ere set aside. The Pope would do
anything for his liberators: why not dissolve the unfruitful marriage, and
give to England a new French consort in the person of either the widowed
Margaret Duchess of Alencon, or of Princess Renee? It is true that the
former indignantly refused the suggestion, and dynastic reasons prevented
Francis from favouring that of a marriage of Renee of France and Brittany
with the King of England; but women, and indeed men, were for Wolsey but
puppets to be moved, not creatures to be consulted, and the Cardinal went
back to England exultant, and hopeful that, at last, he would compass his
aspiration, and make himself ruler of the princes of Christendom. Never
was hope more fallacious or fortune's irony more bitter. With a strong
master Wolsey would have won; with a flabby sensualist as his
stalking-horse he was bound to lose, unless he remained always at his
side. The Cardinal's absence in France was the turning-point of his
fortunes; whilst he was glorying abroad, his enemies at home dealt him a
death-blow through a woman.

At exactly what period, or by whom, the idea of divorcing Katharine at
this time had been broached to Henry, it is difficult to say; but it was
no unpardonable or uncommon thing for monarchs, for reasons of dynastic
expediency, to put aside their wedded wives. Popes, usually in a hurry to
enrich their families, could be bribed or coerced; and the interests of
the individual, even of a queen-consort, were as nothing in comparison of
those of the State, as represented by the sovereign. If the question of
religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a
Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended,
instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been
little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of
the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of
his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time
consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered
by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move.

It is probable that the Bishop of Tarbes, when he was in England in the
spring of 1527 for the betrothal of Mary, conferred with Wolsey as to the
possibility of Henry's marriage to a French princess, which of course
would involve the repudiation of Katharine. In any case the King and
Wolsey--whether truly or not--a