Chapter 9

THE CARDINAL'S FALL.[652]

[Footnote 652: See, besides the documents cited, Busch, _Der Sturz des Cardinals Wolsey_ (Hist. Taschenbuch, VI., ix., 39-114).]

The loss of their spiritual jurisdiction in England was part of the price paid by the Popes for their temporal possessions in Italy. The papal domains were either too great or too small. If the Pope was to rely on his temporal power, it should have been extensive enough to protect him from the dictation and resentment of secular princes; and from this point of view there was no little justification for the aims of Julius II. Had he succeeded in driving the barbarians across the Alps or into the sea, he and his successors might in safety have judged the world, and the breach with Henry might never have taken place. If the Pope was to rely on his spiritual weapons, there was no need of temporal states at all. In their existing extent and position, they were simply the heel of Achilles, the vulnerable spot, through which secular foes might wound the Vicar of Christ. France threatened him from the north and Spain from the south; he was ever between the upper and the nether mill-stone. Italy was the cockpit of Europe in the sixteenth century, and the eyes of the Popes were perpetually bent on the worldly fray, seeking to save or extend their dominions. Through the Pope's temporal power, France and Spain exerted their (p. 229) pressure. He could only defend himself by playing off one against the other, and in this game his spiritual powers were his only effective pieces. More and more the spiritual authority, with which he was entrusted, was made to serve political ends. Temporal princes were branded as "sons of iniquity and children of perdition," not because their beliefs or their morals were worse than other men's, but because they stood in the way of the family ambitions of various popes. Their frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires. James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John, and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the petty Italian prince. _Corruptio optimi pessima_. The lower dragged the higher nature down. If the Papal Court was distinguished from the courts of other Italian sovereigns, it was not by exceptional purity. "In this Court as in others," wrote Silvester de Giglis from Rome, "nothing can be effected without gifts."[654] The election of Leo X. was said to be free from bribery; a cardinal himself was amazed, and described the event as _Phoenix et rara avis_.[655] If poison was not a frequent weapon at Rome, popes and cardinals at least believed it to be. Alexander VI. was said to have been poisoned; one cardinal was accused of poisoning his fellow-cardinal, Bainbridge; and others were charged with an attempt on the life of Leo X.[656] In 1517, Pace (p. 230) described the state of affairs at Rome as _plane monstra, omni dedecore et infamia plena; omnis fides, omnis honestas, una cum religione, a mundo abvolasse videntur_.[657] Ten years later, the Emperor himself declared that the sack of Rome was the just judgment of God, and one of his ambassadors said that the Pope ought to be deprived of his temporal states, as they had been at the bottom of all the dissensions.[658] Clement himself claimed to have been the originator of that war which brought upon him so terrible and so just a punishment.

[Footnote 653: _L. and P._, i., 3838, 3876.]

[Footnote 654: _Ibid._, ii., 3781; _cf._, i., 4283, "all here have regard only to their own honour and profit".]

[Footnote 655: _Ibid._, ii., 2362.]

[Footnote 656: _L. and P._, ii., 3277, 3352.]

[Footnote 657: _Ibid._, ii., 3523.]

[Footnote 658: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 209, 210, 309; _cf._, _L. and P._, iv., 3051, 3352. Clement had given away Sicily and Naples to one of Charles's vassals "which dealing may make me not take him as Pope, no, not for all the excommunications that he can make; for I stand under appellation to the next general council". Every one--Charles V., Henry VIII., Cranmer--played an appeal to the next general council against the Pope's excommunication.]

