The King's Secret Matter

by Jean Plaidy

‘Bah!’ cried the King. ‘She has embraced that for several months. I tell you this: I have not shared her bed all that time. Nor would I ever do so again.’

  ‘Unless of course,’ murmured Campeggio rather slyly, ‘His Holiness declared the marriage to be a true one.’

  The King’s anger caught him off his guard. ‘Never! Never! Never!’ he cried.

  Campeggio smiled faintly. ‘I see that an angel descending from Heaven could not persuade you to do what you have made up your mind not to do. My next duty is to see the Queen.’

  Katharine received the two Cardinals in her apartments where Campeggio opened the interview by telling her that he came to advise her to enter a convent. Wolsey, watching her closely, saw the stubborn line of her mouth and knew that she would not give way without a struggle.

  ‘I have no intention of going into a convent,’ she told him.

  ‘Your Grace, this may be a sacrifice which is asked of you, but through it you would settle a matter which gives great distress to many people.’

  ‘Distress?’ she said significantly. ‘To whom does it bring greater distress than to me?’

  ‘Do you remember what happened in the case of Louis XII? His wife retired to a convent and so made him free to marry again.’

  ‘I do not intend to follow the example of others. Each case is different. For myself I say that I am the King’s wife, and none shall say that I am not.’

  ‘Does Your Grace understand that unless you comply with this request there must be a case which will be tried in a court?’ Wolsey asked.

  She turned to Wolsey. ‘Yes, my lord Cardinal, I understand.’

  ‘If you would take our advice . . .’ began Wolsey.

  ‘Take your advice, my lord? I have always deplored your voluptuous way of life, and I know full well that when you hate you are as a scorpion. You hate my nephew because he did not make you Pope. And because I am his aunt you have turned your venom on me, and I know that it is your malice which has kindled this fire. Do you think I would take advice from you?’

  Wolsey turned to Campeggio and his expression said: You see that we have a hysterical woman with whom to deal.

  ‘Your Grace,’ interposed Campeggio, ‘I would tell you that, if you allow this case to be tried in the light of day, it may well go against you, in which event your good name would suffer grievous damage.’

  ‘I should rejoice if this case were brought into the light of day,’ replied Katharine, ‘for I have no fear of the truth.’

  Campeggio’s hope of an easy settlement of this matter was fast evaporating. The King was determined to separate from the Queen; and the Queen, in her way, was as stubborn as the King.

  He still did not abandon hope of forcing her into a convent. If he could get her to admit that her marriage with Arthur had been consummated, he believed he could persuade her to go into a convent. He had summed up her character. She was a pious woman and would never lie in the confessional even though, for her daughter’s sake, she might do so outside it.

  He said: ‘Would Your Grace consider confessing to me?’

  She did not hesitate for a moment. ‘I should be happy to do so.’

  Campeggio turned to Wolsey who said immediately: ‘I will take my leave.’

  He went back with all haste to the King to tell him what had taken place at the interview; and Campeggio and Katharine went into the Queen’s private chamber that she might confess to him.

  When she knelt the Legate from Rome asked the fatal question: ‘Your Grace was married to Prince Arthur for some six months, from November until April; did you never during that time share a bed with the Prince?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Katharine, ‘I did.’

  ‘On how many occasions?’

  ‘We slept together only seven nights during those six months.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Campeggio, ‘and would you tell me that not once during those seven nights . . .’

  Katharine interrupted: ‘Always he left me as he found me – a virgin.’

  ‘And this you swear in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost?’

  ‘This I swear,’ said Katharine emphatically.

  He sighed, knowing that she spoke the truth; the gout was beginning to nag and he longed for the peace of a dark room. He could see that this case was not going to be settled without a great deal of trouble; nothing, he decided, must be settled quickly. The situation in Europe was fluid. It would go ill with him and the Holy Father if they granted Henry his wish and then found that the whole of Christendom was in the hands of the Emperor.

