Six Wives (53 page)

    Historians, if they have noticed this incident at all, have rather played it down. In fact, it was a watershed. Hitherto, whatever Anne may have thought about Wolsey in private, her public dealings with him had been correct, even warm. Now she had broken with him with deliberate, public ostentation. It can only have been because she had decided that his initiatives in Rome were doomed to failure.

    In taking this line, Anne was opposing her judgement to Henry's. For the King, formally at least, was giving his full backing to his minister. Who would be proved right: the mistress or the minister? And where would that leave Henry?

* * *

Wolsey, of course, also understood the risks of his game. And, he quickly decided, a reluctant envoy like Knight was worse than useless. So Knight was countermanded and, in his place, it was decided to send the young Turk, Stephen Gardiner. The decision was extraordinarily sudden, so much so that Gardiner had not time even to say farewell to his closest friend in Wolsey's household, Thomas Arundel. Instead, he sent him a touching letter. 'Though I depart from you in body', Gardiner wrote, 'I depart not in mind and soul, which . . . shall be ever where you be during my life, wheresoever this body shall fortune to wander.'
¹³

    It was a rare flash of sentiment in a man who would show none in his public life.

    This aggression was one reason for Wolsey's choice of Gardiner; the other was – Wolsey thought – Gardiner's proven loyalty to himself. But Gardiner showed himself free of sentiment in this area too. Wolsey, he decided, had launched his career, but only Anne could take it to the summit. So, shortly after his arrival in Italy, he wrote to Anne, protesting his 'willing and faithful mind' to do her 'pleasure'. Anne replied promptly, thanking him for his offer and accepting it enthusiastically: 'not doubting, but as much as possible for man's wit to imagine, you will do'. But then she added a note of caution. 'I do trust in God', she wrote, 'that the end of this journey shall be more pleasant to me than your first. For that was but a rejoicing hope, which causing the like of it, doth put me to more pain.' 'Therefore I do trust', she concluded, 'that this hard beginning shall make a better ending'.
¹⁴

    It was done tactfully. But equally there is no doubt that, from Anne's point of view, Gardiner was on probation. His last mission to the Pope had failed; this one had better succeed.

* * *

Gardiner joined Bryan and Vannes at Rome in early February. They found a Papal Court in turmoil. Clement was dangerously ill and there were even rumours that he was dead. The rumours turned out to be exaggerated. But his convalescence was long and slow. It was also a perfect excuse to put off even seeing the English envoys, much less addressing their business.

    But, as they were fobbed off from day to day, they came at the truth by other means: as Knight had reported two months earlier, the political climate in Rome had turned decisively against the English. There was now, they became sure, no chance that Henry would get what he wanted.

    The position was clear to them by mid-February. Gardiner wrote to Henry in guarded terms; Bryan in much blunter ones. For some reason, these particular letters were delayed and did not reach Wolsey till 19 March. Early the following morning Wolsey sent Brian Tuke, the Master of the Posts, to Greenwich to deliver the letters in person and report on Henry's reactions.

    As it happened, the moment was ill-chosen. Henry had sprained his foot the day before and it was 11 o'clock before it was dressed and he had breakfasted. Tuke was ushered in as soon as he had finished and presented the letters. Their contents were not calculated to improve the King's mood. Gardiner's letter to Henry, Tuke reported, was written 'with as much or more desperation, than that was to your Grace'. Still worse was Bryan's letter, which was 'totally of desperation'. The King shared only the odd paragraph with Tuke, but these gave the flavour of the whole. Bryan 'could not believe that the Pope would do anything for his Grace', adding the characteristic Bryan-ism that: 'It might well be in his Pater Noster (Our Father), but it was nothing in his Creed'. Worst of all for Wolsey, Tuke spotted that there was another letter enclosed with the one to Henry. It was 'directed I wot [know] not to whom, but I suppose to Mistress Anne'.
¹⁵

    The minister's monopoly of information was broken and the ambassadors had opened up separate channels of communication – not only to the King but to the King's mistress.