Another result of the merging of the Pope in the Italian prince was the practical exclusion of the English and other Northern nations from the supreme council of Christendom. There was no apparent reason why an Englishman should not be the head of the Christian Church just as well as an Italian; but there was some incongruity in the idea of an Englishman ruling over Italian States, and no Englishman had attained the Papacy for nearly four centuries. The double failure of Wolsey made it clear that the door of the Papacy was sealed to Englishmen, whatever their claims might be. The roll of cardinals tells a similar tale; the Roman curia graciously conceded that there should generally be one English cardinal in the sacred college, but one in a body (p. 231) of forty or fifty was thought as much as England could fairly demand. It is not so very surprising that England repudiated the authority of a tribunal in which its influence was measured on such a contemptible scale. The other nations of Europe thought much the same, and it is only necessary to add up the number of cardinals belonging to each nationality to arrive at a fairly accurate indication of the peoples who rejected papal pretensions. The nations most inadequately represented in the college of cardinals broke away from Rome; those which remained faithful were the nations which controlled in the present, or might hope to control in the future, the supreme ecclesiastical power. Spain and France had little temptation to abolish an authority which they themselves wielded in turn; for if the Pope was a Spaniard to-day, he might well be a Frenchman to-morrow. There was no absurdity in Frenchmen or Spaniards ruling over the papal States; for France and Spain already held under their sway more Italian territory than Italian natives themselves. It was the subjection of the Pope to French and Spanish domination that prejudiced his claims in English eyes. His authority was tolerable so long as the old ideal of the unity of Christendom under a single monarch retained its force, or even so long as the Pope was Italian pure and simple. But when Italy was either Spanish or French, and the Pope the chaplain of one or the other monarch, the growing spirit of nationality could bear it no longer; it responded at once to Henry's appeals against the claims of a foreign jurisdiction.

It was a mere accident that the breach with Rome grew out of Spanish control of the Pope. The separation was nearly effected more than (p. 232) a century earlier, as a result of the Pope's Babylonish captivity in France; and the wonder is, not that the breach took place when it did, but that it was deferred for so long. At the beginning of the fifteenth century all the elements were present but one for the ecclesiastical revolution which was reserved for Henry VIII. to effect. The Papacy had been discredited in English eyes by subservience to France, just as it had in 1529 by subservience to Charles. Lollardy was more powerful in England in the reign of Henry IV. than heresy was in the middle of that of Henry VIII. There was as strong a demand for the secularisation of Church property on the part of the lay peers and gentry; and Wycliffe himself had anticipated the cardinal point of the later movement by appealing to the State to reform the Church. But great revolutions depend on a number of causes working together, and often fail for the lack of one. The element lacking in the reign of Henry IV. was the King himself. The Lancastrians were orthodox from conviction and from the necessities of their position; they needed the support of the Church to bolster up a weak title to the crown. The civil wars followed; and Henry VII. was too much absorbed in securing his throne to pursue any quarrels with Rome. But when his son began to rule as well as to reign, it was inevitable that not merely questions of Church property and of the relations with the Papacy should come up for revision, but also those issues between Church and State which had remained in abeyance during the fifteenth century. The divorce was the spark which ignited the flame, but the combustible materials had been long existent. If the divorce had been all, there would have been no Reformation in England. After the death of Anne Boleyn, Henry (p. 233) might have done some trifling penance at his subjects' expense, made the Pope a present, or waged war on one of Clement's orthodox foes, and that would have been the end. Much had happened since the days of Hildebrand, and Popes were no longer able to exact heroic repentance. The divorce, in fact, was the occasion, and not the cause, of the Reformation.

* * * * *

That movement, so far as Henry VIII. was concerned, was not in essence doctrinal; neither was it primarily a schism between the English and Roman communions. It was rather an episode in the eternal dispute between Church and State. Throughout the quarrel, Henry and Elizabeth maintained that they were merely reasserting their ancient royal prerogative over the Church, which the Pope of Rome had usurped. English revolutions have always been based on specious conservative pleas, and the only method of inducing Englishmen to change has been by persuasions that the change is not a change at all, or is a change to an older and better order. The Parliaments of the seventeenth century regarded the Stuart pretensions, as Henry and Elizabeth did those of the Pope, in the light of usurpations upon their own imprescriptible rights; and more recently, movements to make the Church Catholic have been based on the ground that it has never been anything else. The Tudor contention that the State was always supreme over the Church has been transformed into a theory that the Church was always at least semi-independent of Rome. But it is not so clear that the Church has always been anti-papal, as that the English laity have always been anti-clerical.

The English people were certainly very anti-sacerdotal from the (p. 234) the very beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign. In 1512 James IV. complained to Henry that Englishmen seized Scots merchants, ill-treated them, and abused them as "the Pope's men".[659] At the end of the same year Parliament deprived of their benefit of clergy all clerks under the rank of sub-deacon who committed murder or felony.[660] This measure at once provoked a cry of "the Church in danger". The Abbot of Winchcombe preached that the act was contrary to the law of God and to the liberties of the Church, and that the lords, who consented thereto, had incurred a liability to spiritual censures. Standish, warden of the Mendicant Friars of London, defended the action of Parliament, while the temporal peers requested the bishops to make the Abbot of Winchcombe recant.[661] They refused, and, at the Convocation of 1515, Standish was summoned before it to explain his conduct. He appealed to the King; the judges pronounced that all who had taken part in the proceedings against Standish had incurred the penalties of _praemunire_. They also declared that the King could hold a Parliament without the spiritual lords, who only sat in virtue of their temporalties. This opinion seems to have nothing to do with (p. 235) the dispute, but it is remarkable that, in one list of the peers attending the Parliament of 1515, there is not a single abbot.[662]

[Footnote 659: _L. and P._, i., 3320. In 1516 one Humphrey Bonner preached a sermon ridiculing the Holy See (_ibid._, ii., 2692).]

[Footnote 660: In this, as in many other reforms, the English Parliament only anticipated the action of the Church; for on 12th February, 1516, Leo X. issued a bull prohibiting any one from being admitted, for the next five years, into minor orders unless he were simultaneously promoted to be sub-deacon; as many persons, to avoid appearing before the civil courts and to enjoy immunity, received the tonsure and minor orders without proceeding to the superior (_L. and P._, ii., 1532).]

[Footnote 661: _L. and P._, ii., 1313. Brewer impugns the authority of Keilway's report of this incident on the ground that he lived in Elizabeth's reign; that is true, but according to the _D.N.B._ he was born in 1497, which makes him a strictly contemporary authority.]

[Footnote 662: _L. and P._, ii., 1131.]

With regard to the Abbot of Winchcombe and Friar Standish, the prelates claimed the same liberty of speech for Convocation as was enjoyed by Parliament; so that they could, without offence, have maintained certain acts of Parliament to be against the laws of the Church.[663] Wolsey interceded on their behalf, and begged that the matter might be left to the Pope's decision, while Henry contented himself with a declaration that he would maintain intact his royal jurisdiction. This was not all that passed during that session of Parliament and Convocation. At the end of his summary of the proceedings, Dr. John Taylor, who was both clerk of Parliament and prolocutor of Convocation, remarks: "In this Parliament and Convocation the most dangerous quarrels broke out between the clergy and the secular power, respecting the Church's liberties";[664] and there exists a remarkable petition presented to this Parliament against clerical exactions; it complained that the clergy refused burial until after the gift of the deceased's best jewel, best garment or the like, and demanded that every curate should administer the sacrament when required to do so.[665] It was no wonder that Wolsey advised "the more speedy dissolution" of this Parliament,[666] and that, except in 1523, when financial straits compelled him, he did not call another while he remained in power. His fall was the sign (p. 236) for the revival of Parliament, and it immediately took up the work where it was left in 1515.

[Footnote 663: _Ibid._, ii., 1314.]

[Footnote 664: _Ibid._, ii., 1312.]

[Footnote 665: _Ibid._, ii., 1315; _cf._ another petition to the same effect from the inhabitants of London (_ibid._, i., 5725 (i.)).]

[Footnote 666: _Ibid._, ii., 1223.]

