Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/224

210 in the monastery of St. Peter's, six miles from Ampthill, where the queen resided. To this court they summoned both the king and the queen. Henry appeared by proxy; but Catherine ignored the court and its proceedings altogether. It was not likely, indeed, that, having denied all authority in the matter but that of the Pope, she should now recognise a tribunal which was proceeding as the devoted instrument of a monarch who had declared, in a letter to those very judges, that he, their sovereign, recognised no superior on earth, but only God, and was not subject to the laws of any earthly creature. All officers and institutions—the Church itself—had now shown that it was scarcely influenced by any law or motive but the will and fear of this self-inflated king. Parliament and convocation had heaped fresh insults upon Catherine before proceeding to try her. Parliament, acting on the dicta of Cranmer and of Cromwell, had passed an act, strictly prohibiting any appeals to the Court of Rome, so that Catherine was cut off from all application to the only authority that she acknowledged; and another, stripping her of the title of queen, and designating her solely as the Princess Dowager of Wales, the widow of Prince Arthur, her first and only lawful husband. On the 12th of April, Henry again—and now openly—solemnised his marriage with Anne Boleyn.



Dr. Lee, the same clergyman who had married Henry to Anne, was sent to cite Catherine to appear. Every precaution was used to prevent Catherine knowing that it was intended by this court to proceed to a final judgment; but that mattered little; for, from first to last, she disallowed the authority of any trial by the king's subjects. On the 12th of May Cranmer pronounced