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.]