Part 32 (1/2)

[Footnote 1026: Is this another trace of ”Byzantinism”? It was a regular custom at the Byzantine and other Oriental Courts to have a ”concourse of beauty” for the Emperor's benefit when he wished to choose a wife (_Histoire Generale_, i., 381 n., v., 728); and the story of Theophilus and Theodora is familiar (Finlay, ii., 146-47).]

[Footnote 1027: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 77; Kaulek, p. 80.]

[Footnote 1028: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 1125; XIII., ii., p. x.x.xi.]

[Footnote 1029: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 77.]

While these negotiations for obtaining the hand of a French princess were in progress, Henry set on foot a similar quest in the Netherlands.

Before the end of 1537 he had instructed Hutton, his agent, to report on the ladies of the Regent Mary's Court;[1030] and Hutton replied that Christina of Milan was said to be ”a goodly personage and of excellent beauty”. She was daughter of the deposed King of Denmark and of his wife, Isabella, sister of Charles V.; at the age of thirteen she had been married to the Duke of Milan, but she was now a (p. 371) virgin widow of sixteen, ”very tall and competent of beauty, of favour excellent and very gentle in countenance”.[1031] On 10th March, 1538, Holbein arrived at Brussels for the purpose of painting the lady's portrait, which he finished in a three hours' sitting.[1032]

Christina's fascinations do not seem to have made much impression on Henry; indeed, his taste in feminine beauty cannot be commended. There is no good authority for the alleged reply of the young d.u.c.h.ess herself, that, if she had two heads, she would willingly place one of them at His Majesty's disposal.[1033] Henry had, as yet, beheaded only one of his wives, and even if the precedent had been more firmly established, Christina was too wary and too polite to refer to it in such uncourtly terms. She knew that the disposal of her hand did not rest with herself, and though the Emperor sent powers for the conclusion of the match, neither he nor Henry had any desire to see it concluded. The cementing of his friends.h.i.+p with Francis freed Charles from the need of Henry's goodwill, and impelled the English King to seek elsewhere for means to counter-balance the hostile alliance.

[Footnote 1030: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 1172.]

[Footnote 1031: _L. and P._, XII., ii., Pref. p.

xxviii., No. 1187.]

[Footnote 1032: _Ibid._, XIII., i., 380, 507. The magnificent portrait of Christina belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, and now on loan at the National Gallery, must have been painted by Holbein afterwards.]

[Footnote 1033: It may have crystallised from some such rumour as is reported in _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 141. ”Marry,” says George Constantyne, ”she sayeth that the King's Majesty was in so little s.p.a.ce rid of the Queens that she dare not trust his Council, though she durst trust his Majesty; for her council suspecteth that her great-aunt was poisoned, that the second was innocently put to death, and the third lost for lack of keeping in her childbed.” Constantyne added that he was not sure whether this was Christina's answer or Anne of Cleves'.]

The Emperor and the French King had not been deluded by English (p. 372) intrigues, nor prevented from coming together by Henry's desire to keep them apart. Charles, Francis, and Paul III. met at Nice in June, 1538, and there the Pope negotiated a ten years' truce. Henceforth they were to consider their interests identical, and their amba.s.sadors in England compared notes in order to defeat more effectively Henry's skilful diplomacy.[1034] The moment seemed ripe for the execution of the long-cherished project for a descent upon England. Its King had just added to his long list of offences against the Church by despoiling the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury and burning the bones of the saint. The saint was even said to have been put on his trial in mockery, declared contumacious, and condemned as a traitor.[1035] If the canonised bones of martyrs could be treated thus, who would, for the future, pay respect to the Church or tribute at its shrines? At Rome a party, of which Pole was the most zealous, proclaimed that the real Turk was Henry, and that all Christian princes should unite to sweep him from the face of G.o.d's earth, which his presence had too long defiled. Considering the effect of Christian leagues against the Ottoman, the English Turk was probably not dismayed. But Paul III. and Pole were determined to do their worst. The Pope resolved to publish the bull of deprivation, which had been drawn up in August, 1535, though its execution had hitherto been suspended owing to papal (p. 373) hopes of Henry's amendment and to the request of various princes. Now the bull was to be published in France, in Flanders, in Scotland and in Ireland. Beton was made a cardinal and sent home to exhort James V.

to invade his uncle's kingdom,[1036] while Pole again set out on his travels to promote the conquest of his native land.[1037]

[Footnote 1034: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 232, 277, 914, 915.]

