[28] 'Henricum non amplius esse regem.'—Sanders, p. 74.
[29] Cranmer, _Letters and Remains_, p. 252.
[31] Cranmer, _Letters and Remains_, p. 274.
[34] Hall, p. 814. Burnet, p. 280 (edit. 1816.)
[35] The Roman catholic historian Lingard acknowledges the deception.
CHAPTER II. HENRY VIII. SEPARATES ENGLAND FROM THE PAPACY. (CHRISTMAS 1533 TO JUNE 1534.)
The maid of Kent having been executed, her partisans rallied round another woman, who represented the Romish system in its highest features, as Elizabeth Barton had represented it in its more vulgar phase. After the nun came the queen.
Catherine had always claimed the honors due to the Queen of England, and her attendants yielded them to her. 'We made oath to her as queen,' they said, 'and the king cannot discharge our consciences.' Whenever Lord Mountjoy, royal commissioner to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, called her '_princess_,' she raised her head haughtily and said to him: 'You shall answer for this before God.'[36] 'Ah!' exclaimed Mountjoy, fretted by the vexations of his office, 'I would a thousand times rather serve the king in the most dangerous cause!' Mary having also received an injunction to drop her title of princess, made answer: 'I shall believe no such order, unless I see his Majesty's signature.' The most notable partisans of Roman catholicism, and even the ambassador of Charles V., paid the queen frequent visits. Henry became uneasy, and shortly before Christmas 1533 he took measures to remove her from her friends. Catherine opposed everything. Suffolk wrote to the king: 'I have never seen such an obstinate woman.' But there was a man quite as obstinate, and that was Henry.
His most cherished desires had not been satisfied: he had no son. Should he chance to die, he would leave two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth; the former supported by the partisans of the old times, the latter by those of the new. Civil war would probably decide to whom the crown should belong. It was necessary to prevent such a misfortune. The Lords and Commons, therefore, petitioned the king, no doubt at his instigation, that his marriage with Lady Catherine should be declared null, and her child illegitimate; that his marriage with Queen Anne should be recognized as valid, and the children issuing from it alone entitled to succeed. All classes of people immediately took the statutory oath; even the monks bowed their heads. They said: 'Bound to render to our king Henry VIII. and to him alone after Jesus Christ,[37] fidelity and worship, we promise inviolable obedience to our said lord as well as to our most serene Queen Anne, his wife, and to their children; and we profess perpetual respect for the holy and chaste marriage which they have legitimately contracted.'[38] This forced testimony, borne to Anne by the monastic orders, is one of the numerous monuments of the despotism of Henry VIII. and of the moral weakness of the monks.