THE PUNISHMENT.
Wolsey returned to Oxford resolved to think no more of Ipswich, the
Orwell, Freston Tower, Ellen, or the scenes of his youth. There was
a singular reaction of life in him about this time, for which some of
his warmest friends could not account. The learned, laborious,
enterprising scholar, became the indefatigable architect, devoting
the energies of his great mind to the ornamenting the loftiest
stories of his magnificent tower.
The funds of his college, assisted by contributions from noblemen and
gentlemen connected with Oxford, and from all whom he could inspire
with something of his own spirit were devoted to that building. Both
Wolsey's and Latimer's Tower are still standing; one still preserved
in all its grandeur as a noble feature of Oxford; the other, lonely
and deserted, still looks over the lovely river Orwell, and is the
wonder of all who sail down to Harwich.
Wolsey's Tower, splendid as it was, was not without deep
mortification to the great man. Men who understood not his design
abused it, and reports of his extravagance were set afloat. When
mentioned to the bursar, they only excited his contempt; for Wolsey
well knew that he honored his college by not robbing her of funds
left for the encouragement of learned men, and whilst he expended so
much in raising a monument to his own magnificence, he did not
misapply one single angel to that work which was legally and justly
devoted to other purposes. The fact was, that as the Tower was near
its completion, and was seen to be so fair an ornament to the
University, he received from other colleges pecuniary assistance, and
never burthened his own with the expense.
His mind was greatly diverted by the interest he took in the
accomplishment of this undertaking; and if any one was impoverished
by it, it was Wolsey himself, who expended his utmost farthing in its
completion.
Yet, however diverted, he was not insensible to the carpings of some,
and the inadequacy of his private finances. So that when the work
was done, the scaffolding taken down, and it stood exposed in all its
elegance, like every other great performance of man's hand and mind,
it gave not its author the satisfaction he anticipated, but
occasioned him much annoyance.
Few men live to see their own works admired, and it is well perhaps
they do not, for if their only pleasure in them is the thought of
man's admiration, and not the employment of their time and talents
from a high sense of duty, which alone gives pleasure, they would be
elevated and depressed by critical declamations to an unreasonable
extent.
Soon after Wolsey had built his Tower, he left the University to go
and reside upon the living of Lymington, which the Marquis of Dorset
had bestowed upon him for the care and attention he had paid to the
education of his sons. His fame had been by this time pretty well
disseminated among all the nobility and gentry who valued literature.
The Boy Bachelor had become the great Oxford man; and Magdalen Tower
had given him a name for taste and elegance which, in those days of
internal disruption between the Houses of York and Lancaster, had
been almost forgotten.
When Wolsey left Oxford he seemed to break off from the accustomed
restraint of scholastic discipline, which he had acquired during his
situation as tutor and schoolmaster. Men were surprised to find the
staid and learned priest the free and joyous companion in the
country, the life and soul of the great houses throughout the
counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Hants.
The Marquis of Dorset had introduced him to the resident gentry
around him, and he met at his hospital board Sir John Nafant, who
became particularly attached to him. He delighted to hear him
discourse, and encouraged him in all his sallies of wit. From Sir
John he received repeated invitations to partake of hospitality; and,
though their years were dissimilar, their tastes for literature and
knowledge were alike.
Wolsey made a great impression upon this worthy knight, who not only
conversed with him upon affairs of state, as then existing in
England, but corresponded with him on foreign affairs, and was
equally astonished at his comprehensive estimate of the resources of
the kingdoms of Europe.
Sir John did not forget to make a very handsome tribute offering to
Wolsey, in acknowledgment of those talents which he displayed.
To none had Wolsey revealed the early disappointment he had met with,
which he neither then nor afterward--though fields of ambition and
vain-glory lay in his way--could totally forget.
Neither cloistered walls nor lofty battlements, neither profound
learning, nor great estates, can change a man who has once imbibed
licentiousness of spirit, and suffered it to usurp the place of love
in the human heart. A man who does wrong, and persists in it without
shame, let the wrong be the transgression of any moral commandment of
God, will find a very poor excuse for his conduct, however much he
may be devoted to learning, and to art or science.
