Part 4

The English people had wanted the war; when they got it they paid for it at first cheerfully. But no advantage accrued, not even appreciable glory, and they tired of it. After Pavia, Henry thought the opportunity had come to strike for the French crown; but such an effort demanded more money. The business of getting it of course devolved on the Cardinal. There was no hope of obtaining it legitimately from a Parliament; Wolsey tried illegitimate methods--and failed. There was no alternative but to drop the war policy. Wolsey made an advantageous peace, and Charles promptly found himself obliged to come to terms with Francis. But it is clear that from this moment Wolsey’s position with his master became painfully uncertain.

Here then is the practical termination of Wolsey’s great period. After this, the king is absorbed by the divorce, and the minister, willy-nilly, must devote himself to that object--his own ruin being the alternative. His diplomatic labours achieved no permanent result, because the position won for England could only be maintained by continuity of diplomatic effort and diplomatic skill. After her own very different fashion, Elizabeth fifty years later was balancing continental forces, and manipulating them to her own ends, in a manner much less impressive and often indeed singularly undignified, but certainly not less successful. And with her, the result was that the England which Philip of Spain had hoped to make an appanage of his own established herself as the indisputable mistress of the seas. The change in the relative position of England between 1558 and 1588 was far greater than between 1508 and 1528.

But Elizabeth worked with a perfectly free hand. Wolsey worked for a master, who was quite capable of wrecking the minister’s schemes for a purely personal end. He had to persuade that master to sanction a policy which he never adopted with enthusiasm. He had to carry it through in spite of the hostility of the governing classes, the ill-will of the queen--who was still on terms of accord with her husband--and his own extreme unpopularity with the mob. That is, he had to work single-handed amidst extremely adverse conditions; and all the circumstances being taken together, it may fairly be said that he displayed a diplomatic genius unique among English statesmen.

IV

DOMESTIC POLICY

In the field of foreign affairs Wolsey’s policy and his methods were both derived from Henry VII.: or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he applied the same methods to a development of the same policy. The invaluable make-weight was converted into the inevitable arbiter: the means, a process of peaceful bargain-driving. The bargains were usually in both cases profitable for England. Incidentally, they generally contained unwritten clauses which were profitable also to the Cardinal. There is no reason to suppose that any case occurred in which Wolsey permitted essentials to be in the slightest degree affected by considerations of his own gain. But he himself would never have thought of disputing that he accumulated great profits out of his diplomatic transactions.

The first objective then of Wolsey’s policy was the establishment of England not merely as an important factor but as the dominant factor in European politics: therein going beyond anything that Henry VII. had contemplated, but still acting on lines laid down by him. In his second objective, he was still a disciple of the old king. This was the establishment of the Crown as a practical autocracy.

The primary condition of an absolutist government was a full treasury; and here Wolsey had the immense advantage of the great hoards accumulated during the last reign. In spite of the heavy expenditure involved in ministering to the king’s pleasures, and on such pageantry as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, government in Wolsey’s hands was economically conducted. The great revenues which fell into his own hands not merely from the numerous preferments he held in England, but also from foreign sources, enabled him to defray the magnificence of his own establishment, public as well as private: and there were indirect methods of throwing much of the cost of the Court upon private persons. It was not till 1523 that the Cardinal found himself forced to look to the country for supplies by the necessities of a war budget. For very nearly ten years he had carried on the government without calling Parliament, although it had hardly been summoned during the preceding decade; under a continuance of the same _régime_, England might have become accustomed to doing almost without Parliament.

The second principle in establishing absolutism was the further depression of the nobility, who--again, as in the days of Henry VII.--were steadily kept from offices of State. Even the Howards exercised no control; and the most powerful of all, the Duke of Buckingham, was suddenly brought to the block. In that, as in everything the king did that was unpopular, the minister was charged with being the moving spirit, and his determination to destroy all rivals was accounted the moving cause. As a matter of fact, the duke’s execution fitted in with the Cardinal’s policy: but there is no direct ground for supposing that he had any active share in the matter. On the whole, there is no evidence that he was particularly vindictive. Still, personal ambition apart, since none of the nobles would willingly have been associated with him as a colleague it was necessary to the carrying out of his policy that his rivals should have their talons pared as far as possible; and also of course that there should be none powerful enough to form a disaffected party. Wolsey knew that, except for one or two ecclesiastics who had already in effect retired from the political arena, he stood practically alone. He had to make himself necessary to the king, and, since he could not be loved by the nobles, it undoubtedly suited him that they should fear him. In the result he succeeded so completely in destroying all possibility of opposition to Henry’s will that there was no man in the kingdom whom the king could not destroy if he chose merely to raise a finger.

