He maintained merely that the particular dispensation, granted for his marriage with Catherine, was null and void.

As a concession to others, he condescended to give a number of reasons, none of them affecting any principle, but only the legal technicalities of the case--the causes for which the dispensation was granted, such as his own (p.

209) desire, and the political necessity for the marriage were fictitious; he had himself protested against the marriage, and so forth.

For himself, his own conviction was ample sanction; he knew he was living in sin with Catherine because his children had all died but one, and that was a manifest token of the wrath of Providence.

The capacity for convincing himself of his own righteousness is the most effective weapon in the egotist's armoury, and Henry's egotism touched the sublime.