hing with Catherine. She was
as immovable as Henry, and deaf to all Campeggio's solicitations. Her
conscience was, perhaps, of a rigid, Spanish type, but it was as clear
as Henry's and a great deal more comprehensible. She was convinced
that her marriage was valid; to admit a doubt of it would imply that
she had been living in sin and imperil her immortal soul. Henry (p. 218)
did not in the least mind admitting that he had lived for twenty years
with a woman who was not his wife; the sin, to his mind, was continuing
to live with her after he had become convinced that she was really not
his wife. Catherine appears, however, to have been willing to take the
monastic vows, if Henry would do the same. Henry was equally willing,
if Clement would immediately dispense with the vows in his case, but
not in Catherine's.[613] But there were objections to this course, and
doubts of Clement's power to authorise Henry's re-marriage, even if
Catherine did go into a nunnery.

[Footnote 612: _Ibid._, iv., 4858.]

[Footnote 613: _L. and P._, iv., 4977.]

Meanwhile, Campeggio found help from an unexpected quarter in his
efforts to waste the time. Quite unknown to Henry, Wolsey, or Clement,
there existed in Spain a brief of Julius II. fuller than the original
bull of dispensation which he had granted for the marriage of Henry
and Catherine, and supplying any defects that might be found in it.
Indeed, so conveniently did the brief meet the criticisms urged
against the bull, that Henry and Wolsey at once pronounced it an
obvious forgery, concocted after the doubts about the bull had been
raised. No copy of the brief could be found in the English archives,
nor could any trace be discovered of its having been registered at
Rome; while Ghinucci and Lee, who examined the original in Spain,
professed to see in it such flagrant inaccuracies as to deprive it of
all claim to be genuine.[614] Still, if it were genuine, it shattered
the whole of Henry's case. That had been built up, not on the (p. 219)
denial of the Pope's power to dispense, but on the technical defects
of a particular dispensation. Now it appeared that the validity of the
marriage did not depend upon this dispensation at all. Nor did it
depend upon the brief, for Catherine was prepared to deny on oath that
the marriage with Arthur had been anything more than a form;[615] in
that case the affinity with Henry had not been contracted, and