dy is combined as to surprise
and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the
superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is;
his head bald like Caesar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English
custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well,
tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent
well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with
the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated
also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his
childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and
writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is
kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he
is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two
masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable,
giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and
cripples."[8]

Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous
pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws
had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European
world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of
decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If
the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English
courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had
he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the
Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have
been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of
itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the
difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first
entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step.

On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he
called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham
sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having
stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage,
enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of
his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King
assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius I