II CHAP Probably he looked upon it as so much deducted from his own chance. Had the dissolved monasteries A.D. 1529 been dissolved into the royal treasury there would have been no complaint. This view is confirmed by the diminution of the project when it fell into the King's hands. ceases to views with him The alienation seems to have been complete on the part of the King when, in September 1529, The King Wolsey wrote desiring an audience, that he might hold inter- communicate some matters of state, which he was unwilling to put in writing. The King replied by Gardiner, requiring Wolsey to state the heads of what he had to say, a proceeding so different from his usual habits as regarded the Cardinal, that we must conclude he wished to put an end to the confidential terms which had so long existed between them. When Campeggio, the legate sent over to act with Wolsey in adjudicating on the divorce, had an audience of the King to take his leave, a week or two afterwards, Wolsey accompanied him, but was insulted by the careful omission of any preparation for his stay near the King. This was the last time he and Henry ever met, for when the King showed some signs of wishing for another interview with his faithful old minister, the new mistress who had got possession of him hurried him away by her persuasions so as to make it impossible. and supersedes him as chancellor Wolsey opened the Michaelmas term as Lord 3 State Papers, i. 344. This may possibly have been a daring act of Gardiner, but it is scarcely probable that he would have ventured so far, even had he wished to shut Wolsey out from the King's presence. On September 23, Wolsey had been admitted to an audience at Greenwich, and Thomas Alward writes to Cromwell that he never saw the King behave more kindly to Wolsey, and that, "whatever they bare in their hearts," Suffolk, Rochford, Tuke, and Master Stevens (Gardiner) were as humble towards him as ever. Ellis, I. i. 309. II retirement Chancellor, but on the following day the Dukes of CHAP Norfolk and Suffolk came to him with a verbal message from the King, requiring him to give up the A.D. 1529 great seal. This was a most unconstitutional proceeding, as the great seal is always delivered to the chancellor by the sovereign in person, and received back in the same manner. Wolsey therefore refused to give up its custody without some further authority. This was given under letters patent (though how they could be confirmed without the great seal itself it is difficult to see), and on the following day Wolsey ceased to be chancellor and prime minister, remaining simply Archbishop of York so far as regarded his constitutional position. He was ordered to retire to Esher, the King's officers taking such Wolsey's complete possession of all his goods that when there to Esher he found the greatest difficulty in securing even food for himself and his attendants; and was deprived of such simple luxuries as household linen and plate. Some months later, about February, the King sent him some such necessaries, and permitted him to remove to the house built by Dean Colet at Sheen, near Richmond, where Wolsey spent most of his time in religious conversation with one of the old brethren of the charterhouse there, a gallery communicating between his residence and the monastery. In Passion Week he started for the north, spending and afterPalm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter at Peter- York borough; and nearly all the rest of his days he spent at Cawood, near York, which was then the Archiepiscopal residence. Here he won universal respect, his true character being all the more conspicuous now that he was freed from cares of state. A contemporary writer on the Puritan side, quoted by wards to CHAP Burnet, speaks of him in high terms of commendation, within four or five years of his death: II A.D. 1530 "None was better beloved than he, after he had been there His exem- a while. He gave bishops a good example, how they might plary life win men's hearts. There was few holy-days but he would as a bishop ride five or six miles from his house; now to this parish church, now to that; and there cause one of his doctors to make a sermon unto the people: he sate among them, and said mass before all the parish. He saw why churches were made, and began to restore them to their right and proper use. If our bishops had done so, we should have seen, that preaching the gospel is not the cause of sedition; but rather lack of preaching it. He brought his dinner with him, and bade divers of the parish to it. He inquired if there was any debate or grudge between any of them; if there were, after dinner he sent for the parties to the church, and made them. all one." But this happy life of retirement was of very short duration. Before November he was arrested for high-treason by the Earl of Northumberland (the Lord Percy to whom Anne Boleyn had been attached) and Sir Walter Welsh (a cousin of Elizabeth Talbois, Anne Boleyn's predecessor), who seem to have been chosen for some purpose of special inHis death dignity. He died at Leicester Abbey, heart-broken at the fate of his colleges and the King's ingratitude, on November 29, 1530, when, even after so eventful a life, he was not quite sixty years of age. So passed away the greatest statesman that England had as yet ever seen, and the real leader of the Reformation. It is not necessary to say anything here of his personal character, as no attempt has been made to review his history, except so far as it is part of that of the Church and country at the period. But it may be said in passing that he has been II grossly and malevolently misrepresented, and that CHAP few English statesmen have really been so worthy the respect and gratitude of posterity.* no crime Whether or not Wolsey was moved to take the Wolsey's course he did by ambition is a question of very little ambition 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 5 Le Grand's Histoire du Divorce, iii. 374, |