Note 558 — INDEX.

Footnote 558: Ibid., iv., 4231, 4942. Henry's own account of the matter was as follows: "For some years past he had noticed in reading the Bible the severe penalty inflicted by God on those who married the relicts of their brothers"; he at length "began to be troubled in his conscience, and to regard the sudden deaths of his male children as a Divine judgment. The more he studied the matter, the more clearly it appeared to him that he had broken a Divine law. He then called to counsel men learned in pontifical law, to ascertain their opinion of the dispensation. Some pronounced it invalid. So far he had proceeded as secretly as possible that he might do nothing rashly" (L. and P., iv., 5156; cf. iv., 3641). Shakespeare, following Cavendish (p. 221), makes Henry reveal his doubts first to his confessor, Bishop Longland of Lincoln: "First I began in private with you, my Lord of Lincoln" ("Henry VIII.," Act II., sc. iv.); and there is contemporary authority for this belief. In 1532 Longland was said to have suggested a divorce to Henry ten years previously (L. and P., v., 1114), and Chapuys termed him "the principal promoter of these practices" (ibid., v., 1046); and in 1536 the northern rebels thought that he was the beginning of all the trouble (ibid., xi., 705); the same assertion is made in the anonymous "Life and Death of Cranmer" (Narr. of the Reformation, Camden Soc., p. 219). Other persons to whom the doubtful honour was ascribed are Wolsey and Stafileo, Dean of the Rota at Rome (L. and P., iv., 3400; Sp. Cal., iv., 159).(back)