Successful as he was in building up the power of the Crown, he was still apparently at the height of his own influence when he learnt that the power of the purse still lay elsewhere; and the king learnt a very important lesson at the same time--a lesson which he was to turn to account before very long--the importance of conciliating popular sentiment. Money was needed for the French war. Wolsey would have treated the Parliament, called to provide it, as a mere passive instrument for carrying out the royal behest. Had the House of Commons in 1523 suffered itself to be brow-beaten, it would have virtually surrendered its place in the Constitution. The House refused to be brow-beaten: it refused point-blank to discuss or to vote in the Cardinal’s presence. When he retired in wrath, a substantial sum was voted, but as a free grant to the king, not obligatory. Two years later, more money was wanted. Wolsey did not dare to ask a Parliament for it. He resorted to Benevolences, and found the citizens of London obstinate in their assertion that Benevolences were illegal. However willing Parliaments or burgesses might be to leave measures to the king and his minister, they were absolutely determined to provide nothing out of their own pockets unless their own consent had first been obtained through strictly constitutional channels.

In this thing Henry was quick to prove himself shrewder than the Cardinal. Like his daughter after him, he had an intuitive perception of the national temper, and lost no time in repudiating the idea of coercion. His personal popularity was doubled, and all the odium for the attempt fell upon the minister. But the scheme towards which he was strongly predisposed had been foiled, and Wolsey, though the result favoured his own views, knew that it would be fatal to him if he failed a second time to give effect to the king’s desires.

Therefore the Cardinal now gave himself up to the effort to meet his master’s demands in the matter on which he had set his heart, the separation from Katharine. But in this one matter, success for him was sufficiently improbable from the outset, and as time went on events which he was wholly unable to control made it a sheer impossibility. He failed, and the failure spelt his ruin. Giving himself utterly to the king’s service, his compliance did not save him. Hitherto he had been a statesman, pursuing ends which certainly magnified both his country and his sovereign with extraordinary ability and amazing success, by methods certainly not more unscrupulous than were sanctioned by the universal practice of the time. Now he devoted himself to an object wholly unworthy, which he must have felt to be utterly unrighteous. The king for whom he degraded himself served him--characteristically. Did the fallen man feel that his punishment was just, even while the hand that dealt it was supremely unjust? It would seem so. The sentiment, if not the words, which Shakespeare put in his mouth is authentic:

O Cromwell, Cromwell! Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies.

V

THE DIVORCE

The whole story of the divorce is an ugly one; no amount of sophistry will ever make it anything else. Mr. Froude succeeded in persuading himself that pure unsullied patriotism was Henry’s ruling motive: and brings himself, apparently with some difficulty, to grant a qualified pardon to Katharine for her resistance, on the ground that after all she was a woman, and weak. If Henry had acted as some others have done, and had taken up definitely the position that by hook or by crook the legalisation of a new marriage for him was a national necessity, in order that a male heir to the throne might be born, the issue would have been a plain one. If bigamy could be justified on the grounds of national expediency, there was a decently good case for authorising a bigamous union. To provide a technical trick for evading the form of bigamy would no doubt have made the process easier, not affecting the ethics of it one way or other. But it followed logically that national interests alone were first to be taken into consideration in the selection of the new spouse. The fact that in that choice Henry was guided by passion and no other consideration whatever is sufficient proof that the actuating motive with him was not _salus populi suprema lex_. The grotesque nemesis by which later on Henry found himself with three acknowledged children of his body of whom two were born in what was supposed to be wedlock, both in virtue of marriages which the Courts had subsequently declared void, while the third, a boy, had no pretensions to legitimate birth--that nemesis is really a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole position.

If on the other hand the awakening of Henry’s conscientious scruples had not coincided with a violent passion for another woman it would have been easier to believe that they were genuine, and that all he really wanted--as he frequently affirmed--was to have those scruples allayed. A genuine doubt would assuredly have demanded an authoritative pronouncement. Unfortunately, he made it perfectly clear that no authority could allay the scruples; he was absolutely determined that the Pope and the Cardinal between them must see to it that the doubts should be confirmed.

