she wore flowing loose over her shoulders. “Mistress Anne”, wrote the Venetian Ambassador, “is not the handsomest woman in the world. She is of middle height, dark-skinned, long neck, wide mouth, rather flat-chested.” She had a fiery temper, was outspoken and domineering, and although not generally liked soon gained a small following, many of them noted for their leanings towards the new religious doctrines of Luther. We first hear of Anne Boleyn at Court in a dispatch of the Imperial Ambassador dated August 16, 1527, four months after Henry had begun proceedings for the annulment of his marriage. Did he plan the divorce and then find Anne? Or had he arranged to marry Anne from the beginning? We shall never know, for Henry was very secretive in his private matters. “Three may keep counsel,” he observed a year or two later, “if two be away; and if I thought my cap knew my counsel I would cast it into the fire and burn it.” His love-letters were secured by Papal agents, and are now in the Vatican library, but, while prettily phrased, they are undated, and disclose little except that Anne Boleyn kept him waiting for nearly a year.
Henry had been carefully guarded by Wolsey and Catherine. He had had mistresses before, but never openly. The appearance at Court of a lady with whom he spent hours at a time created an extraordinary stir. Together Anne and Henry arranged to send a special royal ambassador to Pope Clement VII, independently of the resident ambassador chosen by Wolsey, to seek not only annulment of the King’s marriage, but also a dispensation to marry again at once. Dr William Knight, now over seventy, was brought forth from retirement to undertake this delicate mission. Two entirely different sets of instructions were prepared for Knight. One made no mention of the proposed new marriage and was to be shown to Wolsey as he passed through Compiègne on his way to Rome; the other was the one on which Knight was to act. Wolsey was shown the dummy instructions as arranged, and at once saw that they had been drafted by ignorant laymen. He hurried home to have the instructions altered, and thus learned all. But although he now took over the management of the negotiations every expedient proved fruitless. The Papal Legate, Cardinal Campeggio, who was sent to England to hear the case used all possible pretexts to postpone a decision. Now that Italy had fallen to the Habsburgs the Pope was at the mercy of the Imperial soldiery. In 1527 they shocked Europe by seizing and sacking Rome. The Pope was now practically a prisoner of Charles V, who was determined that Henry should not divorce his aunt. This broke Wolsey. New counsellors were called in. A follower of the Duke of Norfolk, Dr Stephen Gardiner, was appointed Secretary to the King. Soon after this appointment Dr Cranmer, a young lecturer in divinity at Cambridge and a friend of the Boleyns, made a helpful new suggestion to Gardiner, that the question whether the King had ever been legally married should be withdrawn from the lawyers and submitted to the universities of Europe. The King at once took up the idea. Cranmer was sent for and complimented. Letters and messengers were dispatched to all the universities in Europe. At the same time the King had the writs sent out for a Parliament, the first for six years, to strengthen his hand in the great changes he was planning. Norfolk and Gardiner, not Wolsey, completed the arrangements. Wolsey retired in disgrace to his diocese of York, which he had never visited. On one occasion he came to Grafton to see the King. But when he entered he found that Anne was there, Norfolk insulted him to his face, and he was dismissed without an audience. On October 9, 1529, Wolsey’s disgrace was carried a step farther by an indictment in theKing’s Bench under one of the Statutes of Præmunire, passed in the reign of Richard II.
These Acts of Parliament were designed to uphold the jurisdiction of the royal courts against the Church courts, and had been one of Wolsey’s favourite instruments for exacting money for the King for technical offences. They provided that anyone who obtained in the court of Rome or elsewhere any transfers of cases to Rome, processes, sentences of excommunication, Bulls, instruments, or “any other things whatsoever which touch the King, against him, his crown and regalty, or his realm”, should lose the royal protection and forfeit all his goods to the King. While the proceedings were going forward in King’s Bench, Norfolk and Suffolk came to Wolsey to take away the Great Seal as a mark that he was no longer Lord Chancellor. But Wolsey protested, saying that he had been made Chancellor for life. Next day they came again, bearing letters signed by the King. When they had gone with the seal the great Cardinal broke down, and was found seated, weeping and lamenting his misfortunes.