No robes, however white, which a man can put on, will cover the
licentiousness of a corrupt heart. No crown--not even the triple one
which adorns the head of the Pope--can free a man from the troubles
of conscience. Better for him to cease to do evil, and learn to do
well, than to bestow all his estates upon the priesthood, who may
mutter masses for his soul, which can never be released from sin but
by the obedience of faith.
Sir Amias Pawlet, a knight whom Wolsey met one day at the table of
the Marquis of Dorset, was a man of very different character to Sir
John Nafant. He saw with a jealous eye the ambition of this young
priest, who seemed to delight in holding him up to the company as an
ignorant county magistrate. Wolsey was certainly not gifted just at
this time with that amiability of mind and temper which could brook
the overbearing arrogance of a man who seemed to think himself
superior to all others in the country.
At the table of his patron, Wolsey scarcely refrained from exposing
his ignorance. He narrated a very simple and pithy story about a
pullet who assumed all the dignity of the dunghill, and looked down
with contempt on all other fowls. He exposed the want of judgment
and flippant manner of the pullet with such force and pointed wit,
that Sir Amias, who perceived it to be levelled at him, was greatly
disconcerted, and threatened Wolsey, for being a public slanderer,
with the penalty of the law.
It is certain that Wolsey's proud spirit was not humbled, but that
he, with a little more pretension to learning, was not less
tyrannical. Sir Amias Pawlet cared nothing for him. He was a man of
principle--a plain, straightforward man--grave, austere, and proud.
He was not deficient in spirit, and a love of truth and propriety,
though he was neither equal to Wolsey, Sir John Nafant, or the
Marquis of Dorset, in letters or knowledge of the world. He was one
of those strong-minded men, attached to the good laws of the land he
lived in, and jealous too for the dignity of the church to which he
belonged. He was not, at the time treated of, a convert to the then
growing liberation of the souls of men from the corruptions of that
superstition which encompassed all Christendom, but he was sensibly
alive to the necessity of propriety in the character of the
priesthood, and a man who was too earnest and sincere in his
profession of religion to admit of any licentiousness.
It was not likely that such a man, coming in contact with the learned
and expansive genius of the young Wolsey, should shine before him.
He did not, for he bent not to the idol of popular greatness, when he
saw in him a regard only for things expedient, and a certain freedom
of speech and behaviour, even in the company of the gentry of those
counties, which ill became the Oxford divine, the tutor of the
Marquis of Dorset's sons, and the great scholar of Magdalen.
'I like not your country squire, most noble peer,' said Wolsey to the
Marquis: 'he is ignorant and positive, sturdy and absolute, and would
do better for a jailer than for a magistrate of this county.'
'I like not your visitor, my lord,' said Sir Amias to the Marquis.
'He is much too clever and intriguing for my liking. He, no doubt,
would be a very convenient father confessor; but I should as soon
think of looking for absolution to your lordship's bloodhound as to
him.'
Now the Marquis was fully convinced that the priest of Lymington and
the knight of the shire were distasteful to each other; but as he
respected both, he kept his own counsel, and did not interfere with
their respective animosities.
It was no small sin in those days to speak anything disrespectful of
the priesthood. Rome had such authority over the nobility, had
invented so many intrigues of priest-craft, and had obtained such an
ascendancy over the families of the great, that she employed
qualified spies in every house to subject the inmates to penances,
and works of her own imposition, even for the slightest offences,
with which she could have nothing to do, and which could never take
away one single fault.
Sir Amias, however, was not to be imposed upon by any requirements on
the part of the priesthood to which they did not themselves submit:
and in his own family he was strict and conscientious, and expected
his priest to be the same.
It was about this time that one of his own servants returned from the
neighboring fair in a state of intoxication. The man was brought
before his master, who at that very time was conversing with the
confessor of his own family.
'How now, knave? this is not the first time thou hast been in bad
company; thou didst promise to avoid such men if I forgave thee.
Thou shall be put into the stocks, that all the country may know thee
for a drunkard as thou art.'
The half-witted man, who was sufficiently sober to comprehend what
was said to him, and was sufficiently filled with sack not to be
afraid of his master, looked very knowingly at him and the confessor.
