Page:The Queens of England.djvu/306

 266 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. even according to the opinion of the court of Rome, the hull having been granted at the joint prayer of Henry and Kath- arine, on the plea that their marriage was necessary for the, preservation of the peace between England and Spain. In this plea two causes for nullifying the bull were found : the first, that Henry, being only twelve years old when it was prayed for, could not be supposed to comprehend the policy which dictated such a measure, and consequently that the prayer had not come from him ; and the second, that the state of affairs between England and Spain, when the prayer was made, did not render such a marriage necessary for the maintenance of peace between them ; and that hence Julius the Second had been deceived in granting the bull. Another cause of its nullity was discovered in the fact, that the bull being issued for the main- tenance of peace between Henry the Seventh and Isabella of Spain, this motive ceased when the marriage had been con- summated, both these sovereigns being dead. It was alleged that the protestation of Henry against the marriage, after the bull had been granted, and previously to its consummation, ren- dered the bull accorded by Julius the Second null, and made it necessary to have another bull granted to render the marriage valid. Such were the pleas urged by Henry to induce the pope to revoke the dispensation given by Julius ; and had conscien- tious scruples alone influenced Henry in praying for this meas- ure, a new bull from the pope might have been obtained to ease his conscience by rendering valid the marriage. Building on the painful position of the pope at that crisis to obtain what he required, Henry dispatched Knight to Rome, to solicit Clement the Seventh to sign no less than four separate docu- ments drawn up in England : the first, a commission to Wolsey, to judge and decide the affair, with so many English bishops ; the second, to grant a bull for declaring the king's marriage null, on account that Katharine's marriage with Prince Arthur was alleged to have been consummated, although she swore to the contrarv ; the third, for the pope to grant a dispensation to Henrv to marry another woman ; and the fourth, an engage- ment on' the part of the pope never to revoke any one of the acts now to be signed. Secretly as Henry had managed this nego- tiation, it had already reached the ears of the emperor, who pro- hibited Henry's requests being attended to ; and the result was, that the pope, wishing to conciliate Henry, and Francis, who espoused Henry's side for the divorce, determined on concili- ating both sovereigns, in order to play them off against Charles