Fish's famous pamphlet shows the spirit that was seething. He spoke of what he had seen and knew. The monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your realm." But Wolsey could interfere with neither bishops nor monks without a special dispensation from the pope. A new trouble arose from the nation in the desire of Henry to divorce Catherine of Aragon, who had been his deceased brother's wife, was six years older than himself, and was an obstacle to the establishment of the kingdom. Her sons were dead, and she was beyond the period when more children could be expected. Though descent in the female line was not formally denied, no queen regent had ever, in fact, sat upon the throne; nor was the claim distinctly admitted, or the claim of the House of York would have been unquestionable. It was, therefore, with no little anxiety that the council of Henry VIII. perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred, either born dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their birth. The line of the Princess Mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood. If she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she did not live, and the king had no other children, a civil war was inevitable. The next heir in blood was James of Scotland, and gravely as statesmen desired the union of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones in London streets, it was said, would rise up against a king of Scotland who entered England as sovereign. So far were Henry and Catherine alike that both had imperious tempers, and both were indomitably obstinate; but Henry was hot and impetuous, Catherine cold and self-contained. She had been the wife of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., but the death of that prince occurred only five months after the marriage. The uncertainty of the laws of marriage, and the innumerable refinements of the Roman canon law, affected the legitimacy of the children and raised scruples of conscience in the mind of the king. The loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial sentence on a violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with superstition to encourage what he secretly desired.