this case involved the question of a change in the national
alliance and a shifting of the weight of England to the side of France;
and the Emperor by his power over the Pope had been able to frustrate the
design, not entirely on account of his family connection with Katharine,
but rather as a question of international policy. The dependent position
of the Pope had effectually stood in the way of the compromise always
sought by France, and the resistance to his will had made Henry the more
determined to assert himself, with the natural result that the dispute had
developed into religious schism. There is a school of historians which
credits Henry personally with the far-reaching design of shaking off the
ecclesiastical control of Rome in order to augment the national
greatness; but there seems to me little evidence to support the view. When
once the King had bearded the Papacy, rather than retrace the steps he had
taken and confess himself wrong, it was natural that many of his subjects
who conscientiously leant towards greater freedom in religion than Rome
would allow, were prepared to carry the lesson further, as the German
Lutherans had done, but I can find no reason to believe that Henry desired
to initiate any change of system in the direction of freedom: his aim
being, as he himself said, simply to make himself Pope as well as King
within his own realm. Even that position, as we have seen in the
aforegoing chapters, was only reached gradually under the incentive of
opposition, and by the aid of stouter hearts and clearer brains than his
own: and if Henry could have had his way about the marriage, as he
conceivably might have done on many occasions during the struggle by a
very slight change in the circumstances, there would have been, so far as
he personally was concerned, no Reformation in England at the time.

One of the most curious phases in the process here described is the
deterioration notable in Henry's character as the ecclesiastical and moral
restraints that influenced him were gradually cast aside. We have seen him
as a kind and courteous husband, not more immoral than other men of his
age and station; a father whose love for his children was intense; and a
cultured gentleman of a headstrong but not unlovable character. Resistance
to his will had touched his pride and hardened his heart, until at the
period which we have now reached (1534) we see him capable of brutal and
insulting treatment of his wife