II grossly and malevolently misrepresented, and that CHAP few English statesmen have really been so worthy the respect and gratitude of posterity.* ambition no crime Whether or not Wolsey was moved to take the Wolsey's course he did by ambition is a question of very little consequence. Ambition leaves an odious mark upon history only when it has been accompanied by wrong and bloodshed; but not a single public act of this great man can be proved to have been unjust, while the gentleness and humanity of his government is conspicuous almost beyond belief when a sifting contrast comes to be drawn between it and that of his contemporaries or successors. He sought power with great ends in view, and his ambition was the honourable ambition of a patriotic statesman. As regards the Church, he knew perfectly well that all Among such misrepresentations it will be as well to refer in a note to the charge of immorality brought against him. As to his son and daughter, there can be little doubt that he (like Cardinal Campeggio, whose son was knighted by Henry VIII.) had been married, perhaps secretly, as Archbishop Cranmer was. A supposed attack of sweating sickness referred to in the indictment against him, as placing the King in danger of infection, is vilely misinterpreted by Bishop Burnet. It occurred when every one who could leave London had done so, on account of the same epidemic of which Dean Colet died. Wolsey refused to leave even at the entreaty of the King, and although several times prostrated by the sickness. At this time Pace writes from Wallingford in language that fully explains that of the indictment: They do die in these parts in every place, not only of the small pokkes and measels, but also of the G great sickness." Brewer's Calend. II His con of power rity neces work CHAP the power and authority he could accumulate would not be too much (in the end it proved too little) to effect the reformations which he proposed. It would have been utterly useless to attempt the task without centration it, when Pope, King, many of the clergy, most of the and autho- nobility, and multitudes of the laity, would have sary for his opposed him. The event showed how matters stood. Few cared for reformation; many cared for destruction. Wolsey saw in what imminent peril the revenues of the Church were from the exhaustive squandering and grasping covetousness of the Court. The clergy declared, through Archbishop Warham, that no king of England had ever extorted such heavy taxes from them, and it was only by a somewhat subtle policy that Wolsey and Warham could stave off a fatal resistance to his further demands. But Wolsey hoped to save the revenues of the Church by administering them more wisely than they had been managed hitherto; hence his transference to colleges of monastic property that was lying comparatively useless, and his projected transformation of the larger town monasteries into bishoprics. No sooner, however, was it seen that it was possible to dissolve monasteries and appropriate their revenues to other uses, than the covetousness of the King and his But proved courtiers sought to make a profit out of the discovery, mischiev- and Wolsey must be ruined as the first step in the example iniquitous course of spoliation. "These noble lords ous as an imagine that the Cardinal once dead or ruined," says the French ambassador of the day, "they will incontinently plunder the Church, and strip it of all its wealth," and this was the common talk of London which he was writing down." Wolsey strove to be 5 Le Grand's Histoire du Divorce, iii. 374. II between and Henry come quasi-pope of England that he might reform the CHAP clergy, turn some useless monasteries into useful bishoprics, colleges, and schools, revive learning, and Contrast make the Church more efficient and more suited for Wolsey its work in the coming order of things. Henry VIII. VIII. made himself quasi-pope of England that he might lay his grasping hand upon the property of the Church, and have his own will-no matter whither it tended-in the control of all its concerns. failed But, looking from the highest ground, and remembering that there is a Divine Providence to assist and to restrain the actions of men, we cannot fail to ask the question, Why, if Wolsey had such excellent objects in view, why was it that he failed? It has been so, often, before and since. The better man fails in doing the good he seeks to do in the better way the worse man steps in and does it to a partial extent in a worse way. There are secret springs concealing the machinery of events which the historian cannot always touch; and that machinery must often still lie hidden. But Wolsey's failure— Wolsey so far as it was a failure is to be partly explained through by the fact that he tried to work out his good ends using Papal by means of an external authority which essentially invaded the rights of the Church, instead of by the inherent authority which the Church of England and every other national Church possesses for reforming itself. There is some reason to believethe strongest of us are but weak,-that he saw the better way and chose the worse. He was only Archbishop of York, and the northern Archbishops have little constitutional power. It was simply impossible, so it must have seemed, to attempt a reformation of the Church when possessed of so authority II have suc he been more pa tient CHAP little general authority: and so he sought to be, and became legate a latere, the Pope's Vicar in England, wielding, as others had done before him, an authority which he had no just right to wield, because, on no principle of ecclesiastical justice had He might the Pope any right to confer it. Had Wolsey ceeded had known better how to wait, he might have carried out his plans to their full extent by means of an authority which had just claims upon the obedience of the Church and people. He chose instead to attempt the attainment of the same good and noble ends by means of an authority delegated to him by the Pope; consequently his plans broke down, a great opportunity was lost, and the Reformation never became in the hands of others what it had given fair promise of becoming in those of the most honest, the noblest, and the wisest of our Church reformers. CIAPER 111 THE DIVORCE OF HENRY VIII. FROM CATHERINE OF ARRAGON [A.D. 1527-1533] III THE the Counts England of Rome, and HE great and engrossing subject of discussion CHAP between the Courts of England and Rome, and indeed, throughout every rank of English society also, from the year 1528 to the year 1533, was the divorce of Henry VIII. from Catherine of Arragon, the first of his six wives. It was in connection with this unhappy scandal that steps were taken by the King on the one hand, and the Pope on the other, which led to the final repudiation of the papal jurisdiction by the Church and State of England. The narrative of all the events connected with this divorce must ever, therefore, form an important chapter of reformation history, and must necessarily be set forth at considerable length. The marriage of Henry and Catherine had been originally arranged purely as a matter of political expediency; and, apparently, without any regard whatever to the wishes of either of the persons prinpally concerned. Even the measure of happiness which attended it for the first few years was more than could be expected from the circumstances of the |