8. Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528.– Two years later, in 1527, as Henry was veering round towards a French alliance (see p. 374), he had no longer much reason to consider the feelings of the Emperor. On the other hand, the strong position which Charles occupied in Italy after the sack of Rome made it improbable that Clement VII. who was then Pope, and who thought more of his political than of his ecclesiastical position, would do anything to thwart the Emperor. An attempt made by Henry in 1527 to draw Clement to consent to the divorce failed, and in 1528 Wolsey sent to Rome his secretary, Stephen Gardiner, an adroit man of business, to induce Clement to appoint legates to decide the question in Henry's favour. Clement, anxious to please all parties, appointed Wolsey and another cardinal, Campeggio, as his legates, but took care to add that nothing done by them should be valid until it had received his own approval.
9. The Legatine Court. 1529.– The court of the two legates was opened at Blackfriars in 1529. Before proceeding to business they tried hard to induce either Henry to abstain from asking for a divorce or Catharine to abstain from resisting his demand. In such a matter Catharine was as firm as the self-willed Henry. Even if she could consent to leave the throne, she could not, if she retained any sense of womanly dignity, acknowledge that she had never been a wife to Henry, or suffer her daughter to be branded with illegitimacy. When king and queen were at last cited to appear Catharine knelt before her husband. She had, she said been his true and obedient wife for twenty years, and had done nothing to deserve being put to open shame. As it was, she appealed to Rome. The queen's cause was popular with the masses, who went straight to the mark, and saw in the whole affair a mere attempt to give a legal covering to Henry's lust. The legates refused to consider the queen's appeal, but when they came to hear arguments on the merits of the case they were somewhat startled by the appearance of the aged Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the holiest and most learned prelates of the day, who now came voluntarily, though he knew that Henry's wrath was deadly, to support the cause of Catharine. Campeggio took advantage of the strong feeling which was growing against the king to interpose delays which he knew to be well-pleasing to Clement, and before these delays were at an end Clement annulled all the proceedings in England and revoked the cause to Rome. Most probably he was alarmed at the threats of the Emperor, but he had also reasons of his own for the course which he took. Henry did not ask for a divorce on any of the usual grounds, but for a declaration that his marriage had been null from the beginning. As, however, his marriage had been solemnised with a Papal dispensation, Clement was asked to set aside the dispensation of one of his predecessors, a proceeding to which no Pope with any respect for his office could reasonably be expected to consent.
10. The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530.– Henry was very angry and made Wolsey his victim. Wolsey's active endeavours to procure the divorce counted as nothing. It was enough that he had failed. He was no longer needed to conduct foreign affairs, as Henry cared now only for the divorce, and raised no objection when Charles and Francis made peace at Cambrai without consulting his interests. The old nobility, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, the son of the victor of Flodden, had long hated Wolsey bitterly, and the profligate courtiers, together with the friends and relatives of Anne, hated him no less bitterly now. Before the end of the year proceedings under the Statute of Præmunire (see pp. 258, 382) were taken against him on the ground that he had usurped legatine powers. It was notorious that he had exercised them at the king's wish, and he could have produced evidence to show that this had been the case. In those days, however, it was held to be a subject's duty not to contest the king's will, and Wolsey contented himself with an abject supplication for forgiveness. He was driven from his offices, and all his goods and estates seized. The college which he had founded at Ipswich was sold for the king's use, and his college at Oxford, then known as Cardinal College, was also seized, though it was afterwards refounded under the name of Christchurch by the robber king. Wolsey was reduced to extreme poverty. In 1530 he was allowed to return to the possession of the archbishopric of York; but he imprudently opened communications with the French ambassador, and harmless as they were, they gave a handle to his enemies. Henry ordered him to be charged with treason. The sufferings of his mind affected his body, and on his way to London he knew that he was a dying man. "Father Abbot," he said, in taking shelter in Leicester Abbey, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." "If I had served my God," he acknowledged as he was passing away, "as diligently as I have done my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs."
11. The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529.– No king ever felt the importance of popularity like Henry, and the compassion which had been freely given to Catharine by the crowd, on her appearance in the Legatine Court, made it necessary for him to find support elsewhere. It had been Wolsey's policy to summon Parliament as seldom as possible. It was to be Henry's policy to summon it as frequently as possible. He no longer feared the House of Lords, and either he or Wolsey's late servant, Thomas Cromwell, an able and unscrupulous man, who rose rapidly in Henry's favour, perceived the use which might be made of the House of Commons. By his influence the king could carry the elections as he pleased, and when Parliament met in 1529 it contained a packed House of Commons ready to do the king's bidding. The members were either lawyers or country gentlemen, the main supports of the Tudor monarchy, and Henry strengthened his hold upon them by letting them loose on the special abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical courts. Lawyers and country gentlemen were very much what they had been in the fifteenth century, without large political ideas or fine spiritual perceptions; but now that they were relieved of the oppression of the great nobles they turned upon the clergy, who claimed fees and dues which they disliked paying, and who used the powers of the ecclesiastical tribunals to exact heavy payments for moral and spiritual offences.
12. The Universities Consulted. 1530.– Henry had as yet no thought of breaking with the Pope. He wanted to put pressure on him to make him do what he had come to regard as right. In 1530 he sent to the universities of Europe to ask their opinion on the question whether a marriage with a brother's widow was contrary to the law of God. The whole inquiry was a farce. Wherever Henry or his allies could bribe or bully the learned doctors, an answer was usually given in the affirmative. Wherever the Emperor could bribe or bully, then the answer was usually given in the negative. That the experiment should have been tried, however, was a proof of the strength of the spirit of the Renascence. A question of morals which the Pope hesitated to decide was submitted to the learning of the learned.
13. The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531.– Towards the end of 1530 Henry charged the whole clergy of England with a breach of the Statute of Præmunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatine authority. A more monstrous charge was never brought, as when that authority was exercised not a priest in England dared to offend the king by resisting it. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in 1531, it offered to buy the pardon of the clergy by a grant of 100,000l., to which was afterwards added 18,000l. by the Convocation of York. Henry refused to issue the pardon unless the clergy would acknowledge him to be supreme head of the Church of England.
14. The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy. 1531.– The title demanded by Henry was conceded by the clergy, with the qualification that he was Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy so far as was allowed by the law of Christ. The title thus given was vague, and did not bar the acknowledgment of the Papal authority as it had been before exercised, but its interpretation would depend on the will of the stronger of the two parties. As far as the Pope was concerned, Henry's claim was no direct invasion of his rights. The Pope had exercised authority and jurisdiction in England, but he had never declared himself to be Supreme Head of the Church either