So Campeggio and Wolsey visited the queen who, after much reflection, rejected the idea. ‘I intend,’ she told them, ‘to live and die in the state of matrimony, to which God has called me. I will always remain of this opinion, and will never change it.’ Her dignity and self-possession, in the face of intolerable pressure, were remarkable. In this impasse Rome repeated its instructions that nothing should be said or done ‘without a new and express commission from this place’.
The threat to Katherine took a more definite form. It was alleged in the king’s council that a plot, to poison the king and the cardinal, had been discovered; a letter was sent to her on the subject ‘in which if she had any hand, she must not expect to be spared’. It was a crude attempt to subdue her, but it did not succeed. The council also complained that ‘she showed herself much abroad, and by civilities, and by gracious bowing her head, which had not been her custom formerly, did study to work upon the people’. But the crowds of London were already supporting her. Wolsey ordered a search to be made for hackbuts and crossbows, the material of insurrection. The situation had reached a point of crisis, not at all helped by the sudden discovery of what became known as ‘the Spanish brief’; this was another papal dispensation, permitting the marriage of Katherine and Henry.
As the weeks of autumn and winter passed without any progress, Anne Boleyn and Henry became increasingly angry and impatient. The king was besotted by her; he lodged her in the palace at Greenwich and lavished jewels and other presents on her. ‘He sees nothing,’ Campeggio told Rome, ‘he thinks of nothing but Anne.’ In their irritation and anxiety they turned their fire upon the cardinal. In turn Wolsey berated Campeggio with the threat that, if nothing were done, such a storm would burst that ‘it were better to die than to live’. One of the king’s envoys, Stephen Gardiner, knelt before the pope. ‘You who should be as simple as doves,’ he said in a remarkable act of impropriety, ‘are full of all deceits, and craft, and dissembling.’ The pope had informed Henry that he could not act without hearing the arguments of both sides, and in the spring of 1529 Sir Francis Bryan, a cousin of Anne Boleyn, wrote from Rome that ‘who so ever hath made your grace believe that he would do for you in this cause hath not, I think, done your grace the best service’. He was clearly alluding to the cardinal. Wolsey himself was saying to his confidential servants that he would pursue the matter as far as he could, and then retire voluntarily in order to devote himself to spiritual affairs. He knew well enough, in any case, that his end might be approaching.
On the last day of May 1529, the legatine court under the direction of Wolsey and Campeggio was convened in the parliament chamber at Blackfriars; the king and queen were staying at the palace of Bridewell, close by, and crossed a wooden bridge over the Fleet river to attend the court. They were both summoned to appear on Friday 18 June, but two days before that date Katherine asked to meet the archbishop of Canterbury and eight bishops; she protested against the whole notion of a trial and told them that she wished to refer the matter to Rome. This would ensure an endless process of debate and questioning. She also delivered a formal protest to the two cardinals at Blackfriars, declaring that they were incompetent judges.
On the day appointed the king and queen came to the legatine court, where Henry took his seat under a cloth of state. Campeggio then delivered an oration on the ‘intolerable’ matter of ‘adultery, or rather incest’ that they must now adjudicate.
‘King Harry of England, come into the court!’
‘Here,’ he replied.
‘Katherine queen of England, come into the court!’
She rose without replying and, leaving her small circle of advisers and lawyers, she went over to the king; she knelt at his feet and spoke to him so that all could hear her. ‘I am a poor woman, and a stranger in your dominions, where I cannot expect good counsel or indifferent judges. I have been long your wife, and I desire to know wherein I have offended you.’ She then pleaded her virginity when she met him, and the fact that she had borne him several children (only one of which, of course, had lived). ‘If I have done anything amiss, I am willing to be put away in shame.’ She spoke a little more, saying that no lawyer in England would, or could, speak freely for her. ‘I desire to be excused until I hear from Spain.’ With that she rose, and made a low curtsy to the king before leaving the court. The cardinals called after her but she made no answer.
The king then spoke to those assembled, stating that she had always been a true and obedient wife. Wolsey rose and denied the reports that he had been the first mover in the matter of the divorce. The king vindicated him and declared that his own scruples of conscience had prompted him. If his marriage were found to be lawful, he would be happy to continue living with the queen. Few in the court believed him.
In succeeding days a number of witnesses were called, the principal among them testifying that Katherine and Prince Arthur had consummated the marriage after their wedding. On leaving the bedroom on the following morning, Arthur had been heard to say that ‘I have been in Spain all night’. One of Katherine’s supporters, John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester, protested against ‘things detestable to be heard’; Wolsey rebuked him and sharp words were exchanged between them.
Charles V sent an envoy to Rome, saying that a verdict against his aunt would be a great dishonour to his family. He insisted that the matter be ‘avocated’ or recalled to Rome, where a more fair investigation would be held; he had also given an undertaking that the pope’s immediate family would be established as the rulers of Florence. An agent for Wolsey, Dr Bennet, threw himself at the feet of the pope and declared, in tears, that then ‘the king and kingdom of England will be certainly lost’. It was unthinkable that his master would appear at a Roman court as a suppliant. Pope Clement wept, and begged for death. On 9 July he called the English ambassadors and told them that the hearing had been recalled to Rome. ‘I am between the hammer and forge,’ he said. ‘It is impossible to refuse what the emperor now demands, whose forces so surround me.’
Meanwhile Campeggio had been drawing out the process of judgment with a series of delays and procedural questions. By Friday 23 July, it seemed that the end was in sight. But on that day Campeggio adjourned the proceedings until October, on the pretence that he must follow the Roman system of justice. He hoped that a favourable verdict might then be announced. The duke of Suffolk was among those who loudly announced their discontent. ‘By the Mass,’ he said, ‘I see now the truth of what is commonly said, that never cardinal yet did good in England!’ A few days later the letter from the pope, declaring that the court had been recalled to Rome, arrived for the king. The failure of the legatine court to deliver a favourable verdict to Henry was the decisive moment in Wolsey’s career. It is clear enough that he was no longer conducting the affairs of the realm; his last warrant for a royal payment was signed on 18 July, and his last letter to any English envoys was sent on 27 July. He had not yet been dismissed, but the shadow had fallen upon him. Anne Boleyn wrote to him an angry letter, in which she accused him of secretly supporting Katherine’s cause; she now relied only on heaven and the king ‘to set right again those plans which you have broken and spoiled’. One of the attendants at a royal banquet heard a conversation between Anne and the king which he later reported to the cardinal’s usher. ‘There is never a nobleman within this realm,’ she said, ‘that if he had done but half so much as he has done, but he were well worthy to lose his head.’