But the fatal shadow of Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, had fallen on the throne, and the king’s infatuation for her was to sweep both his wife and his daughter into a vortex of misery from which there was no escape for one of them but death. Whether Wolsey first insinuated the doubt as to the validity of the king’s marriage, in order to pander to Henry’s wandering fancies, or whether Henry himself, carried away by his passion for Anne Boleyn, evolved the idea of a possible flaw in his union with Katharine, matters little. The question was soon entangled in a mass of chicanery, and whichever of the two may have been the first to strike the match, it was clear to Wolsey, that his fortunes depended henceforth on his keeping the flame alive. The subject had been mooted as far back as 1525, and the first mention of the coming divorce, of which we have any record, is contained in a letter from Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, to Wolsey. Referring to some other business, Warham says, “it will be better not to proceed further, till this great matter of the King’s grace be ended”.[66] Again in 1526, after a long interval in which the subject seems to have been dropped, the Bishop of Bath and Wells remarked to the Cardinal of York, “there will be great difficulty _circa istud benedictum divortium_”.[67] The sack of Rome by the Imperialists, and the Pope’s captivity delayed the investigation of the cause by the papal courts to which it had been referred, but in 1527, Henry’s “scruples” for having married his brother’s widow began to be talked of as the King’s “great,” “secret” or “private matter”.[68] Possibly, when Henry first began to study the Scriptures, and the writers of antiquity in search of arguments to support his “scruples,” he may not yet have fallen in love with Anne, or at least Wolsey did not know that he had. When he did set his mind on marrying her, it did not seem probable that his fancy would outlive the necessary delays and preliminaries of a divorce, even if it could be obtained, or that the ambition of the Boleyns would be equal to the influence of the Cardinal. But during Wolsey’s absence in France, the whole subject assumed a point and a piquancy hitherto undreamed of. Wolsey had not fostered Henry’s desires in order to further his marriage with the grand-daughter of a wealthy merchant. He himself aimed at nothing short of the Papacy, and he thought that by negotiating a brilliant marriage with a princess of France, he could make for himself a convenient stepping-stone thereto, far more secure than that which Mary’s marriage would afford. As the candidate of two powerful monarchs, he would practically control the next conclave; but the Boleyns could do nothing for him. He had yet to learn that Anne was strong enough to work his ruin.