Volume II Part 12 (1/2)
[Sidenote: May 12. The king is cited to appear at Rome.]
[Sidenote: The censures of the church suspended only till the emperor can execute them.]
[Sidenote: The pope's resolution and the explanation of it.]
On the 12th of May a citation was issued against the King of England, summoning him to appear by person or proxy at a stated day. It had been understood that no step of such a kind was to be taken before the meeting of the pope and Francis; Bennet, therefore, Henry's faithful secretary, hastily inquired the meaning of this measure. The pope told him that it could not be avoided, and the language which he used revealed to the English agent the inevitable future. The king, he said, had defied the inhibitory brief which had been lately issued, and had incurred excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be proceeded against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be p.r.o.nounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was not possible for him to remain pa.s.sive; and if he declined to resort at once to the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely until the emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with the strong hand. It stood not ”with his honour to execute such censures,” he said, ”and the same not to be regarded.”[149] But there was no wish to spare Henry; and if Francis could be detached from his ally, and if the condition of the rest of Christendom became such as to favour the enterprise, England might evidently look for the worst which the pope, with the Catholic powers, could execute. If the papal court was roused into so menacing a mood by the mere intimation of the secret marriage, it was easy to foresee what would ensue when the news arrived of the proceedings at Dunstable. Bennet entreated that the process should be delayed till the interview; but the pope answered coldly that he had done his best and could do no more; the imperialists were urgent, and he saw no reason to refuse their pet.i.tion.[150] This was Clement's usual language, but there was something peculiar in his manner. He had been often violent, but he had never shown resolution, and the English agents were perplexed. The mystery was soon explained.
He had secured himself on the side of France; and Francis, who at Calais had told Henry that his negotiations with the see of Rome were solely for the interests of England, that for Henry's sake he was marrying his son into a family beneath him in rank, that Henry's divorce was to form the especial subject of his conference with the pope, had consented to allow these dangerous questions to sink into a secondary place, and had relinquished his intention, if he had ever seriously entertained it, of becoming an active party in the English quarrel.
[Sidenote: Delay of the interview between the pope and Francis.]
[Sidenote: The true purposes of that interview.]
The long talked-of interview was still delayed. First it was to have taken place in the winter, then in the spring; June was the date last fixed for it, and now Bennet had to inform the king that it would not take place before September; and that, from the terms of a communication which had just pa.s.sed between the parties who were to meet, the subjects discussed at the conference would not be those which he had been led to expect. Francis, in answer to a question from the pope, had specified three things which he proposed particularly to ”intreat.” The first concerned the defence of Christendom against the Turks, the second concerned the general council, and the third concerned ”the extinction of the Lutheran sect.”[151] These were the points which the Most Christian king was anxious to discuss with the pope. For the latter good object especially, ”he would devise and treat for the provision of an army.” In the King of England's cause, he trusted ”some means might be found whereby it might be compounded;”[152] but if persuasion failed, there was no fear lest he should have recourse to any other method.
It was this which had given back to the pope his courage. It was this which Bennet had now to report to Henry. The French alliance, it was too likely, would prove a broken reed, and pierce the hand that leant upon it.
[Sidenote: Probable isolation of England.]
[Sidenote: Policy of Francis.]
Henry knew the danger; but danger was not a very terrible thing either to him or to his people. If he had conquered his own reluctance to risk a schism in the church, he was not likely to yield to the fear of isolation; and if there was something to alarm in the aspect of affairs, there was also much to encourage. His parliament was united and resolute. His queen was pregnant. The Nun of Kent had a.s.signed him but a month to live after his marriage; six months had pa.s.sed, and he was alive and well; the supernatural powers had not declared against him; and while safe with respect to enmity from above, the earthly powers he could afford to defy. When he finally divorced Queen Catherine, he must have foreseen his present position at least as a possibility, and if not prepared for so swift an apostasy in Francis, and if not yet wholly believing it, we may satisfy ourselves he had never absolutely trusted a prince of metal so questionable.
The Duke of Norfolk was waiting at the French court, with a magnificent emba.s.sy, to represent the English king at the interview. The arrival of the pope had been expected in May. It was now delayed till September; and if Clement came after all, it would be for objects in which England had but small concern. It was better for England that there should be no meeting at all, than a meeting to devise schemes for the ma.s.sacre of Lutherans. Henry therefore wrote to the Duke, telling him generally what he had heard from Rome; he mentioned the three topics which he understood were to form the matter of discussion; but he skilfully affected to regard them as having originated with the imperialists, and not with the French king. In a long paper of instructions, in which earnestness and irony were strangely blended, he directed the amba.s.sador to treat his good brother as if he were still exclusively devoted to the interests of England; and to urge upon him, on the ground of this fresh delay, that the interview should not take place at all.[153]
[Sidenote: The king's instructions to the Duke of Norfolk to ”disappoint the interview.”]
