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dressers, and it was great charity to find them; others said that now they would poll and pill in their counties, and oppress the poor people. Thus every man had his saying."

Very dishonorable, doubtless, all this, in the opinion of persons to whom right and wrong are alike consecrated by antiquity, and abuses overgrown till they are no longer tolerable, are the expanded virtues of the good old times.

It may be that Wolsey was unwisely splendid in his outward habits. It may be that, having been born in a poor man's family, he valued the magnificences and pomps of life more highly than they are valued by those to whom such things are familiar from their cradles. If it were so, the crime is a venial one. But to us his chief fault appears rather to have been too great recklessness of the opinion of others: he did not care to avoid the odium which so much display would inevitably entail upon him; an odium which he ought to have foreseen, and taken measures to escape. And yet his splendor was but one more exhibition of the same nature in him, which was every way great. Prodigally gifted with the most varied powers, with exquisite tastes of all kinds, taste for music, taste for painting, taste for architecture, taste for every thing which was beautiful or magnificent, the vast rewards which were heaped upon him from every court in Europe-rewards not for underhand service, but for honest work honestly doneenabled him to gratify such tastes in the most gorgeous manner; and he did gratify them, and that is all. If he had been born a nobleman, it would have been called honorable and glorious. In the son of the poor man, who had conquered his position, not by divine right of primogeniture, but by his own genius and the grace of God, it was vulgarity and paltry ostentation.

But inasmuch as any attempt at an active picture of what Wolsey was, is beyond our scope, and for the present we desire only to reopen the question whether he has, or has not, been fairly dealt with; this purpose will best be answered by narrowing our compass and confining ourselves to an examination of those special actions which have been made matter of heaviest complaint against him. And of these, perhaps, there will be as many as we shall be able to deal with-his aspirarations after the papacy, his conduct about Queen Catharine's divorce, and the (supposed) abject nature of his behavior in his disgrace.

The first and the last are represented as

the counterparts of each other; the same essential vulgarity of mind displaying itself alternately in the arrogancy of an enormous self-confidence, and in a prostrate imbecility when flung back upon its own resources. The second is what tells most heavily against him in the opinion of serious persons, and on so great a matter we shall of course be able to touch but slightly. We shall be able to see, however, the principles on which he acted; and if our view of his history be a correct one, they will be found remarkably characteristic of him.

First, then, for the matter of the popedom -the standard topic of declaration against him among the early Protestant writers; and there is a curious paralogism in their invectives which is not unamusing. On the one hand, the anti-Christian character of the Roman bishop is reflected upon the aspirant to the see. To be anti-Christ was bad, but to have desired to become anti-Christ was infinitely monstrous. On the other hand, the outward position of the popedom, the spiritual sovereignty of Europe, with an independent principality attached to it, placed its possessors on a level with crowned heads; and for the butcher's cur to aspire to such a dignity was an enormous audacity. Sweeping our minds clear of this and similar folly, and looking at the thing really as it was, it is hard to say why, if Wolsey felt any ambition to become pope, it was an ambition which he was not at perfect liberty to entertain. Being already a member of the College of Cardinals, from among whom the popes were chosen, why, if he so wished, might he not innocently desire a position which he was so admirably qualified to occupy? The fact happens to be, however, that he desired nothing of the kind; the pontifical throne not at that time being in such a condition that the seat upon it was in any way a thing to be coveted; the name of a power and not the thing, an authority without a sword, a spiritual empire in full mutiny, and the rulers of it left with no weapon to enforce order, except the idle thunders which had become but a vain sound--this was no position for which the first minister of the strongest power in Europe would gladly have exchanged his place, or which he would very readily have accepted, if it had been offered to him. Of course he would have accepted it, because he.at one time canvassed for it; but he canvassed for it without his own goodwill, and at the entreaty, and at last at the command, of Henry.

These are not assertions which do not ad-.

