"there was no less than a thousand boats full of men and women of the city of London waffeting up and down in Thames expecting my Lord's departure, supposing that he should have gone directly from thence to the Tower, whereat they rejoiced; and I dare be bold to say the most part never received damage at his hands." "Oh wavering and new-fangled multitude!" he continues. Is it not a wonder to consider the inconstant mutability of this uncertain world! The common people always desiring alterations and novelties of things for the strange ness of the case; which often turneth them to small profit and commodity. For if the sequel of this matter be well considered and digested, ye shall understand that they had small cause to triumph at his fall. What hath succeeded all wise men doth know, and the common sort of them hath felt. Therefore, to grudge or wonder at it surely were but foliy; to study a redress, I see not how it can be holpen, for the inclination and natural disposition of Englishmen is and hath always been to desire alteration of officers." How perennial is the English character! On Wolsey's arrival at Putney, he mounted his mule, and, followed by his train on horseback, he set out for Esher; and at this moment the scene took place which has furnished matter for such volubility of eloquence upon the meanness of his spirit, his coward ice, prostration, &c. He had scarcely started when a messenger was seen approaching; and on inquiring who it was, he was told that Sir Henry Norris was coming from the king. And bye-and-bye he came to my lord, and saluted him, and said that the king's majesty had him commended to his grace, and willed him in any wise to be of good cheer, for he was as much in his highness's favor as ever he was, and so shall be. And in token thereof he delivered him a ring of gold with a rich stone, which ring he knew very well, for it was always the privy token between the king and him, whensoever the king would have any special matter despatched at his hands. Sir H. Norris then more fully delivered his message, repeating his encouragements, declaring that the king's unkindness was apparent only, and that which had been done, was done "out of no displeasure," but only "to satisfy the minds of some which he knew to be no friends to the Cardinal." The baseness of Wolsey's spirit is supposed to have been shown in the manner in which he received this message. He is represented as absorbed in misery at the thought of his disgrace; to have been sunk in the dust by the court favor, and elated to madness by this gleam of hope that it might be regained. Before relating his behavior, it as well to consider whether this be an altogether satisfactory account of what was probably passing in his mind. For twenty years he had been the king's most faithful servant; not only had he been chief minister of state, but he had lived on terms of the most confidential and affectionate intimacy with Henry himself; he was sincerely and warmly attached to him; and all this was now come suddenly to an end. In a conflict of duties, he had found himself forced to act in a manner by which he had inevitably forfeited his position; and whether any kindly feeling remained in Henry's mind towards him was still uncertain. This, it must have seemed, was forfeited also, since at once he had been cast aside in abrupt and careless haste; not even dismissed with courtesy, but flung away as a worn-out tool which was no longer needed. If he was a man of even ordinary honesty, his distress under such circumstances would not have been confined to the loss of his power and his rank: the manner of his fall would probably have been more painful than even the matter of it; and he must have felt himself cruelly wronged. If, besides this, he had really loved the king's person with an honest and loyal affection, the blow in coming from him must have been infinitely more hard to bear than if dealt by any other hand. Treatment more deeply wounding to a true-hearted man it is impossible to conceive. And in Wolsey's position there was every thing to aggravate, nothing to soften, the pain which he could not choose but feel. He had no friends-wealth he had, and dependents, but no family which would gather about him; no wife or children to teach him what power there is in love in the hour of calamity; no more desolate old man was ever driven out to face the pelting of the storms of fortune, and there is every proof that his spirit was crushed and broken by it. It is no excess of charity to suppose that feelings of this kind may have affected him as much as, perhaps more than, a decline of outward splendor; and if we suppose him feeling also what we know that he did feel, that the storm which had broken over himself was but the first dropping of a tempest that would destroy all that he considered most precious and most holy, we shall have no difficulty in understanding how such a message as that which was brought to him by Sir H. Norris, may have touched him to the bottom of his heart. If as a worn-out servant of the state he was hurt by his country's ingratitude, it was something to learn that by the chief of the state he was still remembered with honor; if the king's personal unkind- | either never mentioned, or have related only ness had wounded him, he was told that he was mistaken in the hand which had dealt the hardest blow. And who can tell what other hopes he may not have entertained? He may have thought that at the last hour, Henry's purpose was relenting. Who can tell? Day after day in the week preceding, he had been closeted with him; and no one knows what passed between them. Only incidentally we learn that Wolsey had been at his feet four hours entreating him; and in those secrets lies the clue to what was passing in Wolsey's breast. We can but guess what it was; but we may as well guess generously as meanly; while we do for certain know that Henry had at least felt as warm an affection for his Chancellor as was ever felt by man for man; and that this affection was loyally returned; a fact which alone, if allowed its ordinary weight, will convert the supposed baseness of the fallen favorite into a simple and beautiful expression