[Sidenote: The ”Three Articles” proposed for discussion will be wholly to the advantage of the Imperialists]
”Our pleasure is,” he wrote, ”that ye shall say ------ that we be not a little moved in our heart to see our good brother and us, being such princes or Christendom, to be so handled with the pope, so much to our dishonour, and to the pope's and the emperor's advancement; seeming to be at the pope's commandment to come or tarry as he or his cardinals shall appoint; and to depend upon his pleasure when to meet--that is to say, when he list or never. If our good brother and we were either suitors to make request, the obtaining whereof we did much set by, or had any particular matter of advantage to entreat with him, these proceedings might be the better tolerated; but our good brother having no particular matter of his own, and being ... that [no] more glory nor surety could happen to the emperour than to obtain the effect of the three articles moved by the pope and his cardinals, we think it not convenient to attend the pleasure of the pope, to go or to abyde. We could have been content to have received and taken at the pope's hand, jointly with our good brother, pleasure and friends.h.i.+p in our great cause; [but] on the other part, we cannot esteem the pope's part so high, as to have our good brother an attendant suitor therefore ...
desiring him, therefore, in anywise to disappoint for his part the said interview; and if he have already granted thereto--upon some new good occasion, which he now undoubtedly hath--to depart from the same.
[Sidenote: He has found by experience that the friends.h.i.+p of the pope is not vital to England.]
[Sidenote: King Henry knows the pope and himself also.]
”For we, ye may say, having the justness of our cause for us, with such an entire and whole consent of our n.o.bility and commons of our realm and subjects, and being all matters pa.s.sed, and in such terms as they now be, do not find such lack and want of that the pope might do, with us or against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a suitor therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and after the advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play and dally with kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all things, and more dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is any piece of our cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be none other thing but our cause, and the other causes whereof we be advertised, our advice, counsel, special desire also and request is, [that our good brother shall] break off the interview, unless the pope will make suit to him; and [unless] our said good brother hath such causes of his own as may particularly tend to his own benefit, honour and profit--wherein he shall do great and singular pleasure unto us; _giving to understand to the pope, that we know ourselves and him both and look to be esteemed accordingly_.”
Should it appear that on receipt of this communication, Francis was still resolved to persevere, and that he had other objects in view to which Henry had not been made privy, the amba.s.sadors were then to remind him of the remaining obligations into which he had entered; and to ascertain to what degree his a.s.sistance might be calculated upon, should the pope p.r.o.nounce Henry deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the sentence.
[Sidenote: Intended appeal to a general council.]
[Sidenote: The advantages of this measure.]
[Sidenote: June 29.]
After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to antic.i.p.ate the pope by an appeal which would neutralize his judgment should he venture upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of restoring the peace of Christendom, if there was true anxiety to preserve that peace. The hinge of the great question, in the form which at last it a.s.sumed, was the validity or invalidity of the dispensation by which Henry had married his brother's widow. Being a matter which touched the limit of the pope's power, the pope was himself unable to determine it in his own favour; and the only authority by which the law could be ruled, was a general council. In the preceding winter, the pope had volunteered to submit the question to this tribunal; but Henry believing that it was on the point of immediate solution in another way, had then declined, on the ground that it would cause a needless delay.
He was already married, and he had hoped that sentence might be given in his favour in time to antic.i.p.ate the publication of the ceremony. But he was perfectly satisfied that justice was on his side; and was equally confident of obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it could be fairly p.r.o.nounced. Now, therefore, under the altered circ.u.mstances, he accepted the offered alternative. He antic.i.p.ated with tolerable certainty the effect which would be produced at Rome, when the news should arrive there of the Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June he appealed formally, in the presence of the Archbishop of York, from the pope's impending sentence, to the next general council.[154]
[Sidenote: Terms of the appeal. The king has no intention of derogating from the lawful privileges of the See of Rome.]
Of this curious doc.u.ment the substance was as follows:--It commenced with a declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise than became a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or attacking the privileges conceded by G.o.d to the Holy See. If his words could be lawfully shown to have such a tendency, he would revoke, emend, and correct them in a Catholic spirit.