Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [23]
It signaled Wolsey’s fall from favor. He had failed in his efforts to free the pope from Charles’s domination and to secure the annulment that Henry demanded. In his dispatch of September 1, the new imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, reported that “the affairs of the Cardinal are getting worse and worse every day.” Henry had banned him from receiving foreign ambassadors and prevented his coming to court. As the envoy continued in cipher, “the cause of this misunderstanding between the King and the Cardinal can be no other than the utter failure of the measures taken in order to bring about the divorce.”3 By October, Wolsey had been charged with praemunire, the illegal exercise of papal authority in England, in his role as legate. On the twenty-second, having resigned the lord chancellorship to the lawyer and accomplished humanist Sir Thomas More, Wolsey acknowledged his offenses and placed himself and his possessions into the king’s hands.
Anticipating that the verdict from Rome would be hostile, Henry now embarked on an English solution to the annulment. Letters “of great importance,” as the accounts of Sir Brian Tuke, the master of the posts, record, were sent to Henry’s ambassadors in Rome, instructing them to inform the pope that neither he nor any other Englishman could be summoned to a Roman court because by ancient custom and privileges of the realm no one could be “compelled to go to law out of the Kingdom.”4 Over the next four years, under the stewardship of Thomas Cromwell, Parliament gradually eroded Rome’s power in England: first to pressure the pope to make concessions, then to fashion a homemade settlement. By 1533, Henry would be the supreme head of the English Church and married to his new wife, Anne Boleyn.
AS THE CAMPAIGN against the Church reached a crescendo, relations between Henry and Katherine broke down irrevocably, with Mary remaining the only bond between them. In March 1531, Henry “dined and resorted to the Queen as he was accustomed, and diminished nothing of her estate, and much loved and cherished their daughter the Lady Mary, but in no ways would he come to her bed.”5 Mary lived in the midst of all this: sometimes at a distance in adjacent royal houses, at other times at court. At Christmas the previous year, Henry, Katherine, and Mary had been together; but Anne Boleyn remained a constant, tormenting presence. On Christmas Eve, Katherine directly challenged Henry about his relationship with Anne. His behavior was a personal affront to her: he was setting a scandalous example. Henry’s response was curt: there was nothing wrong in his relationship with Anne, and he intended to marry her whatever Katherine or the pope might say.6
Anne was becoming equally bold. In conversation with one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, she declared that “she wished all the Spaniards were at the bottom of the sea” and added that “she cared not for the Queen or any of her family, and that she would rather see her hanged than have to confess that she was her Queen and mistress.”7 Katherine now wrote to the emperor that she believed Anne alone stood in the way of a reconciliation with her husband and if she—that “woman [Henry] has under his roof”—were out of the way, their marriage might have a chance. Her husband’s behavior displayed “not the least particle of shame.”8
For Mary, separation from her father was proving hard to bear, and she continually petitioned to see him. In July 1530, she wrote asking to be allowed to visit him before he left for four months of hunting. On this occasion Henry agreed. He traveled to Richmond, where Mary was staying, and spent the whole day with her, “showing her all possible affection.”9 Suspicious of Mary’s influence over her father, Anne Boleyn sent two servants to report on their conversation.10 The following summer, Henry visited Mary again at Richmond “and made great cheer with her,” speaking of her as he had when she was a young child, as a great “pearl.”11
Such visits became more infrequent as Henry’s views became increasingly colored by those