Mary Tudor (9 page)

Katherine had not been called to give evidence in the tribunal; she didn’t even know it had taken place. It was not until June 22 that Henry went to her apartments to inform her of his intentions and to demand a formal separation. His conscience troubled him, he said; their marriage was invalid, and he was taking steps to have it annulled by the pope. He failed to mention his infatuation with Anne Boleyn, which was now an open secret. As Katherine began to cry, Henry lost his nerve: “all should be done for the best” he mumbled, and after begging her “to keep secrecy upon what he had told her,” he beat a hasty retreat.
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But behind her tears the queen was “very stiff and obstinate.” She confirmed that Arthur “did never know her carnally” and demanded counsel from both Henry’s subjects and “strangers [foreigners].”
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Wolsey immediately recognized the danger: Katherine was threatening to bring her nephew, the emperor, into the fight. “These were the worst points that could be imagined for the impeaching [preventing] of this matter … that she would resort to the counsel of strangers,” and he “intended to make all the counsel of the world, France except, as a party against it.”
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The queen hurriedly dispatched one of her Spanish servants, Francisco Felipez, to appeal to Charles to intervene. Henry ordered that Felipez be arrested, but the Spaniard eluded capture and reached the emperor at Valladolid at the end of July. Charles reacted quickly. He was shocked “to hear of a case so scandalous” and promised to “do everything in his power on her behalf.” He told his ambassador in England, “We cannot desert the Queen, our good aunt, in her troubles and intend doing all we can in her favour.” But, he added cautiously, “to this end, as the first step towards rendering help, it seems to us that this matter ought to be treated with all possible moderation, having recourse to kind remonstrances alone for the present.”
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Charles wrote to Henry, asking that he halt the proceedings immediately, and to the pope, requesting that he revoke Wolsey’s legateship and recall the case to Rome. He could not believe “that having, as they have, so sweet a princess for their daughter, [the King] would consent to have her or her mother dishonoured, a thing so monstrous of itself and wholly without precedent in ancient or modern history.”
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The fate of the king’s marriage was not a merely personal affair but a public matter of European significance.

THE HUMANIST
Juan Luis Vives, who had left England in May to spend the summer in the Netherlands, returned in late September to find Katherine “troubled and afflicted with this controversy that had arisen about her marriage.” She “began to unfold … her calamity,” weeping over her “destiny, that she should find him, whom she loved far more than herself, so alienated from her that he thought of marrying another; and this affected her with a grief the more intense as her love for him was the more ardent.” She was unable to find out what Henry planned to do next, but the “report and common opinion was … that her cause was remitted to Rome.”

Katherine instructed Vives to go to the emperor’s ambassador, López, and ask the emperor on her behalf “that he would deal with the Pope that she might … be heard before his Holiness decided on her cause.”
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On October 26, López did as Katherine asked. “The divorce is more talked of than ever,” he wrote to his master; “if therefore the Emperor really has the Queen’s honour and peace of mind at heart, orders should be sent to Rome for a trusty messenger to bring us the Pope’s decision.”
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Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio arrived in England on October 9 with orders from the pope to hear the case but to reach no decision.
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He proposed that Katherine take vows of “perpetual chastity” and join a religious community, leaving Henry free to marry again without calling into question Mary’s legitimacy or her claim to the throne. Katherine responded angrily: she would never take the veil as Campeggio had proposed and intended to “live and die in the estate of matrimony, into which God had called her, and that she would always be of that opinion and never change it.” She held her husband’s conscience and honor in “more esteem than anything in this world.” She was, she said, the true and legitimate wife of the king and at the time of their wedding remained “intact and uncorrupted.”
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It was a protest she would make repeatedly for the next seven years.

Katherine would prove as defiantly committed to the legitimacy of her marriage as Henry was to its annulment. “She insists that everything shall be decided by [judicial] sentence,” Campeggio reported.