    Henry gathered up his miserable morning's mail and kept it for consideration. It was now Palm Sunday Eve and the beginning of Holy Week. The King and Cardinal spent Easter separately, Henry at Greenwich and Wolsey at Richmond. And they did not meet till the following Saturday, 3 April, when Wolsey visited the Court with his colleague Campeggio.

    During their audience, Henry and Campeggio had a conversation about the most recent sensation: the circulation of a Lutheran pamphlet at Court during Holy Week itself. Henry teased Campeggio by repeating the pamphlet's arguments for the confiscation of Church property and Campeggio did his best to reply. Finally the King called a halt to their argument and assured him that he 'always would remain a good Christian'.
¹⁶

    It is impossible to be sure of what was going on. But it looks like a struggle for the King's mind. Anne, for it must be she, had despaired of a solution at Rome and was pressing for more extreme measures, including probably those outlined in the Lutheran pamphlet. Wolsey, on the other hand, was doggedly sticking to his existing policy. Let Henry's ambassadors only push hard once more and Clement would – must – concede what he wanted.

Wolsey, for the moment, won.

    His victory was embodied in the separate letters which Henry and Wolsey sent to the English ambassadors in Rome on 6 April. Both had the same message: the ambassadors were not to despair but to act! But the tone of the letters was different. Wolsey's had the icy calm of barely suppressed hysteria. Nothing, he insisted, must stand in their way and they must press the Great Matter on the Pope
etiam in ipso articulo mortis
– 'even in his very death throes'. Henry's, however, breathed the confidence of superior and particular knowledge. No credence, the King stated flatly, was to be given to 'common report'. Such were mere vulgar rumours, like the stories about Campeggio's Imperialism. Here Henry went out on a limb. 'We find and certainly know Campeggio to be of a far other sort in his love and inclination towards us than was spoken, not having such affection towards the Emperor, as in him was suspected.' Then he became confidential, tipping his ambassadors the wink. 'And to be plain with you,' he continued, 'if ever he had been of other mind, we have said somewhat to him as might soon change that intention.' Had Henry applied the stick of a threatened schism from Rome? Or the carrot of the promise of the bishopric of Durham? Or both? In any case, his confidence in his kingly cunning was supreme. He was riding high, and, as it turned out, for a fall.
¹⁷

    The letters were given to the courier Alexander, who made excellent time, arriving in Rome only a fortnight later on 21 April.

    As it happened, Bryan had settled down to write another personal report to Henry that day. 'Sir', he had begun, 'your Grace hath sent me hither to the intent I should instruct you, from time to time, of all your affairs here, as I could know, see or hear.' For those who knew Bryan, as Henry did, it was an ominous beginning.

    And it got worse.

    They had seen the Pope several times, Bryan told Henry, and they had reported the entirely negative results in their joint letters to Wolsey, 'whereby ye [Henry] may perceive that plainly [the Pope] will do nothing for your Grace'. 'There is no man living', Bryan added, 'more sorrier to write this news to you, than I am. But if I should not write this, I should not do my duty. I would to God my former letters might have been lies, but I feared ever this end.'

    As Bryan was concluding the despatch, the courier arrived with the letters from England. Bryan broke off to read them and added a postscript:

It was as near as even Bryan dared to get to saying 'I told you so' to Henry.

    But there was someone else, Bryan knew, who would have no such inhibitions. 'Sir', he had written in the body of the letter, 'I write a letter to my cousin Anne. But I dare not write to her the truth of this because I do not know whether your Grace will be contented that she should know so shortly or no.' Instead, Bryan threw the responsibility of breaking the news on Henry himself: 'I have', he added innocently, 'said to her in my letter that I am sure your Grace will make her privy to all the news'.
¹⁸

    How willingly Henry undertook the task and how Anne responded we can only guess.

