Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/227

] Henry had accomplished his long striven-for object: he had deposed his old queen, and secured his new one; he had assumed great power over the Church, and derived some wealth from it, but he had no satisfaction in it. His movements had originated in passion, not in principle; he was no Reformer by nature, but fast bound in the prejudices of his education, and he felt a constant longing to reconcile himself again with the Pope. His proceedings were nowhere popular. Over the whole of Europe Catherine was an object of sincere sympathy. In his own dominions we have seen the vehemence of popular expression against his marriage, and the women were more indignant than the men. In his own Court, and amongst the very relatives of Anne Boleyn, he found stout partisans of the discarded queen. The wife of Anne's own brother, the Countess of Rochford, had been lady of the bedchamber to Catherine, and with other Court ladies were so open and violent in condemning the treatment of her, that Henry sent Lady Rochford and another lady of high rank to the Tower.

On the other hand, the Pope was as unwilling to break entirely with Henry. England was a valuable fief of the Holy See, but Clement was held tight to his opposition to Henry's proceedings by the emperor, who may be said, with his aunt, Queen Catherine, to have been far more really the artificers of the severance of England from Rome, than Henry, Cranmer, or Anne Boleyn. If Queen Catherine had submitted readily to the divorce, induced by an easy disposition or the offer of rewards and honours, and if Charles had not exerted all his power and all his menaces to keep the Pope firm, there would have come no break with Henry. As it was, led by their mutual regrets, and by the active offices of Francis I., who was eager to join a fresh coalition against Charles, the Pope consented to meet Henry's ambassadors at Marseilles. In July, under the influence of Charles and his brother Ferdinand, he had annulled the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, and excommunicated Henry and Anne if they did not separate before the end of September; and now, on the 25th of September, he embarked on board the French fleet to meet Francis and the English envoys. No sooner, however, was it settled that Clement and Francis should meet than Henry was seized with alarm lest they should enter into a secret league prejudicial to him. He sent over to Francis the Duke of Norfolk, accompanied by the Viscount Rochford, Parolet, Brown, and Bryan, with a retinue of 160 horsemen, as if to accompany Francis, but in reality furnished with secret instructions to dissuade Francis from proceeding to the interview, and offering him a large subsidy if he would countenance him by establishing a patriarch in France, and forbid the transmission of money to the papal treasury. When Francis refused to listen to this advice, Henry recalled the Duke of Norfolk, who was a zealous Catholic, and whom Henry probably thought too anxious to agree with the Pope, and sent in his place the Bishop of Winchester and Bryan.

These envoys professed that they were come to execute the wishes of Francis, and encouraged by this, Francis refused to proceed with other business until Clement had done everything possible to arrange amicably the affairs of Henry. Great, therefore, was the astonishment of both the Pope and the King of France to find, on proceeding to this business, that these ambassadors had come unfurnished with any powers to treat either with the Pontiff or the French King. They were only commissioned to watch the proceedings, and report them to their master. Henry, with all his desire of reconciliation, was still in constant fear of committing himself, and finding that the Pope had been prevailed on to decide against him, Francis insisted that the envoys should dispatch a messenger for full powers to treat; and, in the meantime, a marriage was concluded betwixt the Duke of Orleans, the son of Francis, and Catherine de Medici, the niece of Clement, an alliance which proved a great curse to France. The result of the dispatch to England appeared in the arrival of Bouner, afterwards Bishop of London, and one of the bitterest persecutors who ever lived, who, on the 7th of November, instead of proceeding to an accordance with Francis and the Pope, to their amazement presented from Henry an appeal from the Pope to a general council.

This unexpected renunciation of the authority of the Pope spoke plainly the distrust in Henry's mind of him, or of the influence behind him. All parties were now aiming at impossibilities. Henry would fain be reconciled with the ancient Church, but he was mortally afraid of the power of Charles over the Pontiff, and these fears were sedulously stimulated by the party at home, headed by Cromwell, Cranmer, and his own queen. Clement desired the reunion, but was a puppet in the hands of the emperor and Francis was bent upon his own views without possessing the confidence of either the Pope or Henry. Both Clement and Francis resented the conduct of Henry, yet neither was willing to give him up. Bonner pretended that the appeal to a council would throw no real obstacles in the way, and Francis, knowing that the Bishop of Bayonne stood well with Henry, sent him to London to propose that he should undertake the management of his affair with the Pope. Henry readily consented, and the bishop, in high spirits, hastened back, proceeded to Rome in the depth of winter, and set zealously to work to bring the matter to a favourable issue. The concession which the bishop flattered himself that he should now obtain was, that the divorce should be once more tried in England, and that the Pope should ratify the sentence, and England should remain in full obedience to the Papal See. So conceding did Henry appear, that he authorised the Bishop of Bayonne to promise, not merely obedience, but benefits to Rome, in proportion to the readiness of Clement to oblige him.

The long-contested question of the divorce, and the threatened consequence—severance of England from the Papal See—now appeared in a fair way of being settled. They were never farther off from such a consummation. However sincere and earnest the two principals in this contest, the Pope and Henry, might be, there were at work in the Court of England and the Court of Rome parties really more powerful than their principals, who were resolved that the two desiderata to this pacification never should be yielded. No sooner had the Bishop of Bayonne set out for Rome, than Cromwell and his party commenced an active campaign in Parliament for breaking beyond remedy the tie with Rome, and establishing an independent church in this country. This able man, who for his past services was now made Chancellor of the Exchequer for life, framed two bills, and introduced them to