This page has been validated.
318
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 17.
confident that they would make no improper demands, they laid before him the proposition which they had heard from the woolsack, and added their own entreaties that he would be pleased to consent.[1] The King was gracious, but the canon law required also the consent of the Queen; for which, therefore, the Duke of Suffolk, the Bishop of Winchester, and other noblemen were despatched to Richmond, and with which they soon returned.[2] Six years were spent over the affair with Queen Catherine: almost as many days sufficed to dispose of Anne of Cleves.
July 7.On the Wednesday morning the clergy assembled, and Gardiner, in 'a luminous oration,'[3] invited them to the task which they were to undertake. Evidence was sent in by different members of the privy council whom the King had admitted to his confidence; by the ladies of the Court who could speak for the condition of the Queen; and finally, by Henry himself, in a paper which he wrote with his own- ↑ Lords Journals, 32 Henry VIII. July 6.
- ↑ 'Upon Tuesday, the sixth of this month, our nobles and commons made suit and request unto us to commit the examination of the justness of our matrimony to the clergy; upon which request made we sent incontinently our councillors the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the Bishop of Winchester, &c., advertising the Queen what request was made, and in what sort, and thereupon to know what answer she would make unto the same. Whereunto after divers conferences at good length, and the matter by her thoroughly perceived and considered, she answered plainly and frankly that she was contented that the discussion of the matter should be committed to the clergy as unto judges competent in that behalf.'—State Papers, vol. viii. p. 404; and see Anne of Cleves to the King; ibid. vol. i. p. 637.
- ↑ Luculentâ Oratione: Strype's Memorials, vol. i. p. 553.
