Volume III Part 34 (1/2)
To this judgment two archbishops, seventeen bishops, and a hundred and thirty-nine clergy set their hands.[601] Their sentence was undoubtedly legal, according to a stricter interpretation of the canon law than had been usual in the ecclesiastical courts. The case was of a kind in which the queen, on her separate suit, could, with clear right, have obtained a divorce _a vinculo_ had she desired; and the country had been accustomed to see separations infinitely more questionable obtained in the court of the Rota or at home, with easy and scandalous levity.[602]
Nor could the most scrupulous person, looking at the marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves on its own merits, pretend that any law, human or divine, would have been better fulfilled, or that any feeling ent.i.tled to respect would have been less outraged, by the longer maintenance of so unhappy a connexion. Yet it is much to be regretted that the clergy should have been compelled to meddle with it; under however plausible an aspect the divorce might be presented, it gave a colour to the interpretation which represented the separation from Catherine as arising out of caprice, and enabled the enemies of the Church of England to represent her synods as the instruments of the king's licentiousness.[603]
[Sidenote: The queen signifies her acquiescence.]
[Sidenote: She will remain in England with the rank of a princess; palaces, pensions, and establishments.]
For good or for evil, however, the judgment was given. The Bishop of Winchester spoke a few words in explanation to the two houses of parliament when it was presented;[604] and the next day the Duke of Suffolk and Wriothesley waited on the queen, and communicated the fortune which was impending over her. Anne herself--who, after the slight agitation which the first mooting of the matter naturally produced, had acquiesced in everything which was proposed to her--received the intimation with placidity. She wrote at their request to the king, giving her consent in writing. She wrote also to her brother, declaring herself satisfied, and expressing her hope that he would be satisfied as well. So much facility increased the consideration which her treatment ent.i.tled her to claim. The Bishop of Bath had taken with him to the Duke of Cleves an offer, which ought to have been an insult, of a pecuniary compensation for his sister's injury. It was withdrawn or qualified, before it was known to have been refused, to increase the settlement on the ex-queen. For many reasons the king desired that she should remain in England; but she had rank and precedence a.s.signed to her as if she had been a princess of the blood.
Estates were granted for her maintenance producing nearly three thousand a year. Palaces, dresses, jewels, costly establishments were added in lavish profusion, to be her dowry, as she was significantly told, should she desire to make a fresh experiment in matrimony. And she not only (it is likely) preferred a splendid independence to the poverty of a petty court in Germany, but perhaps, also, to the doubtful magnificence which she had enjoyed as Henry's bride.[605]
[Sidenote: Monday, July 12. The bill for the divorce is pa.s.sed in parliament.]
[Sidenote: Displeasure of the Duke of Cleves,]
[Sidenote: And want of generosity on the part of the king,]
Parliament made haste with the concluding stroke. On Monday the 12th the bill for the divorce was introduced: it was disposed of with the greatest haste which the forms of the Houses would allow; and the conclusion of the matter was announced to the queen's own family and the foreign powers almost as soon as it was known to be contemplated. The Duke of Cleves, on the first audience of the Bishop of Bath, had shown himself ”heavy and hard to pacify and please.” When all was over, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, with other n.o.ble lords, wrote to him themselves, persuading him to acquiesce in a misfortune which could no longer be remedied; his sister had already declared her own satisfaction; and Henry, through his commissioners, informed him in detail of the proceedings in parliament and convocation, and trusted that the friends.h.i.+p between the courts would not be interrupted in consequence. It would have been well had he added nothing to a bare narrative of facts; but questionable actions are rarely improved in the manner of their execution. The king was irritated at the humiliation to which the conduct of the German powers had exposed him in the spring; and the Duke of Cleves had afterwards increased his displeasure by a secret intrigue with the court of Paris. Satisfied with his settlements upon Anne, he avowed an anxiety to be extricated from his offer of money to the duke, ”who might percase, to his miscontentment, employ it by the advice of others, or at least without commodity to the giver.”[606]
In fact, he said, as he had done nothing but what was right, ”if the lady's contentation would not content her friends, it should not be honourable for him, with detriment and waste of his treasure, to labour to satisfy those who without cause misliked his doings, which were just, and without injury to be pa.s.sed over.”[607] Finally, he concluded: ”In case the duke sheweth himself untractable and high-couraged, in such sort as devising interests and respects, he shall further set forth the matter, and increase it with words more largely than reason would he should, alledging, percase, that though the lady is contented, yet he is not contented, her mother is not contented, requiring why and wherefore, and such other behaviour as men in high stomach, forgetting reason, shew and utter, in that case you, the Bishop of Bath, declaring unto the duke how we sent you not thither to render an account of our just proceedings, but friendly to communicate them, you shall desire the duke to license you to depart.”[608]
[Sidenote: Which does not contrast favourably with the conduct of the duke.]
[Sidenote: The duke will not admit that his sister has been honourably treated; but will not pres his quarrel to a rupture.]
