King Henry had previously endeavored to have Catharine persuaded to enter a convent; and in view of such an event, his sensitive conscience had required him to apply to the ablest canonists in Rome to give him their opinions on the three following questions: 1. Whether, if a wife were to enter a convent, the Pope could not, in the plenitude of his power, authorize the husband to marry again. 2. Whether, if the husband were to enter a religious order that he might induce his wife to do the same, he might not be afterwards released from his vow and at liberty to marry. 3. Whether, for reasons of state, the Pope could not license a king to have, like the ancient patriarchs, two wives, of whom one only should be acknowledged and enjoy the honors of royalty. Rather convincing proofs, truly, that the compunctions of conscience of this royal hypocrite were a hollow sham! After her expulsion from her husband’s court, Catharine first went to her manor of the More, in Hertfordshire; and then settled at Ampthill, from whence she wrote to Pope Clement, informing him of her banishment from the royal court. As the Pope would not sanction the divorce, but instead issued a bull of excommunication against the royal rebel, the king, in 1533, dissolved his own wedlock by a decision pronounced in a court held by Archbishop Cranmer. Some historians state that he had married Anne Boleyn previously to the time when the divorce was pronounced. When the news of this double insult reached poor Catharine, she was lying upon a sick-bed, worn out with sorrow. In vain had she pleaded to be allowed to see her only child, the Princess Mary, for one last farewell. And now her agonized mother’s heart is wrung with added woe. Lord Montjoy, her former page, was deputed to bear to her the minutes of the infamous conference, by whose decision she was degraded from the rank of queen of England to that of dowager-princess of Wales. Rising from her couch and seizing her pen, she drew it through the words “princess-dowager,” and exclaimed to those who had brought to her this insulting document: “So I return the minutes; and I desire ye to say to his Grace, my husband, Catharine, his faithful consort, is his lawful queen; and for no earthly consideration will she consent to be called out of her name.” Catharine afterwards removed to the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace of Bungen. By the king’s orders, she was deprived of most of her servants, because she would be waited on by no one who did not address her as queen. She was next removed to Kimbolton Castle, though Henry’s first orders had been to take her to Fotheringay Castle, a place notorious for its bad air. But Catharine had declared that she would not go there “unless drawn with ropes,” and so she had been sent to Kimbolton.