At exactly what period, or by whom, the idea of divorcing Katharine at this time had been broached to Henry, it is difficult to say; but it was no unpardonable or uncommon thing for monarchs, for reasons of dynastic expediency, to put aside their wedded wives. Popes, usually in a hurry to enrich their families, could be bribed or coerced; and the interests of the individual, even of a queen-consort, were as nothing in comparison of those of the State, as represented by the sovereign. If the question of religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended, instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move. It is probable that the Bishop of Tarbes, when he was in England in the spring of 1527 for the betrothal of Mary, conferred with Wolsey as to the possibility of Henry's marriage to a French princess, which of course would involve the repudiation of Katharine. In any case the King and Wolsey--whether truly or not--asserted that the Bishop had first started the question of the validity of Henry's marriage with his wife, with special reference to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, who was to be betrothed to Francis I. or his son. It may be accepted as certain, however, that the matter had been secretly fermenting ever since Wolsey began to shift the centre of gravity from the Emperor towards France. Katharine may have suspected it, though as yet no word reached her. But she was angry at the intimate hobnobbing with France, at her daughter's betrothal to the enemy of her house, and at the elevation of Henry's bastard son to a royal dukedom. She was deeply incensed, too, at her alienation from State affairs, and had formed around her a cabal of Wolsey's enemies, for the most part members of the older nobility traditionally in favour of the Spanish alliance and against France, in order, if possible, to obstruct the Cardinal's policy.[41]