Mary Tudor by Linda Porter

were soon to prove that whether he did or did not was largely irrelevant. Henry had also failed to appreciate the impact of continued instability in continental Europe. On 6 May 1527, before Wolsey’s court was even assembled, a mutinous and unpaid imperial army attacked Rome, pillaging and murdering in a manner reminiscent of barbarian hordes.The pope became the prisoner of the emperor. Charles V was a good Catholic and rather embarrassed by the orgy of looting and rape carried out by troops in his employ, but he did not much care for Italian popes. Now he had one under his control. In England his aunt, though no doubt suitably shocked by what had happened to the Holy City, knew that she had been given a breathing space and an opportunity to challenge her husband. Wolsey, meanwhile, could turn the information coming from Europe to his own advantage, since it seems likely that, privately, he was never fully persuaded of the arguments that the king wanted him to make. On the last day of May he pronounced that he could not proceed to judgement and referred matters to a learned group of churchmen and lawyers. Henry’s straightforward annulment was stopped in its tracks.
    Katherine would have fought, in any case, but her opposition would have been muffled and far less effective. Excluded from the first steps to have her marriage annulled, she was not officially informed of Henry’s intentions until 22 June. The confrontation was painful, apparently for both of them. Henry confirmed his wife’s worst fears when he told her ‘they had been in mortal sin all the years they had lived together’. His conscience could abide it no longer. They must separate. He asked her to give thought to where she might like to retire. He must have hoped that she would see the futility of opposition, presenting his case with a terse finality that signified that he would not change his mind. He was her sovereign, and she must obey him. He could hardly have expected her to obey him as his wife, since he had just informed her that she was no such thing. Did he seriously believe that she would meekly disappear from the scene or that she would not challenge his arguments? Despite the strength of his personal beliefs, Henry’s interpretation of what the book of Leviticus had to say about marrying his brother’s widow was selective. Childlessness was the biblical penalty for a sinful union and Mary was clearly proof that, while the marriage had not been blessed with sons, it had produced one healthy offspring.
    Katherine burst into tears on hearing her husband’s intentions, though she had known for a while that he was contemplating putting her aside.The realisation that he had already chosen a replacement may have been more of a shock, though of course Henry was careful not to mention Anne Boleyn to Katherine, but it was hard to keep such things secret in court circles. The queen’s distress alarmed Henry and he attempted to console her, assuring her that it would all turn out for the best. Probably they both knew it would not. The queen denied vehemently, as she was to do at every future stage of proceedings, that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. It was so long ago that there was only the evidence of a few men who had been Arthur’s companions in Wales, and their memories were inconclusive, though they remembered the young prince’s boasts about his prowess and what a pleasant thing it was to have a wife. Only Katherine herself knew the truth. Modern writers have tended to take the view that she could have been lying, that it was a convenient blank in her memory of a sad interlude in her life. Might she have overcome her powerful religious convictions and compromised with her conscience in this way? Perhaps. But surely equally significant in trying to judge her veracity is the fact that she never conceived by Arthur, whereas she became pregnant shortly after marrying Henry.
    At this stage, there is no record that Katherine mentioned