Had the Queen Lived: Read online

  Dissatisfied, the lawyers did as their King commanded them and before departing threatened to break all ties with Rome if Henry did not achieve satisfaction, a threat the Pope did not take at all seriously. After all, no King had ever broken ranks with the Church and he did not expect that to happen now. The lawyers would not see satisfaction as they prepared to head back to England. Little did they realize that Henry’s rage against the Church was only growing.

  When the Pope finally did take action, he sent Cardinal Campeggio as the papal legate in his stead to review the case and decide the matter. The Cardinal, however, was on strict papal orders not to come to any final judgment and to use any means necessary to disrupt the King’s plans to terminate his marriage. These tactics worked for seven long years. Henry’s strong faith had made him reticent to rush toward a break from Rome. Henry saw himself as being tested, just as he had read, had so often happened to great men and kings in the Bible. Meanwhile, Anne was growing ever more impatient that she was now in her late twenties and still was not married; she even threatened to leave the King if he could not give her satisfaction. The pair quarreled over this issue intensely, with most of these arguments leaving the King begging Anne not to leave him and swearing that it would just be a matter of time before they would marry.

  At this stage, Wolsey still knew little of Anne’s status as more than a possible mistress, and indeed, as Henry’s true love; he was only concerned with how to bring the divorce proceedings about, with Rome stalling. Wolsey was deeply conflicted by the King’s demand. Either decision he could make would cost him dearly. Although he was the senior-most official of state, he was also a Cardinal and served as the Papal representative in England. A great portion of his personal wealth, which had allowed him to afford to build lavish palaces, came from this office. Wolsey knew that by supporting the divorce he would be planting enemies about him who sought to replace him. Also, since the Catholic Church did not believe in divorce, he would be viewed as a hypocrite to his own followers.

  Wolsey was in an impossible situation. If he chose not to support the divorce and fight against it, he risked angering the King and losing his titles, offices, wealth, power, or worse. If he were to support and achieve the divorce he would alienate the very source of his power, his seniority in the Church, and neutralize the reason for his elevation to the Chancellorship in the first place. During his time serving Henry, he had made many enemies in the Privy Council who would love nothing more than to seek his downfall. Should he support and arrange this divorce, Wolsey feared they would do exactly that. He also doubted the King’s protection against his enemies’ attempts if the divorce did not come around as quickly as Henry desired.

  Queen Katherine had always regarded Wolsey as her bitter enemy. The Queen saw in Wolsey a corrupt man of the cloth with a mistress, two bastard children, and wealth rivaling, perhaps even surpassing, that of the King. She held him liable for the many unfortunate deaths of otherwise innocent political rivals, and for the ruin of anyone who threatened his position. While Wolsey certainly carried out matters concerning the Queen much more severely than even Henry had originally intended, he was nevertheless carrying out the King’s orders. Katherine further blamed him for his complicity in the elevation of Henry’s bastard child by her former lady-in-waiting, and thus for threatening Princess Mary’s rightful claim to the throne. He also was responsible for sending the Princess away from her mother to be raised by Governesses and servants, and for reading her private correspondence with her family in Spain; because of Wolsey’s tactics the Queen would only be able to visit her daughter once a year to assess her progress.

  The final act came when Wolsey had arranged the Blackfriars Trial in 1529 to investigate the Queen’s claim of virginity with her former husband, Prince Arthur. The trial was Wolsey’s plan to remove Katherine from the throne by force, which the King vigorously embraced. Henry had tried in private, by gentler and kinder means, to convince Katherine to renounce her throne and go into a nunnery; such attempts were to no avail. He even promised to take care of her financially in any palace of her choosing the rest of her life; again, Katherine denied him. When the trial idea came up Wolsey convinced Henry it could work and he jumped at the chance to be rid of her once and for all. The King expected the outcome to be a foregone conclusion, but he would be sadly mistaken. The trial consisted of a legatine court authorized by the Pope and conducted in the Dominican Friary of the Parliament Chamber in London. Cardinal Campeggio represented His Holiness the Pope, who was not in attendance.

  If it could be proven that Katherine had lied about her virginity and had, indeed, consummated her marriage with then-Prince Arthur, the marriage would be annulled, the Lady Mary would be declared a bastard, and the King would be left free to remarry. Confident in his case, the King opened the proceedings, presenting a passionate opening argument for his cause. He spoke highly of Katherine and their time together, and how much he detested why things had come to a trial, but concluded by advising the court to make no mistake this marriage was never legal and should not have been judged thus. It is said he found the very inability of Katherine to produce a living male heir as proof that God Himself condemned the marriage. His argument was said to be so moving that few in the court believed Katherine could be innocent.

  The Queen was represented by Bishop John Fisher as her counsel. One of the main legal arguments that Katherine’s defense had made at Blackfriars had been to appeal to Rome to pronounce a final verdict on the matter. This outraged Henry; by appealing to Rome this argument made the King also subject to the Vatican. With Anne’s encouragement, Henry began designs towards winning a separation. At the conclusion of the first few days of the trial, Anne persuaded him to deny the application to appeal to Rome and played on his own fears of vulnerability, that he would be made a subject to Rome if he allowed Katherine’s request to go through.

