Free Anne Boleyn: A Novel by Evelyn Anthony

By the time he returned, Anne would probably be out of favor; she had lasted a year already.
    There was no secrecy about his mission to France, because the whole issue of what was now known as the King’s Secret Matter had leaked out after the first deceitful move he and Henry had made to have the marriage annulled in England. He had been surprised by Henry’s sudden impatience to get the sentence of divorce pronounced, but he tried to meet the King’s wishes with a proposal of typical cunning.
    Wolsey and Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, held a secret court at Westminster Palace and charged the King with marrying his brother’s widow and living in incest for eighteen years. Counsel for Henry was appointed to offer a faint plea against the indictment, while Catherine was neither told of the proceedings nor represented. After three sessions, Wolsey advised that a question should be put to the English bishops: was it lawful to marry a brother’s widow? There could be only one answer and the self-appointed court could use the opinion of the hierarchy as the instrument of annulment without reference to the Pope.
    It was the easiest way and the quickest, and the Pope, harried by war and invasion from the forces of the Emperor Charles V, would be glad to acknowledge it.
    But the Cardinal, so long accustomed to humoring the King himself, had misjudged the bishops of his Church. Their answer was simple and disastrous. Such a marriage was valid if granted Papal dispensation. Their reply went further, instigated no doubt by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a godly, outspoken man whom Wolsey had always disliked. Under any circumstances, the Queen had the right to appeal directly to the Pope against any decision annulling her marriage.
    The court at Westminster never sat again, but its failure had the effect of hardening Henry against his unhappy wife, where success might well have made him merciful.
    So much was at stake, as Wolsey pointed out; not only the condition of his soul, which was blackened with sin, but the plan for a French alliance against the Emperor must be cemented by Henry’s marriage to the French Princess, and every time the King risked his limbs jousting and hunting, he left his kingdom at the mercy of civil war with only an eleven-year-old girl as his successor. The time for tact was past.
    Henry agreed so readily Wolsey was surprised. He decided he’d nursed the Queen’s feelings long enough and ordered the Cardinal to proceed openly against her. News of the impending divorce burst like a thunderbolt over the country.
    In his first rage and disappointment, Henry went to his wife, informed her that he considered himself living in incest, and asked her to leave the court. The brutality of the action should have warned her. A more timid woman might have been driven to exile and confessing what Wolsey and the King wanted, but Catherine only cried wretchedly, refusing to admit anything unlawful. With great dignity she also refused to leave her husband unless he drove her out. The angry storm between them passed, but the Cardinal made his preparations to go to France. A new contingency had arisen, and Wolsey seized on it to turn the circumstances to his purpose. The Emperor’s troops had invaded Rome and sacked it with appalling ferocity; they had captured the Pope and shut him up in the imperial Castle of St. Angelo.
    Christendom was leaderless, and Wolsey issued a summons to the remaining Cardinals to meet at Avignon and assume the Papal authority. At the same time he promised Henry that one of the first actions of the commission would be to annul his marriage. He urged him to avoid the Queen and publicly lament his conscience because the opinion of the bishops was also the opinion of the people. Catherine was kind and her charity had made her loved; even at court she had no enemies, since the powerful lords had nothing to gain by her dismissal. Their power depended upon the weakness of the Crown, and a new Queen