Henry and Wolsey declared that the cash should be devoted to "putting down" that "Monster Luther," as they sometimes called him, or that "fellow Luther," as they spoke of him now and then, by way of change, though his fellow did not exist at the period when the term was applied to him. Among the many irons that Henry now had in the fire was an Italian iron, with which he stood a pretty fair chance of burning his fingers, for he had interfered in the disputes between Francis the First of France and the Emperor Charles, who was at war in Italy. Francis had laid himself down on the pavement before Pavia, resolved to leave no stone unturned to place a curb on the foe and pave his own way to victory. As he lay under the walls, the cream of the Imperial army was poured down upon him with a savage violence that causes the blood to curdle at the bare recital. Thoroughly soured in his hopes, Francis plunged into the very thick of the Imperial cream, and beating around him with his sword in all directions, reduced seven men, with his own hand, to the inanimate condition of whipped syllabubs. His valour availed him little, for he was removed—to adopt the spelling of the period—in custardy. He was kept in captivity in Spain, at the strong fortress of Pizzichitone, from which he wrote home to his mother—probably for the means of replenishing his sac de nuit—and concluded his note with the memorable words,"Tout est perdu hors l'honneur," which, for the benefit of that portion of the public who may have learnt their "French without a master," and have, consequently, never mastered it at all, we translate into "All is lost, excepting honour."
Francis being now completely down, Henry and Wolsey proposed to Charles that they should combine in making the very most of the helpless position of their prostrate enemy. Fortunately for the French king, his two opponents were not only deficient in funds, but had begun to quarrel; on the old principle, perhaps, that when Poverty stalks in at the door, Love hops out at the window. The pay of Charles's forces had fallen fearfully into arrear, and they declared they would no longer go on fighting on half salaries. It was therefore determined to bring the military season to a close; and the grand ballet of action, having for its plot the invasion of France—of which Henry had drawn out the scheme, and which was to have put forward the strength of a double company, comprising a powerful combination of the English and Imperial troupe—was postponed for an indefinite period.
Henry, who was ready to sell himself to either party, finding Charles too poor to purchase him, offered himself without reserve to Francis. Terms were soon arranged, by which Henry was to receive by instalments two millions of crowns, with a permanent annuity when the chief sum was paid off; and Wolsey was also handsomely provided for—at least in the shape of promises. While the agreement was most solemnly ratified by Francis himself and the chief of the French nobility, the Attorney and Solicitor-General of France privately popped a protest on to the file, in order that the king, who was particular about his honour, might not have his scruples shocked should he subsequently feel disposed to break his word and fly off from his agreement. He found considerable difficulty in effecting his release without swearing to at least a dozen things he never intended to perform, and when the document was brought to him, full of concessions to Charles, he affixed his signature with the indifference of a man putting his name to a bill, regardless of the amount, which he does not mean to liquidate. He had no sooner got out of custody, and found himself comfortably seated before his palace fire, than Sir Thomas Cheney and Dr. Taylor walked in with a message from Henry the Eighth, to congratulate Francis on his delivery. "If you'll take my advice," said one of the visitors, at the same time handing his card, with
upon it, to give weight to his words, "you will pay no attention to the liabilities you have entered into with regard to the Emperor."
"Indeed, Doctor, I don't mean to trouble myself upon the subject," was the king's reply; "and in fact I have kept up a running accompaniment of private protests to every obligation I have undertaken." Dr. Taylor explained to him that he was on the safe side, for the bonds he had given were bad in law, having been executed while the king was under duress, and therefore not legally responsible. Thus did the chivalrous Francis, who had written so nobly about having lost everything except his honour, present an early instance, of which later times have furnished so many, of the largest talkers being the smallest doers, or perhaps rather the greatest dos in the universe.
We have now to relate a curious personal anecdote of Henry the Eighth, which might have caused a considerable abridgment of his reign, much in the same way that the want of strength in the bowl in which the three wise men of Gotha went to sea, put a premature period to their little history. * Henry, in his early manhood, was one day running after a hawk, perhaps to put a little salt on its tail in the idle hope of catching it. The bird was actively retreating before its royal pursuer, and had just quitted a hedge by hopping the twig, when it traversed a ditch on the other side, which Henry endeavoured to clear by the aid of his leaping-pole. The attempt somehow failed, and the monarch pitching on to his head in the soft mud, sunk into it as far as his neck, and became planted with his legs in the air for several seconds. Happily a footman named Edmund Moody—"You all know Tom Moody" though you may never have heard of Edmund—came up at the instant and pulled the king up from the ground by the roots—at least by the roots of his hair—with wondrous promptitude. Had this accident proved fatal, Henry would have been the first instance of a monarch losing his crown by being planted instead of supplanted, which had been the fate of some that had preceded him.
It is now time for us to speak of the commencement of that spirit of Bluebeardism which ultimately gave the most glaring colouring to Henry's character. He had always been a little flighty and indiscriminate in his attentions to the fair sex, but he had hitherto treated Catherine with respect, until he met with Anne Boleyn, or Bullen, the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who was descended from a former Lord Mayor of London, but by a series of clever match-making—a talent for which was inherited by Miss Anne—the family had succeeded in allying itself, by marriage, to some of the proudest aristocracy in the land.