  All appeared to be going well for the King until Katherine made a dramatic move. In a final, desperate act to win back her husband and retain her crown, Katherine dropped to her knees at Henry’s feet, before the entire court, and begged him to be merciful and consider that she was still a maid when she married him; she beseeched him to consider the truth of the matter before God, and let her keep her honor. The dramatic gesture stunned the court, and was followed by the Queen’s immediate departure, never to return.

  While he would succeed in shedding himself of his wife and Queen, Henry was humiliated; her uncharacteristic act of defiance had taken place not in private, which was to be expected, but in open court. Further, the crowd had rallied to the Queen’s side, much to Henry’s chagrin and highlighting to him even further the conflicted position of a King who seeks to rule in his lands, but is yet subservient to the judgments of churchmen.

  Despite Katherine’s dramatic testimony, Wolsey would not be placated, he continued on, even after Katherine’s departure. He miraculously found servants who attended Prince Arthur the night of his wedding and testified to the consummation of the marriage. These witnesses claimed that the Queen was inaccurate in her statements to the court and that Arthur had himself bragged to having taken her. To this day, the truth of the matter rests with Prince Arthur and Queen Katherine; however, the show trial was enough for Henry to feel validated in his cause.

  Unfortunately, the trial did not produce the outcome the King so desired and that Wolsey so desperately needed. The court, based solely on Cardinal Campeggio’s orders, decided to delay proceedings yet again, until the Pope himself could answer the arguments made in the record. Wolsey and Campeggio were the principal deciders on the panel and when Campeggio failed to yield the appropriate verdict, Wolsey knew he was finished. Perhaps this was the final strain on the once strong bond of trust and loyalty between Henry and his minister. It was also exactly the ammunition the Boleyns needed if they were to successfully bring down the Cardinal. Wolsey had been untouchable until now. With this single act of a broken promise, his
enemies, including Boleyn, could take him down with little trouble. As for Katherine, she never changed her story.

  In 1531 Queen Katherine was ordered to leave court and head to a rundown palace called the More, because Henry was planning finally to wed Anne. Two years later, Katherine was moved to Kimbolton Castle. The castle had been known for its draftiness and was in a severe state of disrepair, but, most importantly, it was secluded. It was vital to Henry and Anne that Katherine be kept as far away from court as possible; to diminish any hope her supporters might have for her re-instatement. Another harsh condition set upon Katherine was that she was not allowed to see or write to her daughter, the Lady Mary. Her position was also downgraded to the Dowager Princess instead of allowing to call herself Queen and was officially forbidden by Henry to do so; a move she intentionally denied. While she was allowed at rare times to have visitors, she chose to keep to her rigid schedule of church masses instead. She had been deathly ill for quite some time from cancer of the heart, another ailment that was not medically understood at the time. Anne had taken her place in all but name and was moved into the palace, staying in the Queen’s former chambers; causing great scandal at court. Yet still, Anne did not relent, and refused to give Henry her maidenhead.

  1.3 Schism

  During the preparation for the trial, Anne and her faction privately built a substantial case against Wolsey, claiming corruption, fraud, and theft against his majesty. The faction consisted of her father Thomas, her brother George, her Uncle Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, and their sometime adversary Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, who was Henry’s closest friend. Privately, Brandon disliked the Boleyns, but he absolutely hated Wolsey for his hold over the King, and joined forces with the Boleyns to bring him down. Brandon also needed to regain Henry’s favor after having illegally married the King’s sister, Mary Tudor, in May 1515, without first seeking the King’s permission. In return for Brandon’s participation in the scheme, Norfolk promised to bring Brandon back to court and into Henry’s good graces.

  If this group was to be successful in its venture it needed nothing short of absolute and irrefutable proof that Wolsey was falsely serving two Masters and thus failing the King. They played on Henry’s ego and Anne provided him books from allegedly heretical authors such as William Fish, who examined matters of church and state and argued that Kings should be the ultimate authority in their kingdom, answerable only to God and not to Rome. Anne also let the King know that Wolsey intentionally banned these books to keep them from him, fearful that the King would take his rightful power, thereby inflaming Henry further.

  The King absorbed these words like a sponge. They fueled his desire, beyond his initial wishes merely for a divorce, to instead want to be fully his own master and take absolute power. After all, was he not the King of England? Why need he beg from Rome permission to conduct the affairs of state within his kingdom? As these questions began racing in his head, Henry prepared for the most radical move thus far in his reign. The people too were calling for Reformation against the corruption and abuses of the clergy. Monasteries throughout the whole of the realm were wealthy and the splendor of some rivaled even the estates of the highest ranks of the nobility.

