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From the close of the Legatine court Henry would see him no more, and his favourite, Stephen Gardiner, who had become chief Secretary of State, succeeded him in the king's confidence. If Wolsey still remained minister for a while, it was because the thread of the complex foreign negotiations which he was conducting could not be roughly broken. Here too however failure awaited him.
By insisting upon all the formalities of law he took care to delay the proceedings till the 23rd July, when he announced that the legatine court should follow the rules of the Roman court, and should, therefore, adjourn to October. Henry, disguising his real feelings, pretended to be satisfied; but in reality his disappointment was extreme.
'The king and I would have you do thus! 'The king and I give you our hearty thanks! Ran it not so, cardinal?" cried Will Sommers. "You will soon win the cap and bells." "In exercise of your legatine authority," pursued the king, "you have given away benefices contrary to our crown and dignity, for the which you are in danger of forfeiture of your lands and goods."
As to actual heresy, he looked on it with the eyes not of a theologian but of a politician; as a thing to be suppressed if it threatened public order, but otherwise negligible. He sought also to diminish the abuses connected with the ecclesiastical courts by the establishment of a Legatine Court of his own.
The artillery also of the church, which his brother had brought over to his side, had, after some interval, joined the other party. Eugenius III. had mounted the papal throne; the Bishop of Winchester was deprived of the legatine commission, which was conferred on Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, the enemy and rival of the former legate.
The first scheme was that he should hold a Legatine Court before which the King should be cited for living in an unlawful union with his brother's widow. Since the Legate was also the King's subject, the royal assent had to be formally given.
In return for the acknowledgment of papal suzerainty, which involved oblivion of the imperial claims, Innocent not only confirmed to Roger and his successors both his conquests in Southern Italy and the royal title, but even, by the grant of the legatine power to the King himself, exempted his kingdom from the visits of papal legates. Roger was supreme in Church and State.
The sermon ended, Wolsey knelt at the altar, and Archbishop Wareham, who, like his immediate predecessors, held legatine authority, performed the act of investiture, placing the scarlet hat with its many hoops and tassels on his brother primate's head, after which a magnificent Te Deum rang through the beautiful church, and the procession of prelates, peers, and ecclesiastics of all ranks in their richest array formed to escort the new Cardinal to banquet at his palace with the King and Queen.
An attempt of Calixtus II to send a legate to England, contrary to the promise he had made to Henry at Gisors, was met and defeated by the king with his usual diplomatic skill, so far as the exercise of any legatine powers is concerned, though the legate was admitted to England and remained there for a time.
And for the abuses of evil priests that have sprung up, my Lord Cardinal sought the Legatine Commission from our holy father at Rome to deal with them.
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