The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [87]
“Your Grace, the Quave been l>
“Princess Katherine”—he quickly found an inoffensive and correct title —“is the child of a dead King. More important, she is the aunt of a living Emperor. A devout Emperor who will doubtless take offence at the implication that his aunt is living in sin.”
Exactly what I wanted! Wolsey was always practical. No cant about morality, no obfuscating issues. I could trust Wolsey.
“Facts are often unpleasant. He has faced Luther well enough.”
“Two unpleasant facts at one time ...” He gestured delicately toward a bowl of fruit. I nodded. He selected a last-year’s apple—soft, but all that was available this time of year. “... are too much for most men to stomach.” He bit into the apple, then looked dismayed as he discovered its soft texture. He quickly put it in a bowl.
“Those who would be Emperor must learn to. As you have. As anyone who would be Pope must.” At that he lightened. He still had hopes of the Papacy. Ah, if Wolsey had been Pope, then this whole conversation would have been unnecessary. But wishing is futile. An illegitimate Medici cousin of Leo X had succeeded the hapless Adrian as Pope Clement VII in 1523.
“But Popes are men.”
“And must die.” I smiled.
“And have concerns. Earthly ones,” he said sternly.
“Now you sound Lutheran,” I mocked. “The Pope, a man? The Pope, swayed by earthly issues?”
Wolsey was in no mood for banter this morning. Oddly, I was; I was in a buoyant, teasing mood. All would be mine. That tends to make a man cheerful.
“Your Grace, this is no matter for humour. To repudiate your wife will be no easy matter. If Your Grace will pardon me, it would have been easier had you done this before Charles become Emperor.... Nay, but then her father ... nay, by then he was dead. In 1518—”
“It is now!” I roared. What was wrong with Wolsey? Had it been the Garden of Eden, things would have been different as well, and what of it? “Now! The year 1527! And I have been living in sin for near twenty years! I want to end it, and instead you blather nonsense.”
He looked more alarmed than I had ever seen him. Then he did something I felt was clearly deranged: he sank to his knees.
“Your Grace, I beg you—” Tears began to stream down his cheeks. Stage tears; Wolsey could weep on command. “—do not proceed in this. Thereby lies much tribulation—”
How dare he presume to dissuade me? I looked down at the bulky figure swaying ludicrously on its knees, artificial tears watering my chamber floor.
“Up!”
His tears stopped instantly as he saw that his audience was not touched. Slowly he lumbered to his feet.
“You are Cardinal, and Papal legate,” I said. “Well versed in canon law and ecclesiastical procedure. What approach should we use?” I chose to ignore the staged outburst as a mutual embarrassment.
So did he.“Your Grace, I feel that perhaps a small ecclesiastical court here in England should ... examine ... the case in question, then give a quiet report to the Holy Father ll be a house matter, so to speak; no need to trouble the Vatican with it.”
Even weeping on his knees, he had been thinking. Was his devious mind never disengaged?
“Excellent,” I said.
“I myself will preside over the court. We need, for appearance sake, one other. What of Warham? He is the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Excellent,” I repeated. This was my first—and most momentous—stride down the path I had chosen to take. The first is always the hardest. After that it becomes so much easier.
Wolsey arranged a “secret” hearing of my troubled matrimonial case. He and Warham were to examine the facts and declare that my marriage was indeed invalid. This information was then to be sent to Pope Clement, who would issue a routine annulment. So simple, so easy. Why, then, did everything fail to transpire as we had planned it?
The court met in late May, 1527, at Westminster. Wolsey as legatus a latere, Papal representative, and Archbishop Warham as assessor, were chief tribunalers, with Richard Wolman as my counsel. I had high hopes, which came to nothing. Their so-called “findings” were that the