in a large number of decisions, by
which the Pope's right of dispensation was denied; and this in spite
of the constant efforts in various ways of the Imperial agents; even
the two mother-universities, Bologna and Paris, had declared in his
favour. He protested that he had been thereby enabled in his
conscience to free himself from the yoke of an unlawful union,
bordering on incest, and to proceed to another marriage. But all the
more urgent was it that the legality of this marriage should be
recognised according to the forms at that time lawfully valid. He no
longer wished for a recognition from the Pope; he laid the question
before the two Convocations of the English Church-provinces. For the
general course of Church history we must admit it to be an event of
the highest significance, that they dared to pronounce the
dispensation of Pope Julius II invalid according to God's law. The
authority hitherto regarded as the expression of God's will on earth
was found guilty, by the representatives of the Church of one
particular country, of transgressing that will. It now followed that
the King's marriage, concluded on the strength of that dispensation,
was declared by the Archbishop's court at Canterbury null and void,
and invalid from the beginning. Catharine was henceforth to be
treated no longer as Queen but only as still Princess-dowager.

She was unable to realise the things that were happening around her.
That she was expected to renounce her rank as Queen awoke in her quite
as much astonishment as anger. 'For she had not come to England,' she
said, 'on mercantile business at a venture, but according to the will
of the two venerated kings now dead: she had married King Henry
according to the decision of the Holy Father at Rome: she was the
anointed and crowned Queen of England; were she to give up her title,
she would have been a concubine these twenty-four years, and her
daughter a bastard; she would be false to her conscience, to her own
soul, her confessor would not be able to absolve her.' She became more
and more absorbed in strict Catholic religious observances. She rose
soon after midnight, to be present at the mass; under her dress she
wore the habit of the third order of S. Francis; she confessed twice
and fasted twice a week; her reading consisted of the legends of the
saints. So she lived on for two years more, undisturbed by the
ecclesiastico-political statutes which passed in the English
Parliament. Till