cult to endure than
the ordinary trial of married women, the transfer of a husband's affection
to some fairer face; and a wife whom so painful a misfortune had failed to
crush would be likely to have been moved by it to a deeper and more bitter
indignation even, because while she could not blame herself, she knew not
whom she might rightly allow herself to blame. And if this were so, the
king is not likely to have allayed the storm when at length, putting faith
in Wolsey's promises, he allowed himself openly to regard another person as
his future wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same
roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position
openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy
dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival.
Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile
would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be
surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the
bitterness of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own
personal wrongs outweighed the interests of the world. Henry had proceeded
to the last unjustifiable extremity as soon as the character of Campeggio's
mission had been made clear to him, as if to demonstrate to all the world
that he was determined to persevere at all costs and hazards.[160] Taking
the management of the negotiation into his own keeping, he sent Sir Francis
Bryan, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, to the pope, to announce that what he
required must be done, and to declare peremptorily, no more with covert
hints, but with open menace, that in default of help from Rome, he would
lay the matter before parliament, to be settled at home by the laws of his
own country.

Meanwhile, the emperor, who had hitherto conducted himself with the
greatest address, had fallen into his first error. He had retreated
skilfully out of the embarrassment in which the pope's imprisonment
involved him, and mingling authority and dictation with kindness and
deference, he had won over the Holy See to his devotion, and neutralised
the danger to which the alliance of France and England threatened to expose
him. His correspondence with the latter country assured him of the
unpopularity of the course which had been pursued by the cardinal; he was
aware of the obstruction of trade which it had caused, and of the general
displeasure f