her reproaches, to resort to those extreme measures which, in the end, were fatal to her church.
To gain Campeggio she took the bold step of asking him to hear her confession, when, relieving him of the obligation of secrecy, she declared that her first marriage had never been consummated. Campeggio could not disbelieve her, and the judgment of history, differing somewhat in the estimate of evidence from the judgment of law, must, we think, accept her word.[1] Wolsey was so apprehensive of the effect of such a declaration made upon oath, that he proposed to assail the dispensation on totally different grounds. But Mendoza deemed it a dangerous plea, and difficult to sustain at law. He recommended a safer defence, and he possessed a weapon keen enough to defeat all the art of Wolsey and his master.
Early in the year he had received from Spain a copy of a dispensation in the form of a brief, which expressly excluded the doubt as to the nature of the first marriage. Soon after Campeggio's arrival Catharine sent this paper to the Legates. It contradicted her own statement, and she protested that she had had nothing to do with obtaining it. But it avoided the reproach which had been so damaging to the Bull. Wolsey was taken by surprise. The plan on which he had pursued his operations so long was overthrown in an instant. He could not abandon his system and attack the dispensing power itself. He confessed that the objections taken to the former document did not here apply ; but he declared that the Brief was spurious, and set about procuring evidence to prove it. Yet for many months Wolsey remained in doubt whether the paper which frustrated the great undertaking of his life was false or genuine. The reasons for suspecting forgery were stronger than he supposed.
- ↑ To the excellent summary of the evidence in Maurenbrecher's Lectures on the English Reformation, and to the ingenious inquiries of Lorentz, must be added the significant fact that Henry did not persistently deny that he had formerly admitted the truth of the Queen's affirmation. In the Articuli in Causa Matrimonii Regii this point is virtually given up : "Quarto nititur probare virginitatem ex confessione Henrici Octavi ; circa eandem confessionem possint eadem dici quae dicta sunt circa confessionem Catharinae, videlicet quod testes sunt singulares, et quod confessio omnino est extrajudicialis et parte absente."