These significant proceedings did not stand alone. In 1515 the Bishop of London's chancellor was indicted for the murder of a citizen who had been found dead in the Bishop's prison.[667] The Bishop interceded with Wolsey to prevent the trial; any London jury would, he said, convict any clerk, "be he innocent as Abel; they be so maliciously set _in favorem haereticae pravitatis_".[668] The heresy was no matter of belief, but hatred of clerical immunities. The _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, wrote More to Erasmus in 1516, was "popular everywhere";[669] and no more bitter a satire had yet been penned on the clergy. In this matter Henry and his lay subjects were at one. Standish, whom Taylor describes as the promoter and instigator of all these evils, was a favourite preacher at Henry's Court. The King, said Pace, had "often praised his doctrine".[670] But what was it? It was no advocacy of Henry's loved "new learning," for Standish denounced the Greek Testament of Erasmus, and is held up to ridicule by the great Dutch humanist;[671] Standish, too, was afterwards a stout defender of the Pope's dispensing power, and followed Fisher in his protest against the divorce before the legatine Court. The doctrine, which pleased the King so much, was Standish's denial of clerical immunity from State control, and his assertion of royal prerogatives over the Church. (p. 237) In 1518 the Bishopric of St. Asaph's fell vacant. Wolsey, who was then at the height of his power, recommended Bolton,[672] prior of St. Bartholomew's, a learned man; but Henry was resolved to reward his favourite divine, and Standish obtained the see. Pace, a good churchman, expressed himself to Wolsey as "mortified" at the result, but said it was inevitable, as besides the King's good graces, Standish enjoyed "the favour of all the courtiers for the singular assistance he has rendered towards subverting the Church of England".[673]

[Footnote 667: See Dr. Gairdner, _History of English Church in Sixteenth Century_, ch. iii., where the story of Richard Hunne is critically examined in detail. Its importance consists, however, not in the question whether Hunne was or was not murdered by the Bishop's chancellor Horsey, but in the popular hostility to the clergy revealed by the incident.]

[Footnote 668: _L. and P._, ii., 2.]

[Footnote 669: _Ibid._, ii., 2492.]

[Footnote 670: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]

[Footnote 671: _Ibid._, iii., 929.]

[Footnote 672: _L. and P._, ii., 4082.]

[Footnote 673: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]

Eleven more years were to roll before the Church was subverted. They were years of Wolsey's supremacy; he alone stood between the Church and its subjection. It was owing, wrote Campeggio, in 1528, to Wolsey's vigilance and solicitude that the Holy See retained its rank and dignity.[674] His ruin would drag down the Church, and the fact was known to Anne Boleyn and her faction, to Campeggio and Clement VII., as well as to Henry VIII.[675] "These Lords intend," wrote Du Bellay, on the eve of Wolsey's fall, "after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the State of the Church, and take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in cipher, for they proclaim it openly. I expect they will do fine miracles."[676] A few days later he says, "I expect the priests will never have the great seal again; and that in this Parliament they will have terrible alarms. I think Dr. Stephen (Gardiner) will have a good deal to do with the management of affairs, _especially if he will abandon his order_."[677] At Easter, 1529, Lutheran books were circulating in Henry's Court, advocating the (p. 238) confiscation of ecclesiastical property and the restoration of his Church to its primitive simplicity. Campeggio warned the King against them and maintained that it had been determined by councils and theologians that the Church justly held her temporalties. Henry retorted that according to the Lutherans "those decisions were arrived at by ecclesiastics and now it was necessary for the laity to interpose".[678] In his last interview with Henry, Campeggio "alluded to this Parliament, which is about to be holden, and I earnestly pressed upon him the liberty of the Church. He certainly seemed to me very well disposed to exert his power to the utmost."[679] "Down with the Church" was going to be the Parliament cry. Whether Henry would really "exert his power" to maintain her liberties remained to be seen, but there never was a flimsier theory than that the divorce of Catherine was the sole cause of the break with Rome. The centrifugal forces were quite independent of the divorce; its historical importance lies in the fact that it alienated from Rome the only power in England which might have kept them in check. So long as Wolsey and the clerical statesmen, with whom he surrounded the King, remained supreme, the Church was comparatively safe. But Wolsey depended entirely on Henry's support; when that was withdrawn, Church and Cardinal fell together.