of natural emotion, caused by a sudden revulsion from wounded feeling. On receiving Norris's message 66 Alighting off his mule," an eyewitness tells us, "all alone, as though he had been the young. est person among us, he incontinent kneeled down in the dirt upon both his knces, holding up his hands for joy. Master Norris perceiving him so quickly from his mule upon the ground, mused and was astonished, and therewith he alighted also, and kneeled by him, embracing him in his arms, and asked him how he did, calling upon him to credit his message. Then talking with Master Norris upon his knees in the mire, he would have pulled off his undercap of velvet; but he could not undo the knot under his chin. Wherefore, with violence he rent the laces and pulled it from his head, and arose and would have mounted his mule; but he could not mount again with such agility as he alighted before, when his footmen had as much ado to set him in his saddle as they could have." Other persons may think of this as they please. We live in a free country, where we have all a right to our opinion; and for our own selves, we consider it (unless it was acting) as one of the most touchingly beautiful scenes in English history. And if it was acting, the counterfeit would at least have been as transparent to Wolsey's own attendants, to men who lived in habitual intercourse with him, as it can be to us, who only gather what he was out of the accounts of writers who were least his friends; yet Cavendish, at least, who tells the story, felt nothing but uncontrolled emotion. A little incident followed, also of no slight significance, which historians have as if there were nothing in it worth observing. Attached to the courts and households of the great nobles of the time there were, as we all know, certain mysterious appendages called Fools; the nature of them is not very clear; but if we may trust Shakspeare, their hearts were always in the right place; the fool never loved when he ought to despise, or despised when he ought to love; and there was a strange mixture of wit and simplicity in them which never failed, as the saying is, "to fit the cap upon the right head," or distinguish the knave from the true man. One of these was in Wolsey's train, a fool, as it would seem, of no common merit, said to be "worth, for a nobleman's pleasure, a thousand pounds;" and Wolsey, desiring to send some token to Henry in answer for the ring, told Norris to take him. And we suppose that if kneeling in the mud had been that contemptible piece of business which Burnet tells us that it was, the fool would have been glad to go, that he might witness no more such antics; yet he would not; "and my lord was fain to send six of his tall yeomen to conduct and convey the fool to the court, for the poor fool took on and fired so in such a rage when he saw that he must needs depart from my lord." The king's intentions, however, were probably less favorable towards Wolsey than the latter hoped; or, in his uncertainty whether he was acting rightly or wrongly, they may have fluctuated between anger and regard. If the latter was of a lovely kind, some unusual difficulty must have obliged him to be cautious in the display of it; since the situation in which the old man was left for several weeks was such as to reflect the highest discredit on those who were responsible for it. The house to which he was ordered to confine himself was without furniture, bedding, plate or linen. No preparation had been made for his reception: it was damp and unwholesome, and a wet and a stormy winter was setting in. That under these circumstances the many gentlemen who formed his train should have insisted on remaining to share his discomfort speaks more eloquently than words for the nature of the relation which subsisted between them and their master. They contributed money among themselves for his support, for none was allowed him; and bought or borrowed some kind of furniture to make the place endurable. Indeed, the affectionate devotion which all these persons showed towards him at this trying time, called out the involuntary admiration of all parties; and six weeks after, the Duke of Norfolk was sent down to Esher, to declare to them, in the king's name, the high credit which they had earned for themselves. I The Privy Council, meanwhile, and the House of Lords, were on their side busy earning for themselves discredit, in drawing up the articles of his impeachment; and the perusal of these articles is the surest proof that the prosecution was a result of personal rancor, and that no real crime could be laid to his charge. There are forty-four in all, and at first reading them, one is tempted to suppose that one is reading some absurd and preposterous parody, instead of the deliberate and serious composition of English statesmen. The persons responsible for their appearance might be determined with an approach to certainty; but there is no occasion to fling a shadow over the names of men who were otherwise honorable and high-minded, and whose better nature was under a temporary eclipse. The single offence against the law with which Wolsey is charged is his acceptance of the office of legate, contrary to the Statute of Provisors; but for this, as the Council well knew, he had the king's permission, under his sign-manual: the remainder of the articles are a rabid declamation against pride, covetousness, and ambition, interspersed with spiteful inuendoes and scandalous stories; which, if they had been true, did not affect the state, and implied no violation of any civil or criminal statute; he had defamed the Church, he had bullied the Privy Councillors, he had bad breath, &c. &c.; so shameful a production never issued, and never again, we hope, will issue from an English government. It is subscribed with the names of all the Council; but the votes of the majority must have obliged the whole body to grant their signatures, since a minority, we know, disapproved the entire business, and Lord Shrewsbury and Sir William Fitzwilliam remained cordially attached to Wolsey to the last. The articles were passed by the peers; but happily, the Upper House was never absolute in England, and