  Henry was furious when he learned of Katharine’s determination not to go into a convent.

  He summoned Wolsey, and the Chancellor came apprehensively, wondering in what mood he would find the King. He was not kept long in doubt. Henry was striding up and down his apartment, his little eyes seeming almost to disappear in the folds of puffy flesh; an unhealthy tinge of purple showed in his cheeks.

  ‘So the Queen will not go into a convent!’ he roared. ‘She does this out of perversity. What difference could it make to her? As for your gouty companion, I like him not. I think the pair of you put your heads together and plot how best you can cheat me of my rights.’

  ‘Your Grace!’

  ‘Ay!’ said the King. ‘Cardinals! They fancy they serve the Pope.’ His eyes narrowed still further. ‘They shall discover that the Pope has no power to protect them from the wrath of a King!’

  ‘Your Grace, I admit to sharing your disappointment in Campeggio. He seems to delight in delay. I have reasoned with him. I have told him of your Grace’s wishes. I have reminded him that when the Holy Father was in distress he came to you, and how out of your benevolence . . .’

  ‘ ’Tis so,’ interrupted the King. ‘I sent him money. And what good did it do? You advised it, Master Wolsey. You said: ‘We will help him now and later he will help us. Whom do you serve – your King or your Pope?’

  ‘With all my heart and soul, with all the powers that God has given me, I serve my King.’

  The King softened slightly. ‘Then what are we to do, Thomas? What are we to do? How much longer must I go on in this sorry state?’

  ‘When the case is heard, Your Grace, we shall have the decision of the court . . .’

  ‘Presided over by that man . . . he has his orders from Clement, and I may not like those orders.’

  ‘Your Grace, you have your own Chancellor to fight for you.’

  ‘Ah, Thomas, if they had but let you try this case as I so wished!’

  ‘Your Grace would have been free of his encumbrances ere now.’

  ‘I know it. I know it. But this waiting galls me. There are times when I think I am surrounded by enemies who plot against me.’

  ‘Clement is uncertain at this time, Your Grace. I hear that he is not enjoying good health. The Sack of Rome and his imprisonment have shocked him deeply. It may be that he will not be long for this world.’

  Henry looked at his Chancellor and suddenly he burst out laughing.

  ‘Ha!’ he cried. ‘If we had an English Pope there would not be all this trouble for the King of England; that’s what you’re thinking, eh Thomas?’

  ‘An English Pope would never forget that he owed his good fortune to an English King.’

  Henry clapped his hand on Wolsey’s shoulder.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ll pray that Clement may see the light or . . . fail to see aught else. He’s shaking in his shoes, that Holy Father of ours. He fears to offend Charles and he fears to offend me, so he sends his gouty old advocate and says: “Do nothing . . . promise nothing . . . wait!” By God and all His saints, I cannot think how I endure him and his master’s policy.’

  ‘We shall win our case, Your Grace. Have no fear of it. Remember that your Chancellor will sit with Campeggio, and while he is there Your Grace has the best advocate he could possibly procure.’

  ‘We shall find means of winning our case,’ said Henry darkly. ‘But it grieves me that the
Queen should have so little regard for the fitness of this matter as to refuse our request. Why should she refuse to go into a convent! What difference could it make to her?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘There are times when I wonder if she does this to spite me; and if she is so determined to do me harm, how can we know where such plans would stop? I have my enemies. It might be that they work against me in secret. If the Queen were involved with them in some plot against me . . .’

  Henry fell silent. He could not continue even before his Chancellor; and to Wolsey his words and the secretive manner in which he said them were like a cold breeze on a hot summer’s day. The climate of the King’s favour was growing very uncertain.

  Wolsey could not have much hope for the Queen’s future peace if she did not comply with the King’s desires. Perhaps she was unwise. Perhaps life in a convent, however abhorrent it seemed to her, would be preferable to what her life would be were she to arouse the full fury of the King’s displeasure.