[Footnote 674: _Ibid._, iv., 4898.]

[Footnote 675: _Ibid._, iv., 5210, 5255, 5581, 5582.]

[Footnote 676: _Ibid._, iv., 6011.]

[Footnote 677: _Ibid._, 6019.]

[Footnote 678: _L. and P._, iv., 5416.]

[Footnote 679: _Ibid._, iv., 5995. Henry VIII. no doubt also had his eye on Gustavus in Sweden where the Vesteraes Recess of 1527 had provided that all episcopal, capitular and monastic property which was not absolutely required should be handed over to the King, and conferred upon him an ecclesiastical jurisdiction as extensive as that afterwards conferred upon Henry VIII. (_Cambridge Modern Hist._, ii., 626).]

Wolsey's ruin was, however, due to more causes than his failure (p. 239) to get a divorce for the King. It was at bottom the result of the natural development of Henry's character. Egotism was from the first his most prominent trait; it was inevitably fostered by the extravagant adulation paid to Tudor sovereigns, and was further encouraged by his realisation, first of his own mental powers, and then of the extent to which he could force his will upon others. He could never brook a rival in whatever sphere he wished to excel. In the days of his youth he was absorbed in physical sports, in gorgeous pageantry and ceremonial; he was content with such exhibitions as prancing before the ladies between every course in a tourney, or acting as pilot on board ship, blowing a whistle as loud as a trumpet, and arrayed in trousers of cloth of gold. Gradually, as time wore on, the athletic mania wore off, and pursuits, such as architecture, took the place of physical sports. A generation later, a writer describes Henry as "the only Phoenix of his time for fine and curious masonry".[680] From his own original designs York House was transformed into Whitehall Palace, Nonsuch Palace was built, and extensive alterations were made at Greenwich and Hampton Court.

[Footnote 680: Harrison, _Description of England_, in Holinshed, ed. 1577, bk. ii., chap. ix.]

But architecture was only a trifle; Henry's uncontrollable activity also broke out in political spheres, and the eruption was fatal to Wolsey's predominance. The King was still in the full vigour of manhood; he had not reached his fortieth year, and his physical graces were the marvel of those who saw him for the first time. Falier, the new Venetian ambassador, who arrived in England in 1529, is as (p. 240) rapturous over the King's personal attractions as Giustinian or Pasqualigo had been. "In this Eighth Henry," he writes, "God has combined such corporeal and intellectual beauty as not merely to surprise but astound all men.... His face is angelic (nine years before a Frenchman had called it "feminine"), rather than handsome; his head imperial and bold; and he wears a beard, contrary to the English custom. Who would not be amazed, when contemplating such singular beauty of person, coupled with such bold address, adapting itself with the greatest ease to every manly exercise?"[681] But Henry's physique was no longer proof against every ailment; frequent mention is made about this time of headaches[682] which incapacitated him from business, and it was not long before there appeared on his leg the fistula which racked him with pain till the end of his life, and eventually caused his death.

[Footnote 681: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 184, 185, 293.]

[Footnote 682: _L. and P._, iv., 4546. Henry had had small-pox in February, 1514 (_ibid._, i., 4831), without any serious consequences, but apart from that he had had no great illness.]

The divorce and the insuperable obstacles, which he discovered in attaining the end he thought easy at first, did more to harden Henry's temper than any bodily ills. He became a really serious man, and developed that extraordinary power of self-control which stood him in good stead in his later years. Naturally a man of violent passions, he could never have steered clear of the dangers that beset him without unusual capacity for curbing his temper, concealing his intentions, and keeping his own counsel. Ministers might flatter themselves that they could read his mind and calculate his actions, but it is quite certain that henceforth no minister read so clearly his master's (p. 241) mind as the master did his minister's. "Three may keep counsel," said the King in 1530,[683] "if two be away; and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel, I would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never," comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior--the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness--there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much subtlety, combined with so much strength."