[Sept.,

sore afraid to come under your discipline; thirdly, that ye favored not all the best the emperor.To the which objections the Cardinal de Medici, [afterwards Clement the Seventh,] Campegius, plied, declaring your grace's merits and qualities, and Sedunensis, showed unto me that they rethat if the king's pleasure had been known, and without omitting any part thereof; assuring me that your grace would have accepted the said room, the matter would have taken effect. For the advancement whereof I did not greatly labor before their entry into the conclave, because your grace, at my departing, showed me precisely that faith, were not the king's persuasions, I should ye would never meddle therewith. And on my stand yet in great doubt whether your grace would accept it or no, if it were offered you, the thing is in such disorder, ruin, and decay, and every day shall be more and more, except God help and be long to write unto your grace of the reported Christian princes set their hands--It should chiding, brawling, and scolding between these cardinals, and of their great schisms of dissensions, their malicious, untruthful, uncharitable demeanor, one of them against the other, which every day increased while they were together."

mit of being proved. The first occasion on which he was named in the conclave was on the vacancy caused by the death of Leo the Tenth in 1522, the vacancy ultimately filled by Adrian the Sixth. That he was proposed at this time without his own knowledge, and by a spontaneous act of some of the Italian cardinals, is evident from the history of the election, which is related in the simplest manner in a letter to Wolsey himself from the English ambassador, where the general attitude of the different parties, the causes which led to the proposal of Wolsey, and the probable feelings with which he himself would be likely to regard the chances of his own election, are detailed with all the openness of confidential correspondence. Obviously, it was a thing which, in the opinion of the ambassador, he had never thought of, and which it was not likely that he would desire. Others, not himself, desired it for him, for no other reason than because he was the fittest person; and his election was not carried, on grounds in the highest degree honorable to him. The letter is printed by Ellis, 3d Series, vol. i., p. 307-8. The writer dinal, one after the other: the "heaped-up So disappear the legends of the great caris Dr. Clerke, afterwards Bishop of Worces- wealth," "to fee his friend in Rome to gain ter. He begins with the common story of the popedom;" the agony of mortified ambithe factions in the conclave; and tells them tion; Charles's promised help and broken with a naïvete which, considering the occa-word; Wolsey's revengeful spleen, and the sion of them, theoretically ought to be start- thousand other historic fancies with which ling. That is to say, in the election of the the story has been dressed supreme head of Christ's Church, the degree are all gone, up for us. They "like the baseless fabric of a of religious feeling amounted to nothing, and Dr. Clerke sees not the least occasion to be would that we could say we should never hear them more. It is true that, on surprised at it. He tells us of the Imperial the next vacancy, Wolsey did actively offer faction, of the French faction, the Medici | himself as a candidate: there are letters exfaction; how they divided this way and di- tant from him to his agent in Rome, vided that way, neither of them being strong ing the manner in which the canvass should directenough to carry their own man, and com- be conducted. The object was, to prevent the bining, therefore, in alternate pairs to defeat ascendancy of either the French or the Imthe third. Of any honest faction, either perial parties; and the election was to be actually existing, or even as a thing to be secured either to himself, or, if that proved desired, we hear nothing. impossible, to the Cardinal de Medici, who, it was then hoped, could be trusted as an inafterwards proved so fatally. In the volumidependent person, although the contrary was business is discussed, Wolsey invariably renous correspondence in which this whole presents himself as ready to undertake a position, on public considerations and because Henry desired it, to which he was personally much disinclined: so he writes to others, so he writes to the king, and so the king to him; and again, in communicating to Henry the election of the Cardinal de Medici, he writes in the tone of a person who was sincerely pleased with the result, and regarded it as a matter of congratulation both to the king

