port him and bear the brunt of the fight, and, in
accordance with his character, he whined that he never meant any harm: he
only wished to discover the truth, to set at rest the scruples raised by
the Bishop of Tarbes. All would be for the best, he assured his angry
wife; but pray keep the matter secret.[42]

Henry did not love to be thwarted, and Wolsey, busy making ready for his
ostentatious voyage to France, had to bear as best he might his master's
ill-humour. The famous ecclesiastical lawyer, Sampson, had told the
Cardinal that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated; and
consequently that, even apart from the Pope's dispensation, the present
union was unimpeachable. The Queen would fight the matter to the end, he
said; and though Wolsey did his best to answer Sampson's arguments, he was
obliged to transmit them to the King, and recommend him to handle his wife
gently; "until it was shown what the Pope and Francis would do." Henry
acted on the advice, as we have seen, but Wolsey was scolded by the King
as if he himself had advanced Sampson's arguments instead of answering
them. Katharine did not content herself with sitting down and weeping. She
despatched her faithful Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, on a
pretended voyage to a sick mother in Spain, in order that he might beg the
aid of the Emperor to prevent the injustice intended against the Queen;
and Wolsey's spies made every effort to catch the man, and lay him by the
heels.[43] She sent to her confessor, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, begging
for his counsel, he being one of the bishops who held that her marriage
was valid; she "desired," said Wolsey to the King, "counsel, as well of
strangers as of English," and generally showed a spirit the very opposite
of that of the patient Griselda in similar circumstances. How entirely
upset were the King and Wolsey by the unexpected force of the opposition
is seen in the Cardinal's letter to his master a day or two after he had
left London at the beginning of July to proceed on his French embassy.
Writing from Faversham, he relates how he had met Archbishop Warham, and
had told him in dismay that the Queen had discovered their plan, and how
irritated she was; and how the King, as arranged with Wolsey, had tried to
pacify and reassure her. To Wolsey's delight, Warham persisted that,
whether the Queen liked it or not, "truth and law must prevail." On his
way through Rochester, Wolsey tackled Fisher, who wa