[Footnote 683: Cavendish, _Life of Wolsey_, p. 397.]

[Footnote 684: Brewer, Introd. to _L. and P._, iv., p. dcxxi.]

In spite of his remorseless blows and arbitrary temper, Henry was too shrewd and too great a man to despise the counsel of others, or think any worse of an adviser because his advice differed from his own. He loved to meet argument with argument, even when he might command. To the end of his days he valued a councillor who would honestly maintain the opposite of what the King desired. These councillors to whom he gave his confidence were never minions or servile flatterers. Henry had his Court favourites with whom he hunted and shot and diced; with whom he played--always for money--tennis, primero and bowls, and the more mysterious games of Pope July, Imperial and Shovelboard;[685] and to whom he threw many an acre of choice monastic land. But they never influenced his policy. No man was ever advanced to political (p. 242) power in Henry's reign, merely because he pandered to the King's vanity or to his vices. No one was a better judge of conduct in the case of others, or a sterner champion of moral probity, when it did not conflict with his own desires or conscience. In 1528 Anne Boleyn and her friends were anxious to make a relative abbess of Wilton.[686] But she had been notoriously unchaste. "Wherefore," wrote Henry to Anne herself, "I would not, for all the gold in the world, cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour; nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so distain mine honour or conscience." He objected, on similar grounds, to the prioress whom Wolsey wished to nominate; the Cardinal neglected Henry's wishes, and thereby called down upon himself a rebuke remarkable for dignity and delicacy. "The great affection and love I bear you," wrote the King, "causeth me, using the doctrine of my Master, saying _Quem diligo, castigo_, thus plainly, as ensueth, to break to you my mind.... Methink it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant, when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and judgment (specially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest), to elect and choose a person which was by him defended (forbidden). And yet another thing, which much displeaseth me more,--that is, to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my determinate mind in that behalf." Then, after showing how empty were Wolsey's excuses, he continues: "Ah! my Lord, it is a double offence, both to do ill and colour it too; but with (p. 243) men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more hateth it." He then proceeds to warn the Cardinal against sinister reports with regard to his methods of raising money for his college at Oxford. "They say the college is a cloak for all mischief. I perceive by your letter that you have received money of the exempts for having their old visitors. If your legacy (legatine authority) is a cloak _apud homines_, it is not _apud Deum_. I doubt not, therefore, you will desist." Wolsey had used his legatine authority to extort money from monasteries as the price of their immunity from his visitatorial powers. The monasteries, too, had strenuously opposed the late Amicable Loan to the King; by Wolsey's means they had been released from that obligation; and Henry strongly suspected that they had purchased their exemption from relieving his necessities by lavish contributions to the Cardinal's colleges. "I pray you, my Lord," he concludes, "think not that it is upon any displeasure that I write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge afore God, being in the room that I am in; and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you." Henry possessed in the highest degree not a few of the best of kingly attributes. His words are not the words of a hypocrite without conscience, devoid of the fear of God and man. For all the strange and violent things that he did, he obtained the sanction of his conscience, but his imperious egotism made conscience his humble slave, and blinded to his own sins a judgment so keen to detect and chastise the failings of others.

[Footnote 685: See various entries in Privy Purse Expenses, _L. and P._, v., 747-62.]

[Footnote 686: _L. and P._, iv., 4477, 4488, 4507, 4509.]

