A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [106]
Because of this—and much more of the same, which was to follow—the king’s decision to abandon Catherine led to the messiest divorce in history. Yet had Anne Boleyn never existed, Henry would still have found a new queen. He had begun to consider changing wives as early as 1514, when Anne was a child of seven; when he quit Catherine’s bed in 1524, it was to sleep with Mary Boleyn, not her younger sister. Three more years passed before he took Anne as his mistress and made the first, tentative inquiries about a dispensation from Rome.
His hopes were vested in his lord chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey sympathized with the king’s yearning for a son and had his own candidate for the succession, the French princess Renée, daughter of King Louis XII. Privately the cardinal was appalled by Anne. He was familiar with her reputation, and by now the king must have heard at least a whisper of it. But to a monarch with Henry’s pride it would have been inconceivable that any queen of his would be tempted—let alone dare—to contemplate infidelities. Furthermore, by now he was in love with her.
Wolsey badly needed a success. Once considered invincible, the lord high chancellor was now seen as a leader of lost causes. His wars had alienated the Commons and the merchants, his dictatorial manner had offended the clergy, and his foreign policy —rejecting Charles V for a French alliance—had proved disastrous. Had he been wise, he would have been unobtrusive. Yet he could not hide his lack of enthusiasm for what the royal court was calling “the king’s great matter.” Henry, impatient, bypassed the cardinal and sent his own secretary, William Knight, to Rome. Knight, speaking for his sovereign, submitted his case to Pope Clement. The pontiff, he argued, should declare Henry’s present marriage invalid. In any event, he proposed, the matter should be decided in England. His Holiness agreed. Knight then suggested that an eminent prelate serve as judge and make the final ruling. He had Wolsey in mind. The pontiff knew it. He also knew that for seven months of the previous year he and his retinue had been holed up in Sant’ Angelo while Rome was sacked. The troops still surrounded the city, and their commander was the English queen’s
Anne Boleyn (1507–1536)
nephew. If Clement yielded to Knight’s other point, he would be inviting the wrath of Charles V. Yet he could not leave the English cardinal out. Therefore, Clement ruled that two members of the sacred college should preside. Wolsey would be joined by an Italian cardinal, Lorenzo Campeggio. This was a stunning loss of face for Wolsey, and when Anne turned against him he was a ruined man. Henry seized his palace at Whitehall and stripped him of his secular offices. He was allowed to retain the archbishopric of York. After a year the king ordered his arrest. Ill, Wolsey died on the way to London.
In the meantime, Cardinal Campeggio had found the English sovereign immovable. “This passion,” he wrote the pope, “is the most extraordinary thing. He sees nothing, he thinks of nothing but his Anne; he cannot be without her for an hour.” Nevertheless Henry, willful but astute, had been proceeding shrewdly. He had appointed a commission to gather legal opinions from Catholic scholars all over Europe, and confronted the pontiff’s representative with the fact that they backed him, without exception. Campeggio agreed that England deserved a fertile queen. He urged Catherine to retire to a nunnery. She agreed—provided Henry