The precise stage at which Henry discovered that the weal of his people required a male heir of his body at any cost; at which his conscience began to question the validity of the dispensation under which he had married Katharine; at which he determined that Anne Boleyn should supplant the queen: all these are matter of some doubt. It is fairly clear that in 1526--certainly in 1527--if not before, Wolsey had been made aware that the king was desirous of exchanging Katharine for Anne; that Wolsey on his knees entreated the king to think better of it; that he found the king obdurate. There is no sign at all that the ethics of the divorce troubled Wolsey in any way; on the other hand no one has ever questioned that the Boleyn marriage was a thing hateful to him from every point of view. But he had to choose between lending himself to the king’s desire and rushing on his own ruin. Perhaps there are not many men who would have dared to take the nobler course; Wolsey, _deteriora secutus_, none the less fell.

It would seem that Wolsey first set himself to discover some legal expedient for nullifying the marriage, hit upon the idea that the dispensation granted by Julius was invalid, and tried more than one scheme with a view to its being pronounced invalid--hoping, it may be, that the law’s delays would give the king time to get over his infatuation for Anne, and that when--if ever--he should be legally free to take a new wife, the new wife would be a more fitting person.

First of all then, Wolsey, as Papal Legate, took steps for holding a Legatine Court in England before which the issue should be tried. But this plan contained a material flaw. Katharine might appeal to the Pope against the decision of the Legatine Court, and Wolsey, in the event of such appeal, would become a mere party in the suit instead of a judge. The Pope therefore must be induced either to give a favourable pronouncement on his own account, or to appoint a Legatine Court _ad hoc_--a Court whose judgment would be final. A very difficult matter; for precisely at this time the recent misfortunes of France were bearing their fruit: the emperor became entirely predominant in Italy, and obtained complete control of Clement--and the emperor was Katharine’s most affectionate nephew. So the hapless Pope, who was very anxious to keep friends with Henry but was naturally even more anxious not to offend Charles, desired above everything to evade giving a decision himself. On the other hand, Wolsey felt that there must be no pretext for subsequently questioning the legality of the process by which the dispensation was to be quashed, and therefore it was imperative that in form that process should convey the Papal sanction. Besides this, he had a very powerful personal reason for insisting on it. In England the Boleyn connection, who knew perfectly well what were Wolsey’s views about Anne, were working hard and not without success to destroy the king’s trust in the Cardinal, who saw his influence tottering. Failure to procure the divorce would certainly mean for him destruction; success, followed by the Boleyn marriage, would place more power in the hands of the most hostile faction, and he would be left absolutely alone to bear the whole obloquy of an extremely unpopular measure, unless the ultimate responsibility could be forced on the reluctant Pope.

As far as Wolsey was concerned, Clement won the game after apparently yielding. A Legatine Commission was appointed, but Campeggio was associated with Wolsey as judge: he managed to spend the best part of a year in reaching England; it was in fact fifteen months after the appointment that the Court began its sittings. A few weeks later, the Pope revoked the case to Rome. For all practical purposes, the revocation sealed the Cardinal’s fate.

For two years past Wolsey’s position, for all that it seemed to the world so assured, had been extremely precarious. The king had sent one agent to Rome behind his minister’s back. The agent’s mission failed ignominiously, but the thing was significant. Wolsey had gone to France on a diplomatic errand; on his return, instead of being summoned to a confidential meeting with the king, he found Anne Boleyn in the presence. He had been soundly rated by the king because, in appointing an abbess to Wilton, he had rejected a most unsuitable _protégée_ of the Boleyns. He knew the stake for which he was playing: he can hardly have doubted, from the beginning of what was called “The King’s Affair,” that his fate was bound up with success or failure. The illusion that he ruled the king was one from which it does not appear that he ever suffered himself. All he did was to rule England and English policy precisely so long as he retained the personal favour of the king, and his policy did not clash with any of the royal predilections.

In this matter of the “divorce,” Wolsey has found an earnest apologist in Father Taunton. In his view, it would seem that the Cardinal was justified, because he believed that there really was a technical flaw in the form of the dispensation as granted by Pope Julius: if there was such a flaw, the king was entitled to the benefit of it: and its existence would enable the Pope to quash the dispensation, without so much as raising the question whether the granting of it at all was _ultra vires_ for any Pope. Now the ingenuity of the lawyer who wins his client’s case on a technical quibble may be admired--in a way: the ingenuity of the ecclesiastic, who would have provided the Pope with a golden bridge for evading an awkward question, is also to be admired. But in presenting these grounds for admiration, the last possibility of a _moral_ defence is given away. Persons honestly believing that the relation between Henry and Katharine was by the moral law incestuous, and could not be otherwise, despite any possible Papal dispensation, were entitled to urge the dissolution of their union. But if that relation was not inherently immoral, and was capable of being made legal as well, then the barest sense of justice demanded, that no dubious point of law should be brought in, in order to engineer a dissolution.