These incidents, of more than a year before the Cardinal's fall, (p. 244) illustrate the change in the respective positions of monarch and minister. There was no doubt now which was the master; there was no king but one. Henry was already taking, as Du Bellay said, "the management of everything".[687] Wolsey himself knew that he had lost the King's confidence. He began to talk of retirement. He told Du Bellay, in or before August, 1528, that when he had established a firm amity between France and England, extinguished the hatred between the two nations, reformed the laws and customs of England, and settled the succession, he would retire and serve God to the end of his days.[688] The Frenchman thought this was merely to represent as voluntary a loss of power which he saw would soon be inevitable; but the conversation is a striking illustration of the difference between Henry and Wolsey, and helps to explain why Wolsey accomplished so little that lasted, while Henry accomplished so much. The Cardinal seems to have been entirely devoid of that keen perception of the distinction between what was, and what was not, practicable, which was Henry's saving characteristic. In the evening of his days, after sixteen years of almost unlimited power, he was speaking of plans, which might have taxed the energies of a life-time, as preliminaries to a speedy withdrawal from the cares of State. He had enjoyed an unequalled opportunity of effecting these reforms, but what were the results of his administration? The real greatness and splendour of Henry's reign are said to have departed with Wolsey's fall.[689] The gilt and the tinsel were indeed stripped off, but the permanent results of (p. 245) Henry's reign were due to its later course. Had he died when Wolsey fell, what would have been his place in history? A brilliant figure, no doubt, who might have been thought capable of much, had he not failed to achieve anything. He had made wars from which England derived no visible profit; not an acre of territory had been acquired; the wealth, amassed by Henry VII., had been squandered, and Henry VIII., in 1529, was reduced to searching for gold mines in England.[690] The loss of his subjects' blood and treasure had been followed by the loss of their affections. The exuberant loyalty of 1509 had been turned into the wintry discontent of 1527. England had been raised to a high place in the councils of Europe by 1521, but her fall was quite as rapid, and in 1525 she counted for less than she had done in 1513. At home the results were equally barren; the English hold on Ireland was said, in 1528, to be weaker than it had been since the conquest;[691] and the English statute-book between 1509 and 1529 may be searched in vain for an act of importance, while the statute-book between 1529 and 1547 contains a list of acts which have never been equalled for their supreme importance in the subsequent history of England.

[Footnote 687: _L. and P._, iv., 5983; _cf._ iv., 3992, where Henry has an interview (March, 1528) with a Scots ambassador and tells no one about it.]

[Footnote 688: _Ibid._, iv., 4649.]

[Footnote 689: Brewer, _Ibid._, iv., Introd., p. dcxxii.]

[Footnote 690: _L. and P._, iv., 5209. One Hochstetter was imported from Germany in connection with "the gold mines that the King was seeking for" (Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 25th January, 1529).]

[Footnote 691: _Ibid._, iv., 4933.]

Wolsey's policy was, indeed, a brilliant fiasco; with a pre-eminent genius for diplomacy, he thought he could make England, by diplomacy alone, arbiter of Europe. Its position in 1521 was artificial; it had not the means to support a grandeur which was only built on the wealth left by Henry VII. and on Wolsey's skill. England owed her advance (p. 246) in repute to the fact that Wolsey made her the paymaster of Europe. "The reputation of England for wealth," said an English diplomatist in 1522, "is a great cause of the esteem in which it is held."[692] But, by 1523, that wealth had failed; Parliament refused to levy more taxes, and Wolsey's pretensions collapsed like a pack of cards. He played no part in the peace of Cambrai, which settled for the time the conditions of Europe. When rumours of the clandestine negotiations between France and Spain reached England, Wolsey staked his head to the King that they were pure invention.[693] He could not believe that peace was possible, unless it were made by him. But the rumours were true, and Henry exacted the penalty. The positive results of the Cardinal's policy were nil; the chief negative result was that he had staved off for many years the ruin of the Church, but he only did it by plunging England in the maelstrom of foreign intrigue and of futile wars.

[Footnote 692: _L. and P._, iii., 1978.]

[Footnote 693: _Ibid._, iv., 5231.]

