Реферат: Henry Viii 2 Essay Research Paper Henry
impediment of affinity also involved by implication that of publicae
honestatis, or “public decency.” The collective suit was thereupon
dropped, and Henry now set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy
See, acting in this independently of Wolsey, to whom he at first
communicated nothing of his design so far as it related to Anne. William
Knight, the king’s secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the
declaration of nullity of his union with Catherine, on the ground that the
dispensing Bull of Julius II was obreptitious i.e. obtained by false
pretences. Henry also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free, a
dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first
degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or
unlawful connexion. This clearly had reference to Anne Boleyn, and the
fictitious nature of Henry’s conscientious scruples about his marriage is
betrayed by the fact that he himself was now applying for a dispensation
of precisely the same nature as that which he scrupled about, a
dispensation which he later on maintained the pope had no power to
grant.
As the pope was at that time the prisoner of Charles V, Knight had some
difficulty in obtaining access to him. In the end the king’s envoy had to
return without accomplishing much, though the (conditional) dispensation
for a new marriage was readily accorded. Henry had now no choice but
to put his great matter into the hands of Wolsey, and Wolsey, although
the whole divorce policy ran counter to his better judgment, strained
every nerve to secure a decision in his master’s favour. An account of the
mission of Gardiner and Foxe and of the failure of the divorce
proceedings before the papal commissioners, Wolsey and Campeggio,
mainly on account of the production of the Brief, has been given in some
detail in the article CLEMENT VII, to which the reader is referred. The
revocation of the cause to Rome in July, 1529, owing, no doubt, in part