The whole case for Wolsey, according to Father Taunton, rests precisely on this very dubious point of law. The dispensation was formally drawn to make the marriage between Henry and Katharine lawful even if affinity had been contracted. But in the ordinary course, as the law stood, a woman being not married but fully betrothed to a man might not--although no actual marriage had taken place--marry that man’s brother, her doing so being against “public honesty.” Since the greater includes the less, and the whole includes the part, it would seem obvious that a dispensation covering the actual marriage _ipso facto_ covered the pre-contract. Yet the apologist would have it that the Cardinal was satisfied to rest the _whole_ case for nullifying the marriage on the position that the dispensation was technically invalid because it did not specifically refer to “public honesty” as well as to affinity. Such was the contemptible quibble by which the “master-mind of his age” was prepared to procure a pronouncement that Katharine was no wife--so that the Papacy might escape an awkward dilemma.

It is at least intelligible to maintain that circumstances may arise under which, for the public safety, flagrant injustice towards an individual may be and ought to be committed. That is undoubtedly the feeling at the bottom of Mr. Froude’s argument. Possibly also it was at the back of Father Taunton’s mind; but he does not put it forward. If the doctrine itself be admitted, a loyal son of the Roman Church is perhaps entitled to hold that it was right to sacrifice Katharine in order to avoid raising a question extremely inconvenient to the Papacy. Perhaps also that view is the excuse least derogatory to Wolsey which can be offered. A review, however, of the entire context of the documents which Father Taunton cites in part points rather to the conclusion that the Cardinal did mean to argue that--dispensation or no dispensation--affinity was an absolute bar; and intended to fall back on the quibble only as a last desperate resort if the contraction of affinity were disproved; that he at least wished to find the moral ground for nullity maintained, but, if that should prove impossible, was prepared to surrender the extreme Papal claim.

The view of the whole business resulting from a consideration of all the facts so far as they can be certainly ascertained is entirely consistent with the rest of the Cardinal’s career. Ambition made him desire power; like other men of great intellect and strong will, he knew himself fitted to hold it; like many other statesmen, and with a good deal more reason than some, he imagined himself the only safe guide for the State; and he knew that if he once fell there would be for him no recovery. About 1526, when for a dozen years he had been the greatest figure in the eyes of the Western world, he found himself presented with a dilemma. He must execute the king’s will in a particular matter--or fall.

The king’s will would at least serve the State well in one respect if it issued in providing a male heir to the throne. Also, if the marriage were really contrary to the moral law and outside the dispensing power, it would be in the interest of public morals that the fact should be declared. So far, no one could possibly be blamed for maintaining the king’s case. That was the line subsequently taken by Cranmer. But for Wolsey the situation was much more difficult than for Cranmer, because for Wolsey it was a _sine qua non_ that the Pope’s official authority should be maintained. He could not, therefore, adopt any course which ignored that authority even so far as by not requiring its open sanction: much less could he, like Cranmer, defy it. Whether, for the sake of preserving that authority the more rigidly, he intended to ignore the one moral defence for the desired measure and content himself with pleading a legal quibble, is a question that can be argued; but it is quite clear that he was prepared to do so in the last resort. In short, if the only way to avoid his own downfall was by sacrificing an innocent victim, the innocence of the victim should not save her. He would have preferred, no doubt, that the sacrifice should not be made, but, under the circumstances, he did not hesitate. His moral plane was too conventionally low for the alternative course. More or Fisher would have acted otherwise. But the successful statesman who is ready to commit political suicide rather than actively participate in an unrighteous deed which he cannot prevent, is not often to be met with. And Wolsey had the further excuse that he hoped to save the Church, as he conceived it, from the disastrous results which he foresaw if the matter fell into other hands.

VI

WOLSEY AND THE REFORMATION

From the attitude of Wolsey to the Papacy in the matter of the divorce, we are naturally led to a consideration of his whole position in matters ecclesiastical and religious.

The great revolution which we call the Reformation had two main aspects. Employing the term “the Church” as representing not the whole body of professing Christians but the clerical organisation: the Reformation in the first place changed everywhere, though in varying degrees, the relation of the secular governments to the Church within their borders; in the second place it changed the relations of the various geographical sections of the Church to the whole Catholic body of which they were members. Thus the State in England assumed a new attitude to the Church in England, and the Church in England as well as the State was placed in a new relation to the Roman pontificate. These changes were essentially political.