* * *

    In view of 'this ingratitude in the Pope's holiness', Wolsey informed the English ambassadors, Henry had decided to abandon the attempt to get cast-iron guarantees from Rome. Instead, 'taking as much as may be had and attained here to the benefit of his cause', he would proceed 'in the decision of the same here, by virtue of the Commission already granted unto me and my lord Legate Campeggio'. Gardiner and Bryan were to return in post to England, since Gardiner's expertise, in particular, was wanted in the forthcoming trial.

    This option, to go it alone in England, had been open to Henry as long ago as December 1527, when Knight had obtained the first Commission. In the subsequent eighteen months, Henry, advised solely by Wolsey, had laboured mightily at Rome. He had squandered money and diplomatic credit. And he had nothing to show for it. Indeed, his position was actually worse. Had he decided to go ahead in early 1528 on the basis of Knight's Commission, he would have had a favourable military and diplomatic wind behind him. By 1529, however, Catherine's nephew, Charles V was master of Italy. The Pope was about to proclaim himself Imperial, and, Henry's ambassadors informed him from Spain, was on the point of revoking the case to Rome.

    All this, the King could bitterly reflect, was the reward for listening to his minister rather than his mistress.

    But Henry and Wolsey had not yet plumbed the depths. On 5 May, Bryan wrote to Henry to inform him of their final audience with the Pope. The meeting had been an acrimonious one and high words had been uttered on both sides. One of the issues had been Campeggio's supposed promises to Henry. The English had thrown his assurances at the Pope. The Pope had countered with Campeggio's own letters, in which 'he hath written . . . that he, neither Francisco Campana, never promised nothing to your Grace particularly but in general words'.

    Bryan, of course, was fully aware of the effect of his revelations. 'If my writing', he told Henry, 'sound anything against the Cardinal . . . [or] other, who feels himself grieved, let him kick; for I do it not of no malice, but according to my duty, to inform your Grace.'
²⁰

    But, whatever Bryan's motives, the effect was the same. Henry had been revealed as gullible – to his own servant Bryan, and, still worse, to Anne, whose fears about Campeggio's being Imperial he had so loftily dismissed the previous autumn.

* * *

Events were now running hard against Wolsey. On 14 May the Wolsey loyalist Sir John Russell had been countermanded as ambassador to France at the last moment. His horses had already been embarked at Sandwich and he himself was on the point of boarding when the new orders arrived. In Russell's place, Henry sent Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Brandon was even closer to him than Bryan and the consequences were to be even more electric.
²¹

    The day before, Du Bellay, freshly back from France, whence he had ridden with most unclerical speed and bravado, had had an audience with Wolsey in which he invited him to the forthcoming peace conference at Cambrai between Francis I's mother, Louise of Savoy, and Charles V's aunt, the Archduchess Margaret. Wolsey, recognising immediately the risk to England of a merely bi-lateral agreement between France and Spain, was desperate to attend. But Henry, whom Du Bellay saw twentyfour hours later on the 14th, refused to give him permission to go. Du Bellay, as he explained to Montmorency, could not write Henry's reasons 'at present, having no cipher'. But, almost certainly, Henry felt that he needed Wolsey at home to handle the Divorce. Indeed, his minister's willingness to rush off abroad at such a moment must have seemed like desertion, even betrayal. Such, at any rate, was Du Bellay's retrospective reading of events. 'What has most served to put him in discredit with the King', he wrote later to Montmorency, 'was that, at my coming, he declared too openly his wish to go to Cambrai.'
²²

    It is true that Wolsey's attitude to the peace conference did not help. But Wolsey's ruin was from a different quarter. On the night of 17 May the courier Alexander reached Windsor with Bryan's letters from Rome. The following morning Wolsey, who had been peremptorily summoned to Court by Henry, commanded Campana and Campeggio's Secretary to Windsor. They arrived at sunset and found Wolsey at table. He had been with Henry all day and was exhausted. So they were put off till 9 the following morning. They turned up at the appointed hour and greeted Wolsey as he emerged from his chamber. Wolsey, normally so voluble, said nothing but took the visitors to the King, introduced them and then left it to Henry to interrogate them.