The high style of Henry contrasts unfavourably with the more dignified moderation of the answer. The duke wrote himself briefly to the king: he replied through his minister to the amba.s.sador, that ”he was sorry for the the chance, and would well have wished it had been otherwise; yet, seeing it was thus, he would not depart from his amity for his Majesty for any such matter. He could have wished that his sister should return to Germany; but, if she was satisfied to remain, he had confidence that the king would act uprightly towards her, and he would not press it.” Of the offer of money he took little notice or none.[609] The bishop laboured to persuade him to pay respect to the judgment of the Church; this, however, the duke resolutely refused, altogether ignoring it as of no manner of moment; neither would he allow that the Lady Anne had been treated honourably, although the bishop much pressed for the admission.
A cold acquiescence in an affront which he was too weak to resent, and a promise that his private injuries should not cause the dissolution of an alliance which had been useful to the interests of religion, was the most which could be extorted from the Duke of Cleves; and, in calmer moments, Henry could neither have desired nor looked for more. But no one at that crisis was calm in England. The pa.s.sions roused in the strife of convictions which divided rank from rank, which divided families, which divided every earnest man against himself, extended over all subjects which touched the central question. The impulse of the moment a.s.sumed the character of right, and everything was wrong which refused to go along with it.
[Sidenote: The divorce is communicated to Francis,]
Sir Edward Karne made the communication to Francis, prefacing his story with the usual prelude of the succession, and the anxiety of the country that the king should have more children. ”Even at that point” Francis started, expecting that something serious was to follow. When Sir Edward went on to say that ”the examination of the king's marriage was submitted to the clergy,” ”What,” he said, ”the matrimony made with the queen that now is?” Karne a.s.sented. ”Then he fetched a great sigh, and spake no more” till the conclusion, when he answered, ”he could nor would take any other opinion of his Highness but as his loving brother and friend should do;” for the particular matter, ”his Highness's conscience must be judge therein.”[610]
[Sidenote: And to the Emperor.]
[Sidenote: The king had lost Germany and gained the Empire.]
”The Emperor,” wrote the resident Pate, ”when I declared my commission, gave me good air, with one gesture and countenance throughout, saving that suddenly, as I touched the pith of the matter, thereupon he steadfastly cast his eye upon me a pretty while, and then interrupting me, demanded what the causes were of the doubts concerning the marriage with the daughter of Cleves.” Pate was not commissioned to enter into details; and Charles, at the end, contented himself with sending his hearty recommendations, and expressing his confidence that, as the king was wise, so he was sure he would do nothing ”which should not be to the discharge of his conscience and the tranquillity of his realm.”[611] In confidence, a few days later, he avowed a hope that all would now go well in England; the enormities of the past had been due to the pernicious influence of Cromwell; or were ”beside the king's pleasure or knowledge, being a prince,” the Emperor said, ”no less G.o.dly brought up than endued and imbued with so many virtuous qualities as whom all blasts and storms could never alter nor move, but as vice might alter true virtue.”[612] On the whole, the impression left by the affair on the Continent was that Henry ”had lost the hearts of the German princes, but had gained the Emperor instead.”[613] Both the loss and the gain were alike welcome to the English conservatives. The latter, happy in their victory, and now freed from all impediments, had only to follow up their advantage.
[Sidenote: Bill for the moderation of the Six Articles in favour of incontinence.]
[Sidenote: Appointment of a standing committee of religion, with extraordinary powers.]
On the 12th of July the persecuting bill was pa.s.sed, and the t.i.the Bill also, after having been recast by the Commons.[614] On the 16th the Six Articles Bill was moderated, in favour not of heresy, but of the more venial offence of incontinency. Married clergy and incontinent priests by the Six Articles Bill were, on the first offence, to forfeit their benefices; if they persisted they were to be treated as felons. The King's Highness, graciously considering ”that the punishment of death was very sore, and too much extreme,” was contented to relax the penalty into three gradations. For the first offence the punishment was to be forfeiture of all benefices but one; for the second, forfeiture of the one remaining; for the third, imprisonment for life.[615] A few days later the extension given to the prerogative, by the Act of Proclamations, was again shortened by communicating to the clergy a share of the powers which had been granted absolutely to the crown; and the parliament at the same time restored into the hands of the spiritualty the control of religious opinion. The Protestants had s.h.i.+fted their ground from purgatory and ma.s.ses to free-will and justification; and had thus defied the bishops, and left the law behind them. The king's proclamations had failed through general neglect. A committee of religion was now const.i.tuted, composed of the archbishops, bishops, and other learned doctors of divinity; and an act, which pa.s.sed three readings in the House of Lords in a single day, conferred on this body a power to declare absolutely, under the king's sanction, the judgment of the English Church on all questions of theology which might be raised, either at home or on the Continent, and to compel submission to their decrees, under such pains and penalties as they might think proper to impose, limited only by the common law and by the restrictions attached to the Act of Proclamations.[616]
[Sidenote: Bill of attainder against various persons who had conspired to betray Calais,]
[Sidenote: To which are added the names of Barnes, Garret, and Jerome.]
[Sidenote: Declared guilty of heresy.]