remarkable favours of fortune occasionally have to submit to
inconveniences attaching to their rank; and, when the occasion rises, they
generally meet with little ceremony. At the outset the utmost efforts had
been made to spare Catherine's feelings. Both the King and the Pope
desired to avoid a judgment on the validity of her marriage. An heir to
the crown was needed, and from her there was no hope of further issue. If
at the beginning she had been found incapable of bearing a child, the
marriage would have been dissolved of itself. Essentially the condition
was the same. Technical difficulties could be disposed of by a Papal
dispensation. She would have remained queen, her honour unaffected, the
legitimacy of Mary unimpugned, the relations between the Holy See and the
Crown and Church of England undisturbed. The obstinacy of Catherine
herself, the Emperor's determination to support her, and the Pope's
cowardice, prevented a reasonable arrangement; and thus the right of the
Pope himself to the spiritual sovereignty of Europe came necessarily under
question, when it implied the subjugation of independent princes to
another power by which the Court of Rome was dominated.

Such a question once raised could have but one answer from the English
nation. Every resource had been tried to the extreme limit of forbearance,
and all had failed before the indomitable will of a single woman. A
request admitted to be just had been met by excommunication and threats of
force. With entire fitness, the King and Parliament had replied by
withdrawing their recognition of a corrupt tribunal, and determining
thenceforward to try and to judge their own suits in their own courts.

Thus, on the 10th of May, Cranmer, with three Bishops as assessors, sate
at Dunstable under the Royal licence to hear the cause which had so long
been the talk of Europe, and Catherine, who was at Ampthill, was cited to
appear. She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to make. Chapuys
advised her not to notice the summons. "Nothing done by such a Court could
prejudice her," he said, "unless she renounced her appeal to Rome." As she
made no plea, judgment was promptly given.[220] The divorce was complete
so far as English law could decide it, and it was doubtful to the last
whether the Pope was not at heart a consenting party. The sentence had
been, of course, anticipated. On the 27th of April Chapuys informed the
Emperor how matters then stood.

"Had his