Anne was determined however to ruin him. She had set her heart on York Place, the London residence of the Archbishops of York, which was, she decided, of a convenient size for her and Henry; large enough for their friends and entertainments, yet too small to permit Queen Catherine to live there also. Anne and her mother took the King to inspect the Cardinal’s goods in York Place, and Henry was incensed by the wealth which he found. The judges and learned counsel were summoned and the King asked how he could legally obtain possession of York Place, which had been regarded as belonging to the Archbishops of York in perpetuity. The judges advised that Wolsey should make a declaration handing over York Place to the King and his successors. A judge of the King’s Bench was accordingly sent to Wolsey. A member of his household, George Cavendish, has left an account of the Cardinal’s last days. According to him Wolsey said, “I know that the King of his own nature is of a royal stomach. How say you, Master Shelley? May I do it with justice and conscience, to give that thing away from me and my successors which is none of mine?” The judge explained how the legal profession viewed the case. Then said the Cardinal, “I will in no wise disobey, but most gladly fulfil and accomplish his princely will and pleasure in all things, and in especial in this matter, inasmuch as ye, the fathers of the law, say that I may lawfully do it. Howbeit I pray you show his Majesty from me, that I most humbly desire his Highness to call to his most gracious remembrance that there is both Heaven and Hell.”
Henry cared nothing for the fulminations of a Cardinal. Threats merely made him take more sweeping measures. The charge under Præmunire was supplemented by a charge of traitorous correspondence with the King of France, conducted without the King’s knowledge. Five days after Wolsey had been found guilty under Præmunire the Earl of Northumberland came to the castle of the Archbishop of York at Cawood, near York, and, trembling, said in a very faint and soft voice, “My lord, I arrest you of high treason.” “‘Where is your commission?’ quoth the Cardinal. ‘Let me see it.’ ‘Nay, sir, that you may not’, replied the Earl. ‘Well, then’, said the Cardinal, ‘I will not obey your arrest.’ Even as they were debating this matter there came in Councillor Walshe, and then said the Cardinal, ‘Well, there is no more to do. I trow, gentleman, ye be one of the King’s privy chamber; your name, I suppose, is Walshe; I am content to yield unto you, but not to my Lord of Northumberland without I see his commission. And also you are a sufficient commissioner yourself in that behalf, inasmuch as ye be one of the King’s privy chamber; for the worst person there is a sufficient warrant to arrest the greatest peer of this realm by the King’s only commandment, without any commission.’”
As Wolsey journeyed back to London, where the cell in the Tower used by the Duke of Buckingham before his execution was again being placed in readiness, he fell ill, and when he neared Leicester Abbey for the night he told the monks who came out to greet him, “I am come to leave my bones among you.” About eight in the morning two days later he sank into a last decline, murmuring to those gathered at the bedside, “If I had served God as diligently as I have done the King He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.” Soon afterwards he died; and they found next to his body a shirt of hair, beneath his other shirt,which was of very fine linen holland cloth. This shirt of hair was unknown to all his servants except his chaplain.
Wolsey’s high offices of State were conferred on a new administration: Gardiner secured the Bishopric of Winchester, the richest see in England; Norfolk became President of the Council, and Suffolk the Vice-President. During the few days that elapsed until Wolsey was replaced by Sir Thomas More as Lord Chancellor the King applied the Great Seal himself to documents of State. With the death of the Cardinal political interests hitherto submerged made their bid for power. The ambition of the country gentry to take part in public affairs in London, the longing of an educated, wealthy Renaissance England to cast off the tutelage of priests, the naked greed and thirst for power of rival factions, began to shake and agitate the nation. Henry was now thirty-eight years old.
Chapter V: The Break with Rome