Both the King and Anne Boleyn believed that Wolsey had played false
with them. They now resolved upon his destruction. The Cardinal had
a presentiment of his impending doom. The French ambassador, who saw
him at this juncture, said that his face had shrunk to half its size.
But his fortunes were destined to shrink even more than his face.
By a law of Richard II no representative of the Pope had any rightful
authority in England[1] (S265). Though the King had given his consent
to Wolsey's holding the office of legate, yet now that a contrary
result to what he expected had been reached, he proceeded to prosecute
him to the full extent of the law.
[1] Act of Praemunire. See S243 and Summary of Constitutional History
in the Appendix, p. xiii, S14, and p. xxxii.
It was an easy matter for him to crush the Cardinal. Erasmus said of
him, "He was feared by all, he was loved by few--I may say by nobody."
His arrogance and extravagant ostentation had excited the jealous hate
of the nobility; his constant demands for money in behalf of the King
set Parliament against him; and his exactions from the common people
had, as the chronicle of the time tells us, made them weep, beg, and
"speak cursedly."
Wolsey bowed to the storm, and to save himself gave up everything; his
riches, pomp, power, all vanished as suddenly as they had come. It
was Henry's hand that stripped him, but it was Anne Boleyn who moved
that hand. Well might the humbled favorite say of her:
"There was the weight that pulled me down.
... all my glories
In that one woman I have lost forever."[1]
[1] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act III, scene ii.
Thus deprived of well-nigh everything but life, the Cardinal was
permitted to go into retirement in the north; less than a twelve-month
later he was arrested on a charge of high treason. Through the irony
of fate, the warrant was served by a former lover of Anne Boleyn's,
whom Wolsey, it is said, had separated from her in order that she
might consummate her unhappy marriage with royalty. On the way to
London Wolsey fell mortally ill, and turned aside at Leicester to die
in the abbey there, with the words:
"...O, Father Abbot,
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye:
Give him a little earth for charity!"[2]
[2] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act IV, scene ii.