the House of Commons spared the country the disgrace which a further proceeding with them would have cast upon it. Cromwell, who had obtained a seat in that parliament for the first time, undertook his master's defence, (as, eleven years later, when he was suffering similar cruel wrong, ! The king, meanwhile, had taken no part on one side or the other; he had allowed the proceedings to follow their own course, reserving his own interference till it became officially necessary. Yet, strange as it may seem, that Henry VIII. should have been less than absolute in his own court, it is clear that he was better disposed towards the Cardinal than, for some reason or other, he was able to show himself to be. Wolsey had heard nothing from him since he had been at Esher; and at the end of three weeks, while the impeachment was still pending, he found it impossible to retain about him so large a body of servants, upon whose charity he, in fact, was living. In the afternoon of the Feast of All Hallows, be called them all together into the Great Hall at Esher, there to tell them that he could do nothing more for them; he would not keep them chained to his fallen fortunes, and that they had better seek other masters, or return to their own families. Many men were present at that scene whose names were afterwards famous for all rising men of genius found a friend and patron in Wolsey. Cromwell was there, and Gardiner, and Sir Ralph Sadler, and others of high mark and note-the very choicest gathering of the intellect of England. And Cavendish, who was present also, has left us a description of it, all faithful, probably, in its smallest features a beautiful sorrowing picture of conflicting heroisms-great, stern men weeping like children, refusing to be comforted. At last, it was over. Wolsey, overcome with illness and sorrow, retired to his room; and the dull November night closed in with storm and pouring rain, "the sorest night of all the year." Cromwell had gone off to London, and Sadler with him; the rest, one by one, had dropped away to their beds; when, at midnight, there came a loud knocking at the gate, and a company of horsemen, drenched and dripping, were demanding eagerly to be admitted. Such a night as this the king had chosen to send his second messenger. Sir John Russell had ridden, in the dark and rain, from Greenwich, with strictest orders that no one should know of where he was gone; and that he should be back before daybreak. He brought with him another token-ring, and a message with it, identical with that which had been sent by Sir Henry that Wolsey should be of good cheer; that the king still loved him, and had sent Russell on this secret journey to let him know it." We are accustomed to regard whatever was done under Henry to have been done by him, or at least with his active con Norris, he found no one to defend him,) and the impeachment recoiled upon its authors. * They are printed by Lord Herbert and by Mr. Galt sent; and to suppose that his own wishes were his only law. Nothing can show more clearly that, on this occasion at least, he did not find himself so unshackled, and that he was obliged to conceal his real feelings. Furniture was now sent, however, and money, "yet not so abundantly as the king's pleasure was". "the default whereof was in the officers," who took their cue from the reigning faction. But the damp house, and the want of those comforts which habit had converted into necessaries, produced their natural effects on a frame already infirm. The old minister fell dangerously ill, and in the middle of the winter was thought to be dying indeed, although he seemed to rally, he never recovered; and his death, in the following year, was the lingering issue of the illness at Esher. Abroad, the impeachment having failed, he was proceeded against with a premunire, and, to the general surprise of the world, he pleaded guilty, and his property was forfeited to the Crown. His crime was the having exercised a legatine power, which the king had formally permitted him to exercise; and men were naturally astonished that he neglected so powerful a counterplea. He has himself left us an account of his motives for doing as he did, which are characteristic and reasonable. He knew that he could never again be in possession of political power, and that his chance of spending the remainder of his life in peace depended on his ceasing to be conspicuous; so long as be was rich he would continue to be considered dangerous, and "he would rather have his liberty with the loss of his goods," than run the risk of imprisonment for life. "And also, he said, there was a continual serpentine enemy about the king, that would, I am well assured, if I had been stiffnecked, have called continually upon the king in his ear, I mean the night-crow, with such a vehemency that I should, with the help of her assistance, have obtained sooner the king's indignation than his lawful favor; and his favor once lost, which, I trust, at present I have, would never have been by me recovered. Therefore, I thought it better for me to keep still his loving favor with the loss of my goods and dignities." He seems to have known that "the king had conceived a certain prick of conscience for what had been done;" and he trusted, as the event proved, justly, to his generosity. As soon as the forfeiture was completed, his pardon was made out, and on receiving it, he was ordered by a decree of the Council to retire to his see of York. Being without money, he was forced to apply for some little pittance out of the treasures which he had surrendered, and a debate of a remarkable kind ensued at the Council-table. The ill feeling of the majority was not yet satisfied, and the sum which they consented to allow him was not sufficient to meet the common expenses of the journey; but so poor a littleness was not allowed to pass without protest. "Some," says Cavendish, "thought it much against the Council's honor, and one of them [the Duke of Norfolk. perhaps; it well suits his character] said, 'Although he never did me good or any pleasure, sooner than he should lack, I pounds, rather than he should depart so simply would lay my plate to gage for