[Footnote 1035: The burning of the bones is stated as a fact in the Papal Bull of December, 1538 (_L.

and P._, XIII., ii., 1087; see Pref., p. xvi., n.); but the doc.u.ments printed in Wilkins's _Concilia_, iii., 835, giving an account of an alleged trial of the body of St. Thomas are forgeries (_L. and P._, XIII., ii., pp. xli., xlii., 49). A precedent might have been found in Pope Stephen VI.'s treatment of his predecessor, Formosus (_Hist. Generale_, i., 536).]

[Footnote 1036: _L. and P._, XIII., ii., 1108-9, 1114-16, 1130, 1135-36.]

[Footnote 1037: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 950, 1110.]

It was on Pole's unfortunate relatives that the effects of the threatened bull were to fall. Besides the Cardinal's treason, there was another motive for proscribing his family. He and his brothers were grandchildren of George, Duke of Clarence; years before, Chapuys had urged Charles V. to put forward Pole as a candidate for the throne; and Henry was as convinced as his father had been that the real way to render his Government secure was to put away all the possible alternatives. Now that he was threatened with deprivation by papal sentence, the need became more urgent than ever. But, while the proscription of the Poles was undoubtedly dictated by political reasons, their conduct enabled Henry to effect it by legal means. There was no doubt of the Cardinal's treason; his brother, Sir Geoffrey, had often taken counsel with Charles's amba.s.sador, and discussed plans for the invasion of England;[1038] and even their mother, the aged Countess of Salisbury, although she had denounced the Cardinal as a traitor and had lamented the fact that she had given him birth, had brought herself within the toils by receiving papal bulls and corresponding with traitors.[1039]

The least guilty of the family appears to have been the Countess's eldest son, Lord Montague;[1040] but he, too, was involved in (p. 374) the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted the scaffold in December.

[Footnote 1038: _Ibid._, vii., 1368; viii., 750.]

[Footnote 1039: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 835, 838, 855.]

[Footnote 1040: He had, however, been sending information to Chapuys as early as 1534 (_L. and P._, vii., 957), when Charles V. was urged to make use of him and of Reginald Pole (_ibid._, vii., 1040; _cf. ibid._, XIII., ii., 702, 830, 954).]

[Footnote 1041: _Ibid._, XIII., pt. ii., _pa.s.sim_.

He attempted to commit suicide (_ibid._, 703).]

With Montague perished his cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, whose descent from Edward IV. was as fatal to him as their descent from Clarence was to the Poles. The Marquis was the White Rose, the next heir to the throne if the line of the Tudors failed. His father, the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re, had been attainted in the reign of Henry VII.; but Henry VIII. had reversed the attainder, had treated the young Earl with kindness, had made him Knight of the Garter and Marquis of Exeter, and had sought in various ways to win his support. But his dynastic position and dislike of Henry's policy drove the Marquis into the ranks of the discontented. He had been put in the Tower, in 1531, on suspicion of treason; after his release he listened to the hysterics of Elizabeth Barton, intrigued with Chapuys, and corresponded with Reginald Pole;[1042] and in Cornwall, in 1538, men conspired to make him King.[1043] Less evidence than this would have (p. 375) convinced a jury of peers in Tudor times of the expediency of Exeter's death; and, on the 9th of December, his head paid the price of his royal descent.

[Footnote 1042: _Ibid._, v., 416; vi., 1419, 1464.]

[Footnote 1043: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 802, 961.]