CHAP III 112 HENRY VIII. DESCRIBED BY A FOREIGNER "His Majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on: above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face, so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick."2 Four years later a similar account is given, which goes more into detail, and speaks of his habits as well as his person, as they appeared to an observant foreigner : "His Majesty is twenty-nine years old, and extremely handsome. Nature could not have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the King of France; very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that Francis I. wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and as it is reddish, he has now got a beard that looks like gold. He is very accomplished; a good musician, composes well; is a most capital horseman; a fine jouster; speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious; hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He hears the office every day in the Queen's chamber, that is to say, vesper and compline. He is very fond of hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of country he means to take; and when one is tired he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture."3 2 Giustiniani's Despatches, i. 86. 3 Ibid., ii. 312. From the same source we have a vivid description of the King's dress at a "solemn reception," which will help the reader to fill up the picture of Henry's appearance at about the age of thirty:-"His bodyguard consisted of 300 halberdiers with silver breastplates, who 'were all as big as giants.' He wore a cap of crimson velvet in the French fashion, and the brim was looped up all round with lacets and gold enamelled tags. His doublet was in the Swiss fashion, striped alternately with white and crimson satin; and his hose were scarlet, III A man of this kind would find little satisfaction in CHAP the society of an invalid wife, whose charms had been ripened early under a southern sky, and had faded early under the trial of adverse circumstances and a northern climate. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the shades of her great trouble already beginning to come over her, to deepen more and more until they were lost in the deeper shadow of death itself. When, in what manner, and by whose suggestion, the idea of a divorce from Catherine first presented itself to the King has been the subject of much controversy; but no writer has brought forward any evidence to show that it was entertained earlier than the beginning of 1527. doubts of The coming event casts forward its shadow at first in the shape of revived doubts respecting the legality Revived of Henry's marriage with his brother's widow. That the legality such doubts had at one time been strongly felt is of Cathe evident. The Archbishop of Canterbury had only riage given up his opposition in deference to the dispensation issued by the Pope and in his evidence and all slashed from the knee up- This H of cloth of gold, which covered a Among the instructions sent to "In hac deinde re secreta insunt nonnulla, secreto Sanctissimo Domino nostro exponenda, et non credenda literis, quas ob causas, morbosque nonnullos, quibus absque remedio Regina laborat, et ob aními etiam conceptum scrupulum, Regia Majestas nec potest, nec vult ullo unquam posthac tempore, ea uti, vel ut Uxorem admittere, quodcunque evenerit."-Burnet, iv. 55, Pocock's Ed. rine's mar III 114 FRENCH ENVOY ON ILLEGALITY OF MARRIAGE CHAP before the legates he speaks of popular discontent, "the murmurings of the people," which was only A.D. 1526 quieted by the same deference to what was thought a sufficient sanction and authority. And although the protest of Henry himself indicates nothing so far as he himself was concerned, it shows that his politic father considered the legality of the proposed marriage extremely doubtful, even after it had received the Papal license. But after the marriage had taken place we hear nothing further of these doubts respecting its lawfulness for about eighteen years. At the end of the year 1526° negotiations were in progress with reference to a contemplated marriage between the Princess Mary and one of the two sons of the King of France." Princess The Bishop of Tarbês (afterwards Cardinal GramMary's illegitimacy mont) was the envoy to whom these negotiations suggested were entrusted; and he raised an objection against it that the Pope had exceeded his powers in granting a dispensation for the marriage of Henry to Catherine, for that such an union was forbidden by the law of God, not only by the law of the Church; and that, therefore, the marriage was not in fact valid, nor the Princess Mary a lawful daughter of the King. Such diplomatic doubts rather suggested nullity of marriage than divorce; and the latter is said to have been proposed to the King originally by his confessor, Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, who did so at the bidding of Cardinal Wolsey. But this story, although it was adopted by Lord Herbert and 5 Herbert's Hen. VIII., 271. 7 The Dauphin was first talked of, and then his younger brother. Mary had been espoused to the Emperor Charles V. when an infant, and ended by marrying his son. III Bishop Burnet, arose out of the prejudices which CHAP were entertained by so many against Wolsey in his later years, and has no other foundation. It was distinctly contradicted by the King, and by Bishop Longland: the fact being that divorce was first Divorce mentioned to both Wolsey and Longland by the tioned by King himself, whose account of the matter is given the King by Cavendish as it was spoken in his hearing before the two legates : first men dence on ject 'Sir,' said Wolsey, 'I most humbly require your Highness Contemto declare before all this audience, whether I have been the porary evi. chief and first mover of this matter unto your Majesty, or no; the subfor I am greatly suspected of all men herein.' 'My Lord Cardinal,' quoth the King, 'I can well excuse you in this matter. Marry (quoth he), ye have been rather against me in the attempting hereof than a setter forth, or a mover of the same. The special cause that moved me unto this matter was, a certain scrupulosity that pricked my conscience, upon certain words spoken at a time by the Bishop of Bayon, the French ambassador, who had been hither sent upon the debating of a marriage to be concluded between the Princess, our daughter, the Lady Mary, and the Duke of Orleans, second son to the King of France. And upon the consultation and determination of the same, he desired respite to advertise the King his master thereof, whether our daughter Mary should be legitimate, in respect of this my marriage with this woman, being sometimes my brother's wife. Which words, once conceived in the secret bottom of my conscience, engendered such a scrupulous doubt, that my conscience was incontinently 8 A Life of Sir Thomas More, written shortly after Longland's death, contains the following passage:—“I have heard Dr. Draycot, that was his [Longland's] chaplain and chancellor, say, that he once told the Bishop what rumour ran; and desired to know of him the very truth. Who answered, that in very deed he did not break the matter after that sort as is said; III CHAP accumbred, vexed, and disquieted; whereby I thought myself to be in great danger of God's indignation; which appeared to me, as me seemed, the rather for that he sent us no issue male; and all such issues male, as my said wife had by me, died incontinent after they came into the world; so that I doubted the great displeasure of God in that behalf. Thus my conscience being tossed in the waves of scrupulous doubts, and partly in despair to have any other issue than I had already by this Lady now my wife, it behoved me further to consider the state of this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of a Prince to succeed me. I thought it good, therefore, in release of the weighty burden of my weak conscience, and also the quiet state of this worthy realm, to attempt the law therein, whether I may lawfully take another wife more lawfull, without spot of carnal concupiscence, by whom God may send me more issue, in case this my first copulation was not good and not for any displeasure or misliking of the Queen's person and age, with whom I could be as well contented to continue, if our marriage may stand with the laws of God, as with any woman alive.' : As Henry had no object to serve by throwing a responsibility on Wolsey which the latter wished to disclaim, we may conclude that this evidence is clear as far as the Cardinal is concerned, and that the idea of a divorce from Catherine did not originate with him. As to its origination in conscientious scruples on the part of the King, the world has always been very incredulous on account of the circumstances connected with his second marriage. The general Contem- opinion of the time, and of subsequent ages also, was nion on the expressed by Shakespeare, and that at a time when it would have been extremely dangerous to express such an opinion if it had not represented that of society at large :1_ porary opi subject 9 Wordsworth's Ecc. Biog., i. 426. seems to have thought that the less said about her mother the better. |