'I's been in good company, master, very good; and if the stocks are
lifted up for my legs, I hope you'll give me some o' the good company
I ha' been in, to keep me in countenance there. There's many more
like me, master; and there's one there as good as yoursel--or your
reverence,' bowing to the priest. 'You're very even-handed, master,
and my good company I've been in might qualify even a better man than
me to be a little merry. I's only like my betters.'
The knight looked at the priest; and the priest looked at the man,
and both were puzzled at his words--but they did not speak at the
moment.
'Why you looks doubtful, both on you. Go and see; I's not so drunk
as not to know an owl when I sees one, though it might be the dusk of
the evening when he flies. Go you with master: you'll see!'
'Where are we to go, and what are we to see?'
'Go to the Masque and Mummers--and if you don't see one you dare not
put in the stocks, then don't put your own servant in; but if you
dare to see him, and dare to take him, and dare to trap him too--why
then trap me with him, and we'll be very good company for each other.
So, master, I'm your man; and when you find a poor fellow imitating
his betters, let his betters find the same law is made for him as for
one o' the worst like me.'
Sir Amias rose. He was not a man to flinch in the execution of the
law intrusted to him as a magistrate; and to his honor be it
recorded, he was not an unjust man, who would screen the rich at the
expense of the poor. Had it been the Marquis of Dorset himself, he
would have treated him exactly as he would a drunken vagabond, who
had not a shilling to help himself.
'There is too much truth in this fellow's audacity,' he replied, 'to
let this matter pass away unnoticed. It will be thrown in my teeth
by every servant I have, after this, if I dismiss this villain and
see not the company he has been in. Come, I will claim your
companionship. Let us go undisguised and openly, that he, and all
men may see what we do in the face of the law and our country.'
Sir Amias desired his servants to take the knave to the village
stocks. 'There wait,' said he, 'my company; and if I find a
companion in the state of intoxication he is in, let him be the
King's son, my loyalty to his father shall make the law take its
course, even with this fool.'
So spoke Sir Amias, and his resolution was equal to his words. The
knight and the priest set forth, and went as directed to the Masque
and Mummers. He had no definite idea as to the issue of his
proceeding; but like a brave soldier, strong in the fulfilment of his
duty, he marched up to the scene of riot, taking with him such
constables as he thought fit for the occasion.
A man of less determination might have been deterred from going to
the scene. A man with less sense of honor would not have done as he
did; and a man, who feared God and honored the King less, would have
been afraid to put the law in execution upon a man who presumed to be
of an order above all law, and yet chose to transgress.
Amidst a set of mummers, masks, and profligates, smugglers, and
debauchees, who should be holding forth, with spirits inflated with
sack, but Wolsey, the priest of Lymington. Sir Amias did not parley
with him in the least; though, in a moment, the fiery priest turned
upon him all the gibes of the company, and in his drunken revel, held
him up to ridicule before them.
It has been said, the knight was uncourteous; but though he knew that
man would accuse him of spite, he cared not for any one in the
discharge of his duty. The law is never stronger than when it deals
equal justice to all. Sir Amias felt that he could not punish his
own servant for a fault which the leader of the parish was himself
guilty of, without making him an example of the same punishment.
He at once put the law into execution, and with such determined
resolution, that the very company who, the moment before, were
disposed to laugh at the knight, were the first to join in roars of
ridicule at the priest of Lymington in the village stocks. He was,
indeed, laid by the heels by the gallant Sir Amias, a spectacle of
justice such as did no injury even to the man who endured it, but
served him right, not only because he ought to have known better, but
because he did know better, and was the worst of the two.
The two drunkards were a contrast, even in their cups. The servant
boasted of his company; and the priest railed against the law, the
knight, the stocks, and the people, and threatened them all with the
anathemas of Rome. Neither he nor his companion were released till
they were sober. One lost his situation as the servant of Sir Amias,
and the other found himself so uncomfortable in the company either of
nobles or commoners, after this affront to his dignity, that he
resigned his living into the hands of his patron; and accepted the
office of secretary to Sir John Nafant, who was then governor of
Calais.