him for a thousand as some would have him do. Let us do for him as we would be done unto, considering his small offence, and his inestimable substance, which he hath departed withal, rather than he would stand in defence with the king in defending of his case, Let not malice cloak this matter. as he might justly have done, as ye all know. Ye have all Now suffer conscience to minister to him some your pleasure fulfilled which ye have along desired. liberality." As far as the Council was concerned, this appeal was naturally ineffectual; but Wolsey's property was now the king's, and he alone had the disposal of it as he pleased. He restored him, in plate, money, and other things, what would be worth something under eighty thousand pounds of our money; and so, in broken health and enfeebled in mind and body, but, as far as we can judge from his letters, in recovered calmness of feeling, the old man set off for his diocese, escaping happily to a retirement which he professed to have long desired, and leaving behind him some at least of those that were to succeed him in his power, who now envied him his release. "In myn opinion," writes Cromwell to him, "I suppose your lordship, being as ye are, ye would not be as ye were, to win a hundred tymes as much as ye were possessed of,"-expressions which we will hope some readers, at least, will be found to regard as something more than that polite nonsense which skilful dealers in phrases compose out of nothingness. Undoubtedly, if quiet well-doing, rewarded by the affections of every one who came in contact with him, were the best constituents of happiness, Wolsey would not have exchanged the few months left to him for all his years of splendor. He carried down with him to York a reputation similar to that which his memory bears among ourselves; in a little while, we learn, not from Cavendish only, but from the unsuspicious testimony of a book published by royal authority, within six years of his death, that it was exchanged for an admiration as deserved as it was unbounded. His time was spent among the people; riding out, day after day, from place to place "taking his dinner with him, that he might not be burdensome;" settling quarrels among the gentlemen, confirming children, visiting churches, "giving all bishops a pattern how to live." "It was wonder to see how men turned-how out of utter enemies they became dear friends."* It is well that we have evidence so trustworthy, speaking so emphatically in his favor: for the calumnies of Hall and Foxe have pursued him to his grave with the old inveteracy; and it is creditable to Henry that he availed himself of so early an opportunity to express what in his own opinion was the character of his old servant's latest actions. Let him have done what he would, there were those about the king who would have taken care that it should wear a sufficiently evil appearance; as it was, they made a crime of the popularity which he so innocently gained. He was winning the hearts of the people, it was said, to make a party for the Church against the State, and reenact, with the support of the Pope and of the Emperor, the part of Thomas à Becket. There is no difficulty in conjecturing who these persons were; but Cavendish speaks indefinitely of his "enemies," -and there let us leave them. Only Anne Boleyn we need have no scruple in naming, who never cared to conceal the intensity of her hatred, nor even till Wolsey was in his grave, felt herself secure of that fatal greatness for which, in a few years, she paid so terribly. And now we are fast approching the last scenes of this tragedy. There were certain duties, it appeared, belonging to the office of the Archbishop of York which could not be discharged in the usual formal manner previous to his installation in the cathedral. This ceremony, therefore, at the request of the Dean and Canons, Wolsey had consented to allow to be performed; but all ostentation was scrupulously to be avoided, and the service was to be conducted in the simplest manner which the necessary forms would allow. What real necessity may have existed for this installation, it is impossible for us to know; but no doubt the step was an impru "Remedy for Sedition," printed in Singer's Cavendish. dent one, if it could reasonably have been avoided. The opportunity was seized to irritate or attempt to irritate Henry's jealousy, and certain ill-judged and ill-timed remonstrances from Rome arriving at the same moment, furnished a pretext for a charge that he was keeping up a secret understanding with the Pope, and that the installation was to be the first step of an ecclesiastical opposition to the Crown. If we are to believe Cavendish's account of the condition of Wolsey, either in mind or body, at the time, such a suspicion was more than the wildest chimera. His real feelings have probably been expressed, in all their sad simplicity, in the beautiful lines of Storer, who introduces him as saying— I did not mean with predecessor's pride I am the tomb where that affection lies, Some misgiving as to the nature of Henry's feelings towards him, he could not have. avoided entertaining, when, a few days before the installation was to take place-again, singularly, on the feast of All Hallows, the anniversary of the dispersion of his Esher household he was arrested by the Earl of Northumberland for high treason. Hatred had done its work; and he was summoned at once to answer a charge against his life. He could not fail to believe that such a blow, if not directly coming from the king, would not have fallen without his approbation. He was too old and too infirm to bear up any longer, and the past sorrow and fresh agitation completed his work of his illness. He hastened, however, as well as he was able, to obey the king's command, and, ill as he was, he set off at the beginning of November to ride to London. As before, we can imagine that the sense of his loneliness must have pressed upon him very drearily. Most fallen statesmen carry with them the sympathy of a party, and churchmen in disgrace with the Crown are backed by the affection and the prayers of their order; but Wolsey had none of this; he stood alone in the world. |