  Since the Queen refused to enter a convent, Campeggio realised that there would have to be a court case; and as this was so it was impossible to deny Katharine the advisers who would be granted to any defendant in such circumstances.

  Accordingly William Warham and John Fisher, Archbishops of Canterbury and Rochester respectively, were appointed her leading counsel; the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall and Henry Standish, Bishop of St Asaph’s, joined them with John Clerk, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. It was arranged that as the Queen was a foreigner she should not rely entirely on Englishmen for her defence, and Luis Vives and one of her confessors, Jorge de Athequa, were appointed with two Flemings. The Flemings and Vives were abroad, and it seemed unlikely that they would be of much use to her; and she was shrewd enough to know that, with the exception of John Fisher, those who had been chosen to support her cause would be in great fear of offending the King.

  Preparations for the hearing were going forward and Campeggio looked on with some misgivings. His great plan was to postpone the hearing on any pretext whatsoever, as he dreaded being forced to give a judgment while the affairs of Europe were so unsettled. His gout provided him with a good excuse, and there were whole days when he shut himself in a darkened room while the servants assured all callers that he was too ill to see them.

  One day when Katharine was with her chaplain, Thomas Abell, the priest said to her: ‘Your Grace, the Imperial ambassador desires urgent speech with you, and he wishes to come before you disguised as a priest as he is fearful that, if he comes undisguised, that which he has to say to you will be overheard.’

  Katharine was torn between her anger that she could not receive her nephew’s ambassador without fear of being overheard, and apprehension as to what new schemes were afoot.

  She looked at Thomas Abell, and wondered how far she could trust him. He had not been long in her service but she could say that during that time he had served her well. She decided that she had such need of friends that she must accept friendship when it was offered, without looking too suspiciously at it.

  ‘He has asked my assistance in this matter,’ went on Thomas Abell, ‘and being eager to serve Your Grace I told him I would do what I could.’

  ‘Then bring him to me in my chapel,’ she said. ‘I will speak to him there.’

  So it was that Iñigo de Mendoza came to her robed as a priest, a hood concealing his features, and as, there in the chapel, he knelt beside her, she realised at once that he was deeply excited.

  ‘Your Grace,’ he said, ‘the best of news! Do you remember a de Puebla who once served your father here in England?’

  ‘I remember him well,’ Katharine answered. ‘He is long since dead.’

  ‘But his son who is now a chaplain lives, and he has found an important document among his father’s papers.’

  ‘What document is this?’

  ‘It is a brief of the same date as the Bull of Dispensation granted by Julius II, but this goes more deeply into the matter, and if we could lay our hands on the original – which is among the archives in Madrid – we could show without doubt that your marriage with the King is legal.’

  ‘You have this?’

  ‘I have the copy of it which de Puebla has given me. I propose to put it into the hands of your defending counsel.’

  ‘Then pray do this,’ said the Queen.

  ‘I trust none of them save Fisher and I am afraid that, as this case is being heard in England, there will be scarcely a man here who would stand against the wishes of the King. What we must work for is to have the case tried in Rome. Then we could hope for justice. At least we have this document, which I have brought to you. Your best plan would be to give it to Fisher. Tell him that it is but a copy and that the original is in Spain. I think we shall see some consternation among our enemies.’

  Katharine took the document and studied it. She was immediately aware of its importance and her spirits rose as Mendoza took his leave and left her in the chapel.

  The King, pacing up and down his apartment, stopped to glare at his Chancellor.

  ‘It seems that everyone conspires against me! When is this hearing to take place? When am I to be granted my divorce? With others, these matters are settled in a matter of weeks. With me they must last for years. And why? Because those who should serve me, bestir themselves not at all.’

  The Cardinal’s thoughts were miles away . . . in Rome. Heartening news had been brought to him a few days before. Clement had suffered a great shock, his health was declining, and it was believed that he could not recover.

