e Duke of Buckingham, when he
maintained that he was the nearest heir to the crown, and would not
let it be taken from him. He had been executed for this: Mary's right
to the succession met with no further opposition; but even so it was
still always a doubtful future that lay before the country. People
wished to marry Mary at one time to the Emperor, at another to the
King or a prince of France: so that her claim to the inheritance of
the crown should pass to the house of Burgundy or to that of Valois.
But how dangerous this was for the independence of the country! Henry
would surely not have lost himself in Wolsey's intrigues, had he had a
son and heir, to represent the independent interests of England.

In other times relations of this kind would have probably been
reckoned as in themselves sufficient reason for a divorce: but not so
in that age. The very essence of marriage lies in this, that it raises
the union, on which the family and the order of the world rests, above
the momentary variations of the will and the inclination; by the
sanction of the Church it becomes one of that series of religious
institutions which set limits on every side to individual caprice. No
one yet dared so far to deny the religious character of marriage, as
to have avowed mere political views in wishing for a separation,
either before the world, or even to himself. But now there was no want
of spiritual reasons which might be brought forward for it. The King's
own confessor revived the doubts in him which had once been raised
before his marriage with his brother's widow. And when the King was
then reminded that such a marriage had been expressly forbidden in the
books of Moses, and threatened with the punishment of childlessness,
how could it fail to make an impression on him, when this threat
seemed to be strictly fulfilled in his case? Two boys had been born to
him from this marriage, but both had died soon after their birth. Even
within the Catholic Church it had been always a moot point whether the
Pope could dispense with a law of Scripture. The divine punishment
inflicted on the King, as he thought, seemed to prove that the Pope's
dispensation (encroaching as it did on the region of the divine
power), on the strength of which the marriage had been concluded, had
not the validity ascribed to it. Scruples of this sort cannot be said
to be a mere pretence; they have something of the half belief, half
superstition, so peculiarly charac