Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this petition was made to rest upon its proper merits.  The justification of the demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal imbecility.  Whatever was the origin of Henry’s resolution, it was acted out with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication, interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country’s interests, as well as his own, required.

It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign.  Hitherto he had remained under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in the same household with the state of a princess,[333] and needlessly wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which his duty permitted.  The circumstances of the case, if they were known to us, though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially palliate it.  Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own determination, and not by Henry’s desire, that she was unprovided with an establishment elsewhere.  There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to these painful doings.  Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour?

But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change.  In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a deputation of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir Thomas More to the two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and for the quiet of the king’s conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom.  It was, probably, but an official request, proposed without expectation that she would yield.  After rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she was not likely, inflexible as she had ever been, to yield when the pope had admitted her appeal, and the emperor, victorious through Europe, had promised her support.  She refused, of course, like herself, proudly, resolutely, gallantly, and not without the scorn which she was entitled to feel.  The nation had no claims upon her, and “for the king’s conscience,” she answered, “I pray God send his Grace good quiet therein, and tell him I say I am his lawful