Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/470

 marriage with Catharine; but on Good Friday the new Archbishop wrote to him (of course by desire) a very humble request that he would allow him to determine that weighty cause which had remained so long undecided. The King willingly gave him a commission to try it; and the Archbishop cited him and Catharine to appear before him at Dunstable-a place carefully selected as being conveniently out of the way. There, on May 23, sentence was given of the nullity of the King's first marriage; and five days later at Lambeth a very secret enquiry was held before Thomas Cromwell and others as to the validity of the King's marriage with Anne Boleyn. Of course it was pronounced valid, though the very date of the event was uncertain, and all the details were kept a profound secret. Anne was crowned at Westminster on Whitsunday, June 1, with all due state, but with no appearance of popular enthusiasm. Then another deputation was sent to Catharine, now at Ampthill, to inform her that she was no longer Queen and must henceforth bear the name of Princess Dowager; but she refused to submit to such a degradation.

Sentence of excommunication was pronounced against Henry at Rome on July 11; but even now he was allowed until the end of September to set himself right, before the sentence should be declared openly, by taking back his wife and putting away Anne Boleyn. This troubled his ally Francis more than himself; for the Pope was coming to France for an interview at which he hoped to make Henry's peace. This interview, indeed, had been planned with Henry's own approval, the policy then being to make the Pope feel that he must look to France and England to save him from the necessity of holding a General Council at the Emperor's bidding. But Henry now completely changed his tone and endeavoured to dissuade Francis from meeting the Pope at all;-which, however, Francis was bent on doing, in order to arrange the marriage, which afterwards took place, of his son Henry, Duke of Orleans, with the Pope's niece, Catharine de' Medici. He met the Pope at Marseilles in October; but, while they were both there still in November, Dr Edmund Bonner, a skilful agent of the King, who had followed Clement from Rome, intimated to his Holiness an appeal on Henry's behalf to the next General Council against the sentence of excommunication. Next month the King's Council at' home came to a resolution that the Pope should henceforth be designated merely " Bishop of Rome"; and during the following year written acknowledgments were extorted from Bishops, abbeys, priories, and parochial clergy all over the kingdom that the Roman pontiff had no more authority than any foreign Bishop.

The policy which the King had now been pursuing for four successive years had been inspired by Thomas Cromwell, who, as we have seen, had been in Wolsey's service. He was a man of humble origin, who, after a roving youth spent in Italy and elsewhere, had risen by the use of his wits, and since his master's fall had now been for three years a Privy