The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [102]
The next week passed peacefully, then came another missive. In this one she took me to task, saying that I owed her a face-to-face good-bye.
Why? So she could berate me? I waited until I had left Deerfield and come closer to London, then called a Council meeting. This was no longer a private matter, as far as I was concerned, but a state one. I wanted everyone to know what I was doing, and why. Together the Council and I drafted a formal letter to the Princess Dowager stating that her disobedience had so displeased me that I did not wish to see her again.
When my progress was completed a month later, the Council sent her another letter, telling her that I was returning to Windsor and wished her to move to Wolsey’s old house, The More, before then. While she was there she was then to select a permanent place of residence and thereafter to retire there.
It was done. It was done. I could hardly believe it of myself. Why, then, did I feel such a mixture of euphoria and despair?
The news of my separation from Katherine spread quickly and was not always well received. Unfortunately, it coincided with the beginning of the Parliamentary measures taken to reform the Church. All the old was being dismantled, the people seemed to feel, and there was no secure haven anywhere.
On May fifteenth, 1532, Convocation acknowledged me as Supreme Head of the Church in England. On May sixteenth, More resigned as Chancellor.
He came to me, carrying his Seals of Office, the very ones that Wolsey had been so loth to suont>
I sent a deputation of thirty councillors to give her the following orders: Remove yourself to Ampthill within a fortnight; reduce your household servers by two-thirds; cease to style yourself Queen; acknowledge me as Supreme Head of the Church in England.
As I expected, she refused the last two orders. She said she would gladly release anyone from her service who would not recognize her as Queen, and that her conscience would never permit her to acknowledge her “husband” as Supreme Head of the Church.
Oh! That woman, that stubborn, hateful woman! To cling to something that did not exist—how revoltingly pathetic!
And Mary ... she proved to be entirely her mother’s daughter and none of mine, in her behaviour toward me. She was contemptuous and rude, continually speaking of her mother and the wrongs I had done her, and of the Church and the wrongs I had done her. In truth, I knew not what to do with my daughter, as I loved her, but knew her now to be totally against me. In sorrow I sent the sixteen-year-old girl to the manor of Beaulieu in Essex, with a household of her own.
I must put a stop to the incipient questioners and sceptics in the realm. What would silence them better than having Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, celebrate my wedding to Anne? As highest prelate in the land, he stood as quasi-Pope to the people. In addition, he had “married” me to Katherine. For him now to officiate at my wedding to Anne would say plainer than anything else that the first marriage was indeed void. I would insist that he do so.
But, astoundingly, he refused. More than that, he denounced me and my “concupiscent desires” and took a grave moralistic stand on the issue of separating from the Pope. I stamped out of his presence.
Alone in my chambers, I paced. Things seemed as hopeless as ever. More had left me. The highest ecclesiastical authority in the land did not see fit to marry me to Anne. The Pope continued to fulminate against me. Only Anne and Parliament stood on my side.
But just when it seemed everything must stay as it was forever, everything changed, as suddenly as a summer squall.
God intervened, and Warham died. True, he was an old man, in his eighties, but I had despaired of ever being rid of him. He had been there since my earliest boyhood, and seemed to be less a man than