“Neither the whole kingdom on the one hand, nor any great punishment on the other, although she might be torn limb by limb, should compel her to alter this opinion.”
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AS THEIR MARRIAGE CRUMBLED
and diplomats hurried between England and Rome, the king and queen continued to appear together in public at court. Mary lived as she had before her removal to the Marches, in houses adjacent to her parents, and regularly visiting them at court. With the outbreak of the plague in May 1528, the royal family, Henry, Katherine, and Mary, came together at Wolsey’s house at Tyttenhanger, near St. Albans in Hertfordshire. For the twelve-year-old Mary, it was precious time spent with both her parents. In what is the earliest of her letters known to have survived, she thanked Wolsey for arranging for all of them to be together, telling him “I have been allowed for a month to enjoy, to my supreme delight, the society of the King and Queen my parents.”
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It was but a temporary reprieve. Increasingly Henry would leave Katherine for days at a time to visit Anne. In advance of the Christmas festivities of 1528, Henry “lodged [his mistress] in a very fine lodging, which he has prepared for her close by his own.” And, as Cardinal Jean du Bellay, the French diplomat, remarked, “Greater court … is paid to her everyday than has been to the Queen for a long time.”
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It was the way of things to come. But if Katherine knew all this, she chose to turn a blind eye. Perhaps she hoped that Henry’s affection for Anne would wane. Certainly she took comfort in the fact that, as she confided to Mendoza, Henry continued “to visit her, and they dine and sleep together.”
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ON MAY
31, 1529, the public trial of the king’s marriage was held in the Parliament Chamber of the Dominican Friary of London, Black-friars.
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Both parties were required to answer their summons on Friday, June 18, but though Henry sent proxies, Katherine unexpectedly appeared in person. She entered the chamber accompanied by four bishops and “a great company” of ladies and gentlewomen. Then, “sadly and with great gravity,” she read out a written statement
protesting the cardinal’s jurisdiction to hear the case.
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The court was adjourned to consider her appeal and was reassembled on the Monday morning. Katherine arrived first, followed by Wolsey, Campeggio, and finally the king himself. Henry spoke briefly, asking for a quick decision “to determine the validity or nullity of his marriage, about which he has from the beginning felt a perpetual scruple.” Wolsey spoke next, assuring the court, and in particular Katherine, that the case would be judged fairly. After Campeggio rose to formally reject Katherine’s protestation and reassert the judges’ jurisdiction, the court crier called, “Katherine, queen of England, come into court!”

Once again Katherine rejected the authority of the court and appealed directly to Rome: how could she, a foreigner, expect justice in England? She then turned to Henry. Though her address was public and in the austere setting of Campeggio’s court, her words were intimate and imploring. Why did he now raise these scruples? she asked; “it was not the time to say this after so long silence.”

In the face of Katherine’s personal appeal, Henry was forced to respond. He had, he said, remained silent only because of “the great love he had and has for her”; he desired more than anything else that the marriage should be declared valid. Her appeal to Rome was unreasonable, “considering the Emperor’s power there,” but she had “the choice of prelates and lawyers.” England was “perfectly secure for her,” and that was where the case should be decided.
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Suddenly the queen left her dais, walked across the courtroom, and knelt down at the king’s feet. Twice Henry tried to raise her up, but she continued to kneel. Then, as Campeggio reported, “in the sight of all the court and assembly,” she spoke “in broken English.”

Katherine had turned Henry’s protestations of love against him. How could he, if he was so keen for their marriage to be declared valid, object to her appeal to Rome? Katherine got to her feet, curtsyed to the king, and left the court ignoring calls for her to return.
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On July 31, Campeggio announced that the pope had adjourned the court.
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While Henry immediately began petitioning for the court to be reconvened, Katherine and the Habsburgs urged Pope Clement to return a favorable verdict. And so events proceeded: high politics and diplomacy in London and Rome conducted alongside the personal reality of a marriage unraveling.