  The strict control over interpretation of liturgy was held in tight control by the Church. To be able to attend mass and hear the service only in Latin, the people had to trust in the accuracy of what their Priests were interpreting for them. This only fed into a system wherein the clergy must pay to obtain training on how to read and understand Latin to relay it to lay people, and then pay the church in order to give the lessons. Payments to the church were endless and everywhere. Luther’s theses presented a direct and uncompromising challenge to the Church about the extent of the Church’s power. Ironically enough, while Luther’s manifesto did not specifically engage the issue of translating the Bible into the vernacular, once the Reformation was underway, this became a central tenet of change. Other theological scholars in England, principally William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer, Thomas Cranmer and John Fish, adapted Luther’s call for reform with the utmost passion, although such reformers were still called heretics and prosecuted by Cardinal Wolsey.

  Among the most prominent of the reformers was William Tyndale, a highly educated theological scholar, born in the early 1490s, who received a Bachelor and Master Degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, respectively. He was ordained by the Catholic Church as a priest in the early 1520s and devoted his career to continuous academic study. To support himself, he tutored several pupils on a variety of subjects. His greatest passion, however, was his translation work. It was this work that inspired his lifetime commitment towards spreading education.

  Tyndale yearned for the broadest collective understanding of the New Testament by everyone. It came as no surprise to either the state or the people that the Church strongly resisted this translation. Tyndale’s excitement to bring the people God’s true word in terms they could understand led him to join a movement that would rock the church to its foundations. He devoted himself to translating the Bible from Latin into English in the mid-1520s, but he was also an accomplished author of books focusing on the abuses of the Church and enforcing its interpretation of God’s truth according to what he deemed anti-Christian practices. Upon hearing news of his works, Cardinal Wolsey sought Tyndale’s arrest.

  Disappointed but undeterred, Tyndale fled to Germany upon his release, seeking refuge to practice his writing and develop his ideas in a safe environment. In 1525, his first published work, a partial English translation of the New Testament, was printed in Cologne; unfortunately, it was pulled from the press before the complete version could be finished. Despite Prussia’s Fredrick I warmly embracing reformist ideas, there were still a large number of Catholic followers throughout German lands and when the church was notified of the printing of Tyndale’s book the work was immediately pulled. Those who carried, transported or possessed Tyndale’s translation, much less read it, were placing themselves at grave risk of arrest for heresy.

  Meanwhile, back in England, the timing of events and placement of allies could not have been arranged more perfectly to aid the anti-Wolsey faction in their maneuverings. The official works against Wolsey were gathered into a volume and given to Henry in July 1529, just before he was to retire for a summer progress with Anne, where she could no doubt seek to influence him further against Wolsey. Anne’s father was elevated to a title and a new position, as Lord Rochford and Comptroller of the King’s Household. This great honor would leave him in a unique position to uncover financial corruption and lay the blame directly at Wolsey’s feet. Evidence was presented to accuse Wolsey of having robbed his master blind for years, with the money being diverted to causes the Cardinal supported, including the building of Universities and his lavish palaces.

  The evidence of these alleged crimes was presented to the King; it was shortly thereafter that the King stripped him of all of his appointments, with the exception of the Archbishopric of York, which continued to bring him lucrative annual payments. Wolsey was formally charged with treason by right of praemunire, an offense in which an official of the government usurps the power of the state by consulting with and acting upon advice from a foreign agent. Wolsey was near sixty years old when he was arrested in 1529 and taken to the Tower of London to await trial. En route to the prison in November 1530 he collapsed and died of unknown causes. His famous last words were “If I had served my God as diligently as I served the King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”

  With Wolsey removed and his former clerk Thomas Cromwell now acting as the King’s new minister except in name, that went to Thomas More; Anne grew ever more impatient with the divorce proceedings. Henry acted swiftly and decisively to consolidate his own authority. He delivered on his previous threat to the Pope and in 1529 ordered his council and advisers to draft up documents breaking away from the bonds of servitude to the Catholic Church in Rome. By February 1
531, the final documents, edited several times, were finally ready for Henry’s signature. That same month he presented his doctrine to the clergy. Although not a single member voted in favor of making the King Head of a new Church of England, the silence of the clerics, ironically under the canon law precept of qui tacet consentire videtur (“he who is silent, is assumed to consent”), was used to validate the law. The King had claimed leadership of the church in England, the clergy said nothing, and so he had broken the Catholic establishment by default. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who had been the first to suggest that the King’s Great Matter was a theological one and not a legal one, was chosen by the King and confirmed by the Vatican in a vain attempt to appease the King. With the Church broken and Henry’s first marriage annulled, English history had forever changed.

  1.4 A Coronation

  On September 1st, 1532, Henry made Anne the first female Marquess of Pembroke, in her own right, with the title passing down to her heirs. Promoting Anne to this new rank of nobility made her worthy of presenting to European Kings as his new wife, which he did several months later. Anne had accompanied him as Queen in all but name. As a result of spending the majority of her life being raised in the service of the Queen of France, it was only fitting when Henry in the winter of 1532 took Anne back to Calais, the site of their first meeting at the summit with the French in 1520. With her new nobility, despite descending from the merchant class, and with his divorce complete and free to marry, Henry formally introduced Anne Boleyn to King Francis I as his fiancé and the future Queen of England. It was during this trip in the winter of 1532, a visit that was years in the making, that Anne finally yielded her virginity to her king.