On the collapse of the commission it was at once announced that the King would summon a Parliament. For many years Wolsey had governed England as he pleased. The King was now to ta...
Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor--Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor--The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. Butts--The...
The momentous year of 1529 wore out. Parliament rose before Christmas; Peers and Commons dispersed to their homes; and the chief parties in the drama were still undetermined what n...
It was believed at the time--and it was the tradition afterwards--that Wolsey, in his mission to Paris, intended to replace Catherine by a French princess, the more surely to commi...
The great scene in the hall at the Blackfriars when the cause of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon was pleaded before Wolsey and Campeggio is too well known to require further de...
A struggle was now inevitable between the King and the Pope, and the result of it would depend on the sentiments of the English nation. Chapuys and the Nuncio believed the majority...
The marriage with Anne Boleyn was now a fixed idea in Henry's mind. He had become passionately attached to her, though not perhaps she to him. The evidence of his feeling remains i...
Cifuentes had been misinformed when he feared that Francis was again about to interpose in Henry's behalf at Rome. The conference at Calais had broken up without definite results....
The unity of Christendom was not to be broken in pieces without an effort to preserve it. Charles V. was attempting impossibilities in his own dominions, labouring for terms on whi...
Pretenders to supernatural powers usually confine the display of their skill to the presence of friends and believers. The exercise of such powers to silence opponents or to convin...
The story returns to Orvieto. The dispensation was promised on condition that it should not be immediately acted on. Catherine having refused to acquiesce in a private arrangement,...
In the year 1526 the political prospects of England became seriously clouded. A disputed succession had led in the previous century to a desperate civil war. In that year it became...
The question whether the Pope had power to license marriages within the forbidden degrees affected interests immeasurably wider than the domestic difficulties of Henry VIII. Innume...
The mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men who play leading parts on the world's stage gather about them the admiration of friends and the animosity of disappointe...
Human pity is due to the unfortunate Pope--Vicar of Christ, supreme judge in Europe, whose decrees were the inspirations of the Holy Ghost--spinning like a whipped top under the al...
If circumstances can be imagined to justify the use of the dispensing power claimed and exercised by the Papacy, Henry VIII. had been entitled to demand assistance from Clement VII...
The Pope had promised Ortiz that nothing should be said of the intended excommunication till the brief was complete. He betrayed the secret to the English Agents, by whom it was co...
Interview between the Pope and Francis at Marseilles--Proposed compromise--The divorce case to be heard at Cambray--The Emperor consents--Catherine refuses--The story of the Nun of...
Easter at Greenwich--French and Imperial factions at the English court-- Influence of Anne Boleyn--Reports of Anne's conduct submitted to the King--Flying rumours--Secret Commissio...
While the Pope was held back by the Cardinals, and the Great Powers were watching each other, afraid to move, the knot was about to be cut, so far as it affected the fortunes of Ca...
England, to all appearance, was now on the eve of a bloody and desperate war. The conspirators were confident of success; but conspirators associate exclusively with persons of the...
Catherine was buried with some state in Peterborough Cathedral, on the 29th of January. In the ceremonial she was described as the widow of Prince Arthur, not as the Queen of Engla...
Human nature is said to be the same in all ages and countries. Manners, if it be so, signally vary. Among us, when a wife dies, some decent interval is allowed before her successor...
The English Peers are supposed to have been the servile instruments of Henry VIII.'s tyrannies and caprices, to have been ready to divorce or murder a wife, or to execute a bishop,...
Whether Henry, on the exposure of the character of the woman for whom, in the world's union, he had quarrelled with Rome and broken the union of Christendom, would now reverse his...