LITMIR.BIZ

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small matters, sitting in the villages often in twos and threes. Bigger matters such as roads and bridges and sheep stealing came before quarter sessions in the appropriate town. It was a rough justice that the country gentlemen meted out, and friendship and faction often cut across the interests of both the nation and the Crown. If in the main they carried the directions of the Crown to the people, the Justices could also on occasion, by turning a deaf ear to official advice, express popular resistance to the royal will. What they did in the counties they could also sometimes do in the House of Commons. Even as Tudor rule advanced towards its climax the faithful Members of Parliament were not afraid to speak their minds. Wolsey saw the dangers of the situation and preferred to work out his policy without the unappreciative counsel of Parliament. Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell learned to handle the Commons with discretion, though even then resistance was not unknown. But in spite of occasional friction, and even riot and rebellion in the countryside, it was on the whole a working partnership. Crown and community alike recognised what the partnership had achieved and what it had to offer.

      Within a few years of his accession Henry embarked upon a programme of naval expansion, while Wolsey concerned himself with diplomatic manœuvre. Henry had already constructed the largest warship of the age, the Great Harry, of 1,500 tons, with “seven tiers one above the other, and an incredible array of guns”. The fleet was built up under the personal care of the sovereign, who ordered the admiral to send word to him in minute detail “how every ship did sail”, and was not content until England commanded the Narrow Seas. Wolsey’s arrangements for the foreign service were hardly less remarkable. A system of couriers and correspondents was organised over Western Europe, through whom news was received in England as quickly as during the wars of Marlborough or Wellington. The diplomatic service which Henry VII had organised with such care was used as a nucleus, supplemented by the ablest products of the New Learning at Oxford, including Richard Pace, John Clerk, and Richard Sampson, the last two destined to become bishops later in the reign. The dispatches of this period, at the height of the Renaissance, are as closely knit and coloured as any in history; each event, the size of armies, rebellions in Italian cities, movements within the College of Cardinals, taxes in France, is carefully weighed and recorded. For some years at least Wolsey was a powerful factor and balancing weight in Europe.

      The zenith of this brilliant period was reached at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, when Henry crossed the Channel to meet his rival, Francis I of France, for the first time. Henry’s main perplexity was, we are told, about his appearance; he could not decide how he would look best, in his beard as usual or clean-shaven. At first he yielded to Catherine’s persuasion and shaved. But directly he had done so he regretted the step and grew the beard again. It reached its full luxuriance in time to create a great impression in France. At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Guîsnes, the jousting and feasting, the colour and glitter, the tents and trappings, dazzled all Europe. It was the last display of medieval chivalry. Many noblemen, it was said, carried on their shoulders their mills, their forests, and their meadows. But Henry and Francis failed to become personal friends. Henry, indeed, was already negotiating with Francis’s enemy, the new Emperor Charles V, who had lately succeeded his grandfather, Maximilian. At Guîsnes he attempted to outdo Francis both by the splendour of his equipment and the cunning of his diplomacy. Relying on his great physical strength, he suddenly challenged Francis to a wrestling match. Francis seized him in a lightning grip and put him on the ground. Henry went white with passion, but was held back. Although the ceremonies continued Henry could not forgive such a personal humiliation. He was, in any case, still seeking friends elsewhere. Within a month he had concluded an alliance with the Emperor, thus forfeiting the French tribute. When the Emperor declared war on Francis English wealth was squandered feverishly on an expedition to Boulogne and subsidies to mercenary contingents serving with the Emperor. Wolsey had to find the money. When Kent and the Eastern Counties rose against a species of capital levy imposed by Wolsey in the second year of war, and absurdly misnamed the “Amicable Grant”, the King pretended he did not know of the taxation. The Government had to beat a retreat, the campaign was abandoned, and Wolsey got the King’s consent to make secret overtures for peace to Francis.