"In these distractions," he continues, " grace, as indifferent and very meet for the room, 'your was proposed, and, as I am credibly informed, had in every scrutiny certain voices; that is to say, in the first, nine; in the second, twelve; in the third, nineteen; and if by the varying of any of the said cardinals, three or four had made any access to the said nineteen, the residue were determined to have fallen in, and your grace unanimi consensu, had been chosen pope. Three objections were made by those of the contrary part; saying, first, your grace was too young; secondly, that they had certain knowledge that ye were determined to truth and the execution of justice; et ita tanquam assueti in hâc libertate et nimiâ vivendi licentiâ, divers of them were right

vision:

and himself. It is most natural that the English government, whose office was that of arbiter and peacemaker in the quarrels of Europe, should desire a person on the papal throne who would support the English policy; just as the French government desired a pope who would support Francis, and the emperor a pope exclusively Imperial. If there is one feature in the popular version of this matter more absurd than that of Wolsey's personal mortification at Charles's disappointing him of support, it is the idea that so shrewd-eyed a statesman could have supposed Charles's consent to his election under any circumstances a possibility. His letters, expressing an apparent unwillingness, have long been known; and shallow-brained historians have interpreted them as a young lady's verbal refusal of a proposal, or a bishop's "nolo episcopari." It is a misfortune that such writers are so ready in explaining the actions of public men, as resulting so invariably from private and paltry motives. If they had considered the simple and obvious points suggested by Dr. Clerke in the letters which we quoted, they could have seen that, even as a personal question of worldly interest, the primate and prime minister of England would have lost rather than gained by a change to the papacy.

There is nothing for a reasonable man to do, except to believe that, for once at least, Wolsey was saying no more than the truth: and that the real bearings of the case were those which were laid down by Clerke. The name of the papacy has a grand sound. It had been powerful in the earlier centuries: in the reaction against the Reformation it became powerful again. At the period at which it was within the reach of the English cardinal, it was at the lowest ebb of helpless discrepitude-as, indeed, this very poor Cardinal de Medici, his successful rival, had to learn, to his bitter cost, when, shut up in his castle of St. Angelo, he looked out upon his city of Rome in the hands of 50,000 brigands, his churches pillaged, his holy women polluted on the altar, his bishops shamefully mutilated in the streets, and his own image (in default of his most sacred person, which, if they could have caught, they would assuredly have treated in the same manner) paraded by a band of drunken Germans, on a mule's back about the city, with a damsel of a doubtful reputation lashed fast to it.

Surely when such a fate was impending over the papacy, it was not so great an object of ambition. Rather, we think, that when such a man as Wolsey gave his consent to be

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placed in nomination for it, we can but place such consent as a large item on the credit side of his account.

We will leave this most foolish matter, for one of infinitely greater significance.

Throughout the length of Henry the Eighth's much-questioned career, the one act for which he has been judged most heavily by posterity, and as a penal retribution for which his subsequent misfortunes are by many persons thought to have followed, was his separation from Catharine of Arragon. In the early years of his reign he prospered in all which he undertook: he was generous, chivalric, and humane: no sooner was that one false step taken than his entire nature is supposed to have undergone a change, and he became a barbarous and cruel tyrant; unfortunate because tyrannical. We do not say that this is what we ourselves believe, but it is very generally believed by others, and wears, it must be allowed, a strong outward versimilitude. Undoubtedly, whatever was the cause, Henry's actions and Henry's reign did, from that period, assume an entirely altered complexion.

There are, however, in that matter of the divorce, a number of circumstances that have not received that consideration which they deserve; and the question is not so simple as at first sight it appears. Many things, seen by the light of their consequences, throw shadows where shadows ought not to fall; and our business is rather the aspect of affairs which was presented to the actors in them, when that which is past to us was a dark and uncertain future. The king's proceedings are interpreted for us in the usual way, by personal feelings; he is represented as weary of his wife, and entertaining a passion for another woman, which he was unable to gratify by less violent methods. The course which he pursued is considered, therefore, unmixedly evil-evil in its origin, and evil in its execution; and all persons abetting him, Wolsey among the rest, so long as he remained on the king's side, are considered accomplices in his crime.

Now, without at this moment considering how far this account be or be not true, as regards Henry, we must call attention to certain facts in the existing condition of the kingdom which place the conduct of his council in a light widely different. If we appear to be flying off upon irrelevant matters, we must beg our readers to believe that it is not without reason; and that what we are going to say has a direct bearing upon the point at issue.