  Let this be granted to me, prayed the Cardinal. Here is the way out of danger, the path which will lead me to new power. My day is over in England. I am going down . . . down . . . The King grows tired of his Thomas Wolsey who once so pleased him, since Anne Boleyn pours poison into his ear. My great mistake was when I made an enemy of that woman. She will not believe that it was at the King’s command that I berated her, that I told her she was not worthy to marry into the House of Northumberland. But she blames me; and she has determined to destroy me.

  Once it might have been said: Thomas Wolsey’s will is the King’s will. That was no longer so, but it was true to say that that which Anne Boleyn desired, the King desired also, for at this time his one wish was to please her.

  The woman was a witch. None other could so completely have bemused the King.

  So he must become the new Pope. He prayed at every possible moment of the day, and often during sleepless nights, for this mercy. But he was not the man to trust to prayer. He had climbed high, he had often said to himself, through the actions of Thomas Wolsey rather than of God. Now Thomas Wolsey must continue to fight. He had asked François for his help, and François had promised to give it. But would the French King prove as unreliable as the Emperor? Wolsey had sent Gardiner to Rome with a list of Cardinals and bags of gold. No expense was to be spared, no bribe was to be considered too much. He would spend all he had to win at the next Conclave, because this time he knew he was not only fighting for power; he was fighting for his life.

  So his thoughts wandered during the King’s tirade, and fervently he hoped that soon he would be free of the unpredictable moods of the King of England.

  But the King’s next words were so startling that Wolsey’s thoughts were diverted from his hopes of the next Conclave.

  ‘This brief that is in the Queen’s hands. We must get it. Warham tells me that it is worked out in such detail that it gives no shadow of a doubt that the marriage is a true one.’

  ‘This . . . brief?’ murmured Wolsey.

  The King was too excited to show his impatience. ‘Warham has brought this news. He says that through de Puebla’s son this document has reached the Queen. It is enough to win the case for her.’

  Wolsey was alert. He had to remember that the Papal Crown was not yet his; Clement was not even dead; he must not lose his grip on the power he possessed in England. He must show himself as eager as he ever was to work for the King.

  He asked
a few searching questions and then he said: ‘But, Your Grace, this is not the original document. It is only a copy.’

  ‘But the original document is in Spain.’

  ‘First,’ went on the Chancellor, ‘we shall declare our belief that the paper which the Queen holds will be considered a forgery unless she produces the original. Therefore she must write immediately to the Emperor imploring him to forward the original to her here.’

  ‘And when it comes . . . if indeed it be as the copy?’

  ‘It will come to her counsel,’ said Wolsey with a smile. ‘We shall not have any difficulty in laying our hands on it when it is in England.’

  Henry smiled slyly.

  ‘And,’ went on Wolsey, ‘when it is in our possession . . .’ He lifted his hands in a significant gesture. ‘But, Your Grace will see that we must get that brief, and our first step is to persuade the Queen to write to her nephew, urging him to send the document to her.’

  ‘I shall order her to do this without delay,’ said the King.

  ‘Your Grace,’ Wolsey began tentatively and hesitated.

  ‘Yes, yes?’ said the King impatiently.

  ‘It would be well if the Queen wrote on the advice of her counsel. Allow me to send for Warham and Tunstall. They will not hesitate to obey Your Grace.’

  Henry nodded and his eyes were affectionate once more. By God, he thought, this man Wolsey has much skill. Then he frowned. He greatly wished that Anne did not dislike the Chancellor so. He had told her that Wolsey was working for them, but she would not believe it. He was her enemy, she said, whose great desire was to marry the King to a French Princess, and now that he knew the King would have none other than Anne Boleyn he sought to delay the divorce with all the means in his power.

  There were times when Henry agreed with Anne; but when he was alone with his Chancellor he was sure she was wrong. He did wish that there was not this hatred between two for whom he had such regard.

  ‘Do that,’ he commanded.

  ‘We must watch Fisher,’ said Wolsey. ‘There is a man whom I do not trust to serve Your Grace.’