Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [20]
If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an impurity: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.
On January 1, 1527, Henry and Anne secretly exchanged vows and pledged themselves to each other. It was at the Greenwich ball in May that they appeared in public for the first time. One moment the court was joyfully celebrating Mary’s betrothal, the next she was all but forgotten, as all eyes and whispers turned to the subject of “mistress Boleyn.” As Don Íñigo López de Mendoza, the new imperial ambassador, reported, the king was now “bent on divorce” and Wolsey was “scheming to bring it about.”4 Mary’s life was about to change forever.
TWELVE DAYS AFTER the ball, Wolsey summoned Henry to appear before a secret tribunal at his town palace at York to answer the charge of unlawfully cohabiting with his dead brother’s wife. In the days that followed, evidence was presented against the marriage, and Wolsey and William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, were called upon to make a judgment.5 It was a stage-managed trial, and the outcome seemed predictable. Yet on May 31, just when the verdict was to be delivered, Wolsey pronounced the case too difficult to call and referred it to a panel of learned theologians and lawyers.6 News had reached England that an imperial army in Italy had mutinied for want of pay and had sacked and pillaged Rome. Pope Clement VII had taken refuge in the Castel Sant’Angelo and was now effectively a prisoner of the emperor.7 Henry’s divorce would be referred to Rome at just the time when the pope was at the mercy of Katherine’s nephew.
Katherine had not been called to give evidence in the tribunal; she didn’t even know it had taken place. It was not until June 22 that Henry went to her apartments to inform her of his intentions and to demand a formal separation. His conscience troubled him, he said; their marriage was invalid, and he was taking steps to have it annulled by the pope. He failed to mention his infatuation with Anne Boleyn, which was now an open secret. As Katherine began to cry, Henry lost his nerve: “all should be done for the best” he mumbled, and after begging her “to keep secrecy upon what he had told her,” he beat a hasty retreat.8
But behind her tears the queen was “very stiff and obstinate.” She confirmed that Arthur “did never know her carnally” and demanded counsel from both Henry’s subjects and “strangers [foreigners].”9 Wolsey immediately recognized the danger: Katherine was threatening to bring her nephew, the emperor, into the fight. “These were the worst points that could be imagined for the impeaching [preventing] of this matter … that she would resort to the counsel of strangers,” and he “intended to make all the counsel of the world, France except, as a party against it.”10
The queen hurriedly dispatched one of her Spanish servants, Francisco Felipez, to appeal to Charles to intervene. Henry ordered that Felipez be arrested, but the Spaniard eluded capture and reached the emperor at Valladolid at the end of July. Charles reacted quickly. He was shocked “to hear of a case so scandalous” and promised to “do everything in his power on her behalf.” He told his ambassador in England, “We cannot desert the Queen, our good aunt, in her troubles and intend doing all we can in her favour.” But, he added cautiously, “to this end, as the first step towards rendering help, it seems to us that this matter ought to be treated with all possible moderation, having recourse to kind remonstrances alone for the present.”11
Charles wrote to Henry, asking that he halt the proceedings immediately, and to the pope, requesting that he revoke Wolsey’s legateship and recall the case to Rome. He could not believe “that having, as they have, so sweet a princess for their daughter, [the King] would consent to have