Catalogue description Letters and papers published in Letters and Papers ... of Henry VIII, vol. IV: 1529 May...

Letters and papers published in Letters and Papers ... of Henry VIII, vol. IV: 1529 May 15-July 24.

Includes a treatise on the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon by Stephen Gardiner (dated between late June and July 1529 and submitted to the 1529 legatine trial over Henry VIII's first marriage) as follows:

SP 1/54 fos 130-229v (LP iv. 5729): Stephen Gardiner's reply to John Fisher's 'Licitum fuisse' (Cambridge University Library Ff.5.25, LP iv. 5728), consisting of: 130-64, marked C, 'Quod ad illa axioma', with annotations by Fisher; 166-217v, marked D, 'Postquam in hac materia' (incomplete as three folios missing between fos 202v and 203), described as having been composed 'as it seems by the King himself', with annotations by Fisher; and 218-29v, marked M, a later version of the latter part of D from fo 203 on, probably in Gardiner's hand.

For the initial identification of Stephen Gardiner as author, see Pierre Janelle, Obedience in Church and State: Three Political Tracts by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1930), pp. xvii-xx and Janelle, L'Angleterre catholique a la veille du schisme (Paris, 1935), pp, 117-18.

Modifying Janelle is V. M. Murphy, 'The Debate over Henry VIII's First Divorce: An Analysis of the Contemporary Treatises (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1984), pp. 127-37 and also on M pp. 138-41. The address on fos 166-9 is printed in Janelle, Obedience, pp. 2-9. On D and M see also SP 1/63, fos 315-58 below.