened his eyes weakly the next morning couriers had been sent out with the news of his death, and within two weeks Henry heard that the man who had frustrated his divorce for nearly two years would not impede it any longer.^^
For months after the false news of his death was corrected the pope's life remained in danger, and Henry, sensing his opportunity, wrote to his envoys in Italy instructing them to use whatever influence was needed— "promises of spiritual promotions, offices, dignities, rewards of money"—to ensure that Wolsey was elected as his successor. (Should Wolsey prove unacceptable to the other cardinals, Campeggio should be suggested.) That the occupant of the papal throne be favorably disposed toward Henry was of the utmost importance; the choice of a new pope was "that on which depends the making or marring of the king's cause."^^ Of course, in the event of Clement's death the two legates in England could judge the nullity suit sede vacante, even before the new candidate was chosen. In either case Clement's passing would put an end to the endless postponements which, as the months passed, made Henry more and more anxious. "At present there is nothing that annoys this king so much as the idea of not accomplishing his purpose," Mendoza remarked on the eve of Campeggio's arrival. The longer the final settlement was
delayed, the greater his annoyance grew, until finally on May 30 he issued the license to Campeggio and Wolsey to begin their proceedings, and they in turn convened the legatine court the following day.
The Parliament Chamber at Blackfriars was arranged "like a solemn court" for the occasion, with carpets on the floor and tapestries on the walls. There were two chairs for the presiding churchmen at the head of the hall, and on their right and left chairs for the opposing parties, the king's covered with a rich canopy of estate. Neither party appeared at the opening sessions, and it was not until June 18 that the dramatic confrontation between the king and the queen began. On that day Katherine's defense was to be made, and her partisans crowded the great hall in order to make their voices heard in her behalf. Katherine had eleven advocates in all, seven English ecclesiastics—of whom only Fisher carried out his assignment competently—and four foreigners, Vives, her confessor Jorge de Athequa, and two Flemish canonists. The two Flemings, sent to England at last by Margaret of Savoy after much delay, had gone back when they found the trial had not yet begun; the imperialists believed they had been ordered out of the kingdom.^^
To the astonishment of the entire assemblage it was not Katherine's lawyers but the queen herself who entered the great hall on the day appointed for her defense. She bore herself with the greatest dignity, leaning on the arm of one of her oldest servitors, Griffith ap Rhys, who by an irony of lineage happened to be Anne Boleyn's uncle. (The aging ap Rhys had served Katherine and Arthur Tudor at Ludlow during their brief marriage; he was a living link with the queen's unhappy past.) In default of more able defenders Katherine had determined to argue her own case, which so delighted her supporters that as soon as she came into view they burst into loud applause and cheers of encouragemen
t.
"Good Katherine! How she holds the field!" they shouted. "She doesn't care a fig. She's afraid of nothing!"
The queen walked past the noisy spectators without breaking stride, but she smiled and nodded her head in acknowledgment of their words in what the French ambassador called "a display of Castilianisms."" When she reached the appointed place she read a prepared statement, attacking the competence of the legatine court to try her case. The judges were biased, she claimed, and besides the matter was already in the hands of a higher authority, the pope. As to the substance of the nullity suit, she had only one argument to put forward. As she had remained a virgin throughout her first marriage—indeed, as she told Campeggio, she had slept by Prince Arthur's side only seven nights in all—her second marriage was unarguably valid. The papal brief in her possession gave the second marriage the sanction of approval from Rome. And twenty years of married life with Henry lent it a time-honored legitimacy no legal argument could assault.
Katherine's eloquence proved ineffective. When the court resumed next both the king and queen were present, and after Henry made a long speech the legates rejected Katherine's objections and prepared to go ahead with the gathering of evidence on the validity of the marriage.
228 ' GREAT HARRY
Without waiting to hear more Katherine made a dramatic appeal. Rising from her chair she crossed the room and knelt before Henry. In a clear, strong voice she made a moving plea for clemency and justice.
"Sir, I beseech you for all the loves that hath been between us and for the love of God, let me have justice and right." "I have been to you a true, honorable and obedient wife," she went on, "ever conformable to your will and pleasure." She had never grudged him anything, she swore, or shown as much as a fleeting sign of discontent with him. If she was culpable in any way, she would gladly undergo the punishment she deserved. But if there was no fault in her, she begged him to restore her to her rightful place at his side, and to deal justly with her.
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