The succession to the English crown had never from the period of the Heptarchy been so distinctly settled in the line of primogeniture as to preclude repeated interruption of that line by methods violent or peaceful. In proportion to the degree of power vested in the sovereign, is the necessity that such power shall fall into the hands of a person not incompetent to exercise it; and the competency so much desired was found often in other members of the royal family than in the immediate and legitimate heir. Under the Saxon, it can be scarcely said that, even in theory, the father was succeeded by the son. Alfred was the youngest of four brothers who reigned all one after the other, though the second had several children: and questions of race, as between Harold and William, were often more important by far than consanguinity. Again, among the Normans, the same uncertainty prevailed; and although under the later Plantagenets, the succession descended for five generations without a break in the line of the eldest born, yet the custom had not yet so organized itself into a law that an interruption of it was regarded as a crime. Theoretically, Henry the Fourth was a usurper, and so were his son and grandson; and yet their usurpation only became a crime, when the sceptre passed into hands too feeble to defend it; and we cannot suppose that the terrible struggle between the rival Roses was caused by an inability to trace the steps of a very simple pedigree. It was not so clear that the right did really lie with the representative of the elder born, that a question might not be fairly raised upon it. Richard 111. preferred his claims as lawful, and Henry IV. refused to acknowledge that he reigned in right of his wife. The law, however it stood in words, was as yet unsettled in the judgments of the people, and it lay with them at any moment to suspend it by the interposition of their will.

But the kingdom had suffered so fearfully in the wars of the Roses, that a disputed succession, after a quarter of a century of quietness had enabled the nation to collect itself; was thenceforward the one terrible evil on which its wiser statesmen looked with greatest alarm. Visions of new Towtons and Barnets rose before them with every fresh hint of a rival claimant; and although in Henry VIII. the lines of the two houses centred, yet there were latent embers of faction smouldering on many sides, which an accidental combination of circumstances might at any time fan into a civil war; and we can

not but think that the want of definite effort to realize the danger and the responsibility of governing a people under such conditions as these, has betrayed us into exceedingly mistaken judgments on many points of grave importance. We, to whom the uncertain future has become a fixed, unchanging past, perceive clearly that no such convulsions as were anticipated did actually take effect: we conceive that we can see good reasons in the condition of the country to satisfy us that they could not have taken effect; and we blame the severity of the Government, which alone, perhaps, prevented them. The execution of the Earl of Warwick by Henry VII., that of the Duke of Buckingham by Wolsey, and far more, those other terrible sentences which darken the later years of Henry VIII., we do not hesitate to speak of as murders: the idea of danger to the state being utterly rejected, as a plea either of cowardice trembling at imaginary dangers, or of falsehood stooping to conceal its cruelty behind groundless and futile accusation. And surely nothing but an absence of sympathy, a want of a genuine desire to understand, could have led us so wide of the real feelings which influenced the actions of the State; or we should have felt that, whether there was or was not a real occasion for fear, the very dream of it must have been enough to make strong men tremble, within so few years of the close of the most dreadful civil war which had ever desolated a country within the annals of human history.

And now let us turn to the year 1527, in which the question was first opened of the divorce between Henry and Queen Catherine. So far, the admirable government of Henry and his own noble qualities had been rewarded by the attached loyalty of the people. The Duke of Buckingham had conspired against him at home, and Richard de la Pole had for twenty years intrigued against him at the foreign courts, levying forces, as opportunity offered, to attempt an invasion; but in neither case had any serious impression been made upon the country, and Henry's throne had been substantially safe from danger. But statesmen cannot regard a government as established on a tolerable basis which depends on the continuance of a single life; and the question which they asked themselves was, not how long it would remain secure in the king's lifetime, but how it would be if he were to die. And here, again, the same carelessness of which we have so much complained in later writers, has made them wholly blind to the situation of the kingdom.

the interests of a common faith, which the English and the Scotch had to defend against the world, hardly sufficed to heal over the old wounds.