The end was not long delayed. "I see clearly," writes Du Bellay on 4th October, 1529, "that by this Parliament Wolsey will completely lose his influence; I see no chance to the contrary."[694] Henry anticipated the temper of Parliament. A bill of indictment was preferred against him in the Court of King's Bench, and on the 22nd of October he acknowledged his liability to the penalties of _praemunire_.[695] The Great Seal was taken from him by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. In November the House of Lords passed a bill of attainder against him, but the Commons were persuaded by Cromwell, acting with Henry's (p. 247) connivance, to throw it out. "The King," wrote Chapuys, "is thought to bear the Cardinal no ill-will;" and Campeggio thought that he would "not go to extremes, but act considerately in this matter, as he is accustomed to do in all his actions."[696] Wolsey was allowed to retain the Archbishopric of York, a sum in money and goods equivalent to at least L70,000, and a pension of 1,000 marks from the See of Winchester.[697] In the following spring he set out to spend his last days in his northern see; six months he devoted to his archiepiscopal duties, confirming thousands of children, arranging disputes among neighbours, and winning such hold on the hearts of the people as he had never known in the days of his pride. Crowds in London had flocked to gloat over the sight of the broken man; now crowds in Yorkshire came to implore his blessing.

[Footnote 694: _Ibid._, iv., 5983.]

[Footnote 695: _Ibid._, iv., 6017.]

[Footnote 696: _L. and P._, iv., 6199, 6050; _cf._ iv., 6295, where Henry orders Dacre to treat Wolsey as became his rank; _Ven. Cal._, 1529, p. 237.]

[Footnote 697: _Ibid._, iv., 6220.]

He prepared for his installation at York on 7th November, 1530; on the 4th he was arrested for treason. His Italian physician, Agostini, had betrayed him; he was accused of having asked Francis I. to intercede with Henry on his behalf, which was true;[698] and he seems also to have sought the mediation of Charles V. But Agostini further declared that Wolsey had written to Clement, urging him to excommunicate Henry and raise an insurrection, by which the Cardinal might recover his power.[699] By Pontefract, Doncaster, Nottingham, with feeble (p. 248) steps and slow, the once-proud prelate, broken in spirit and shattered in health, returned to meet his doom. His gaol was to be the cell in the Tower, which had served for the Duke of Buckingham.[700] But a kindlier fate than a traitor's death was in store. "I am come," he said to the monks of Leicester Abbey, "I am come to leave my bones among you." He died there at eight o'clock on St. Andrew's morning, and there, on the following day, he was simply and quietly buried. "If," he exclaimed in his last hour, "I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs." That cry, wrung from Wolsey, echoed throughout the Tudor times.[701] Men paid _le nouveau Messie_ a devotion they owed to the old; they rendered unto Caesar the things that were God's. They reaped their reward in riches and pomp and power, but they won no peace of mind. The favour of princes is fickle, and "the wrath of the King is death". So thought Wolsey and Warham and Norfolk. "Is that all?" said More, with prophetic soul, to Norfolk; "then in good faith between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you shall die to-morrow."[702]

[Footnote 698: _Ibid._, iv., 6018, 6199, 6273, 6738.]

[Footnote 699: De Vaux writes on 8th November, 1530, to Montmorenci, that the King had told him "where and how" Wolsey had intrigued against him, but he does not repeat the information (_ibid._, iv., 6720), though Bryan's remark (_ibid._, iv., 6733) that "De Vaux has done well in disclosing the misdemeanour of the Cardinal" suggests that De Vaux knew more than he says.]

[Footnote 700: So Chapuys reports (iv., 6738); that Wolsey had used Agostini to sound Chapuys is obvious from the latter's remark, "were the physician to say all that passed between us, he could not do anything to impugn me".]

[Footnote 701: _Cf._ Buckingham's remark in _L. and P._, iii., 1356: "An he had not offended no more unto God than he had done to the Crown, he should die as true a man as ever was in the world".]

[Footnote 702: _D.N.B._, xxxviii., 437.]