Page:The Queens of England.djvu/302

262 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. not to be rendered very unhappy by it. The effect it produced on her health and spirits, by imparing her personal attractions, and increasing her habitual gravity into a fixed melancholy, served to make her still less pleasing to Henry, who disliked her the more for the change in her produced by his own unkind- ness. He pretended to entertain scruples on the subject of their marriage, revealed these scruples to his confessor, and made them the excuse for gradually alienating himself from the society of the queen. There remains little doubt that Wolsey at first encouraged the king to divorce Katharine. He was prompted to do this, not only by his desire to gratify Henry, but to avenge himself on the queen and her nephew, the em- peror, for the real or imaginary slights he had received from them ; he also wished that Henry should wed the Duchess d'Alencon, whose portrait he had procured to show him. Al- though Henry had meditated the divorce for some time, it was not until the close of the year 1526 that the queen became aware of his intention. When she heard of it, she dispatched a confi- dential agent to Spain, to convey the sad news fo her nephew ; but Wolsey took care that he never reached his destined course, by having him stopped on the road. The defeat of Francis the First at Pavia, and his consequent imprisonment in Spain, had excited something like a generous sentiment in the breast of Henry, and led to his using his in- terest in his behalf. Dissatisfied with the conduct of Charles the Fifth, whom he disliked and envied, he wished to assist in securing the liberty of the French king ; and the good feeling, prompted more by ill-will to Charles than friendship for Francis, so far conciliated the latter, and the regent his mother, as to lead to a renewal of friendly intelligence with them. Soon after the return of Francis to his own kingdom, and while yet his sons were detained as hostages by Charles, Wolsey was sent to France to treat for a marriage between the Princess Mary and Francis, or his son, the Duke of Orleans. The cardinal arrived at Calais with an equipage of nearly one thou- sand men on the nth of July, 1527, and was met at Boulogne by Byron with no less a train. After him came the Cardinal of Lorraine, sent by the French king to do Wolsey honor, and to be the bearer of a letter from Francis, containing the assurance that himself and Madame Louisa, his mother, would meet him at Amiens ; which assurance was fulfilled on the 4th of August, when the king and his mother, royally attended, met him a mile