The speaker, after describing his unwillingness, as a natural-born Englishman, to submit to the dominion of a stranger, and declaring how much the nation had ever detested it, goes on to relate the negotiations in which he had been employed by Henry for the marriage of Prince Edward with Mary Stuart,

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With ourselves it is a very simple matter to find the heir to a vacant throne: it is but to arrange the various members of the bloodroyal by an easy calculation of their degrees of approximation to the last sovereign, and the question is instantly determined. And so it is supposed, in a loose way, that it must always have been similarly easy, and never could have presented any real difficulty. At the time of which we speak, however, nothing could be more difficult. The loyalty which was felt for Henry might and would be transferred to his legitimate children; but if he "While this matter was in treaty," he says, died without children, or if fair ground ex"and after it was agreed on, and before it was isted of questioning their birth, consequences Scottishmen to understand their affections; and ratified, I had sundry conferences with divers of the most dreadful kind could scarcely fail amongst others with one Otterbourn, Sir Adam to ensue. The nearest heir in that case was Otterbourn, a knight, reputed to be as wise a James of Scotland; and a technical difficulty man as any was in Scotland. He was sundry instantly presented itself which only the times ambassador here with King Henry the sword could resolve: according to the law of Eighth from the last king of Scotland; and with the constitution, no stranger born out of the him I discoursed of the great benefit and quietness like to ensue of that marriage between those realm could succeed; but the validity of that two princes, whereby the two realms should be law was still open to question, and James, united and conjoined under one regiment. And with all the power of France at his back, in our talk it seemed to me that he could not would not fail to try it. Again, setting aside choose, but broke out in these words- Why the point of law, it is also certain, on other think you,' said he, that this treaty will be pergrounds, that the English nation at that time formed?' Why not?' said I. I assure you,' would never have submitted to receive a king like of it. And though the governor and some of said he, it is not possible, for our people do not from Scotland; and that such a king, if he the nobility for certain respects have consented had succeeded would only have succeeded by to it, yet,' said he, 'I know that few or none of conquest. It is not easy for us at this disthem do like of it; and our common people do tance of time to realize the feelings with utterly mislike of it.'--I told him it was very which the two nations regarded each other strange to me to understand their affections to be when the scars of Flodden Field were yet such, considering the great weal and benefit that green, and the blackened granges on either must needs ensue of it: the opportunity and occaside of the border kept alive a perennial sion thereof being offered as it were by God's Providence, having left unto them a young prinhatred; but feelings did really exist which cess and to us a young prince, by the marriage could have made the peaceful accession of of which two princes, the two realms being knit James an impossibility. No accounts remain and conjoined in one, the subjects of the same to us of the discussion which passed upon which have always been infested with the wars the matter in Henry's reign; but at the bemight live in wealth and perpetual peace.-'I ginning of the reign of Elizabeth, when the pray you,' said he, 'give me leave to ask you a succession question was debated in Parlia-words-If,' said he, 'your lad were a lass, and question; and this was his question in these ment, a speech was made by Sir Ralph Sadler, which remarkably illustrates the distempered jealousies which lay in the way of the union of the kingdoms. Sadler had been a privy councillor for twenty years under Henry: he had served and continued to serve almost till the close of the century, and his sentiments may be taken fairly to represent what was felt by the great body of the gentlemen of England. The debate was then whether Mary of Scotland should or should not be nominated to succeed Elizabeth; and it must be remembered, that the obstacles raised against her nomination existed in treble force thirty-five years before. A peace of three-quarters of a century, and

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our lass were a lad, would you then,' said he, 'be
so earnest in this matter, and would you be con-
tent that our lad should marry your lass, and so
be king of England?' I answered, that, consider-
ing the great good that might ensue of it, I would
not shew myself zealous to my country if I should
lass and we the lad, we could be well content
not content to it. Well,' said he, 'if you had the
with it; but,' said he,' I cannot believe that your
nation would agree to have a Scot to be king of
England, and likewise I assure you,' said he,
'that our nation, being a stout nation, will never
agree to have an Englishman to be king over
Scotland; and though the whole nobility of the
realm would consent to it, yet our common people
and the stones in the street would rise and rebel

against it. This was his saying unto me, and
others said to the like effect; whereby you may

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