      These overtures were Wolsey’s fatal miscalculation; only six weeks later the Imperial armies won an overwhelming victory over the French at Pavia, in Northern Italy. After the battle the entire peninsula passed into the hands of the Emperor. Italy was destined to remain largely under Habsburg domination until the invasions of Napoleon. But although Francis himself was taken prisoner and crushing terms of peace were imposed on France, England did not share in the spoils of victory. Henry could no longer turn the scales in Europe. The blame was clearly Wolsey’s, and the King decided that perhaps the Cardinal had been given too free a hand. He insisted on visiting the great new college which Wolsey was building at Oxford, Cardinal College, destined to become Christ Church, the largest and most richly endowed in the university. When he arrived he was astonished at the vast sums which were being lavished upon the masonry. “It is strange”, he remarked to the Cardinal, “that you have found so much money to spend upon your college and yet could not find enough to finish my war.”

      Up till now he had been inseparable from Wolsey. In 1521 he had sent to the scaffold the Duke of Buckingham, son of Richard III’s Buckingham, and close in line of succession to the throne. His crime had been leading the opposition of the displaced nobility to the King’s chosen Chancellor. But after Pavia Henry began to have second thoughts. Perhaps, he decided, Wolsey would have to be sacrificed to preserve the popularity of the monarch. Then there was Queen Catherine. In 1525 she was aged forty. At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, five years before, King Francis had mocked at her behind the scenes with his courtiers, saying she was already “old and deformed”. A typical Spanish princess, she had matured and aged rapidly; it was clear that she would bear Henry no male heir. Either the King’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, now aged six, would have to be appointed by Act of Parliament, or perhaps England might accept Catherine’s child, Mary, now aged nine, as the first Queen of England in her own right since Matilda. It was still doubtful if a woman could succeed to the throne by English law. Would England tolerate being ruled by a woman? Might Mary not turn out very like her Spanish mother, narrow and bigoted, a possible queen perhaps in Spain, or France, or Austria, countries full of soldiers, but not acceptable to the free English, who had obeyed Henry VII and Henry VIII because they wished to obey, and although there was no central army except the Beef-eaters in the Tower? Would Mary be able to rule in the Tudor manner, by favour and not by force?

      The long clash of the Wars of the Roses had been a nightmare to the nation which a disputed succession might revive. To the monarch these great questions of State were also questions of conscience, in which his sensual passions and his care for the stability of the realm were all fused together. They perplexed Henry for two more years. The first step, clearly, was to get rid of Catherine. In May 1527 Cardinal Wolsey, acting as Papal Legate and with the collusion of the King, held a secret ecclesiastical court at his house in Westminster. He summoned Henry to appear before him, charged with having married his deceased brother’s wife within the degrees of affinity prohibited by the laws of the Church. Henry’s authority had been a Bull of dispensation obtained by Ferdinand and Henry VII in 1503, which said in effect that since the marriage between Catherine and Arthur had not been consummated Catherine was not legally Henry’s deceased brother’s wife and Henry could marry Catherine. Although Catherine, on the advice of successive Spanish ambassadors, maintained to her dying day that her marriage with Arthur had not been consummated nobody was convinced. She had lived under the same roof with Prince Arthur for seven months.  After hearing legal argument for three days the court decided that the point should be submitted to a number of the most learned bishops in England. Several bishops replied however that provided Papal dispensation had been secured such a marriage was perfectly lawful. Henry then tried to persuade Catherine herself that he and she had never been legally married, that they had lived in mortal sin for eighteen years. He added that as he intended to abstain from her company in future he hoped she would retire far from Court. Catherine burst into tears and firmly refused to go away.

      About a fortnight later Wolsey crossed the Channel to conduct prolonged negotiations for a treaty of alliance with France. While Wolsey was away Henry became openly infatuated with Anne Boleyn. Since she had returned from school in France Anne had grown into a vivacious, witty woman of twenty-four, very slender

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