One of their earliest "dodges" had been to repair the plebeian word Bullen, by omitting the U and substituting an O, which got it to Bollen. In the course of time, having been allowed an inch in the way of licence, they took an L, or at least one liquid absorbed another, and the word now stood Bolen. Subsequently a Y, without a why or wherefore, was dropped in, and the Bullens, who had probably acquired their name, originally, from having been landlords, or perhaps potboys, at the "Bull," had now assumed the comparatively elegant title of Boleyn, which has since become so famous in history. Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of Nancy, had long lived about the Court, and had been employed as a deliverer of messages, or ticket-porter, for Henry the Eighth, on some important occasions. Anne, who was born in the year 1507, had in very early life gone out to service as maid—of honour—to the king's sister, Mary, who, when going over to be married to Louis the Twelfth, took the girl abroad, where she picked up a few accomplishments. On Mary's returning home, a widow, Anne Boleyn found another situation with Claude, the wife of Francis the First, but after remaining in another family or two for a short time in France, she returned to England, where we find her, in 1527, engaged as maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon.
Henry having become deeply enamoured of Miss Boleyn, who had shown a strong determination to stand no nonsense, was suddenly seized with religious scruples as to his marriage with the queen; for he found out, seventeen years after the event, that he had done wrong in allying himself with his brother's widow. The fact of her being now an oldish lady of forty-three added no doubt considerably to the pious horror of the king at the step which he had taken. He accordingly began to think seriously of a divorce; and when Wolsey was sounded on the subject, the cardinal, for reasons of his own, yielded a prompt concurrence. He was anxious to pay off Catherine on account of a quarrel he had had with her nephew, the emperor; and thus, in the words of the poet of Dumbarton Castle,
He was sent as an ambassador to Francis, ostensibly to arrange about the marriage of Henry's only daughter Mary, but really, as it is believed, to induce the French king to consent that Wolsey should be a sort of acting pope during the investment of the castle of St. Angelo, where the Spaniards and Germans had made the real pontiff a prisoner.
Poor Clement bore his ill fortune with patience, though, as long as the investment of the castle lasted, he used to say it was one of the most unprofitable investments in which he had ever been involved, and that nothing but the excessive tightness prevented him from selling out, for he was quite tired of the security.
THE reign of Henry the Eighth would become tedious were it not for the privilege we have assumed in dividing it into chapters; though we shall not follow the example of the melodramatists who suppose fifteen years to have elapsed between each of their acts, and thus carry on their plots by means of the imagination of their audience. It is true that many of the events of Henry's reign are dark enough to cause a wish that we might be allowed to omit them; but we must not give up to squeamishness what we owe to posterity.
We have not yet come to the catalogue of his various female victims, and we have yet to describe those matrimonial freaks upon which we would gladly have put a ban by forbidding the banns, had we lived three centuries in advance of our present existence. We must, however, speak the truth; and though we might imitate the author of the play called The Wife of Seven Husbands, who requested the public to consider that a husband had elapsed between each act, we will not call upon our readers to imagine that a wife of Henry the Eighth has elapsed between each chapter.
We will now resume our narrative, and in the first place look after Wolsey, whom we left under orders to proceed to the French dominions; and as the cardinal must by this time have commenced the passage across, we will take him at once out of his unpleasant position, and land him at Boulogne.
Wolsey's reception in France was like that of a royal personage, and had all the inconveniences of such a compliment; for the firing of the guns at Boulogne frightened his mule, who had not been trained to stand fire, and who indulged in a kick-up of the most, extraordinary character.
This interview with Francis resulted in three treaties, which were concluded on the 18th of August, 1527, * by the first of which it was agreed that the Princess Mary should marry young Francis, Duke of Orleans, instead of old Francis, his father, a point that had hitherto been an open question; the second treaty concluded a peace, and the third stipulated that nothing done by the pope during his captivity should take effect, but that as long as Clement was in durance, which it required all his fortitude to endure, Wolsey should have the management of ecclesiastical affairs in England. The pope himself good-naturedly sent over a bull to confirm the cardinal in his new powers; and "here certainly," says Lord Herbert, "began the taste our king took of governing, in chief, the clergy." His lordship might have added with truth that Wolsey had performed the wonderful physical feat of biting off his own nose to be revenged upon the rest of his face, for it is certain that the taste Henry had been encouraged to take of power over the church soon led him to be discontented with a mere snack, for his appetite grew fearfully by what it fed upon. Like the modest dropper-in at dinner-time, who sits down to take "just a mouthful," and is led on to the consumption of a hearty meal, Henry, who at first simply intended to pick a bit from the power of the pope, soon became a cormorant of church influence. Henry's thoughts were seriously occupied with the design of getting a divorce, and he therefore pretended to be in great alarm as to the succession to the throne, in consequence of a "public doubt" as to his marriage being lawful and the Princess Mary being legitimate.
There is no question that the wish was in this instance father to the thought, and that, so far from Henry's desiring to silence all discussion on the point, he was the first to encourage the criticism of his wife's and his daughter's position. Notwithstanding his notorious flirtation with Anne Boleyn, which the forward minx decidedly encouraged, he pretended to be looking out for an eligible parti in the event of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon being officially nullified. He had a picture sent over to him of the Duchess of Alanson, sister to Francis, and used to pretend that he should probably set his cap at that lady; but the picture was a mere blind, or probably in a very short time it experienced a worse fate than that of a blind by being turned into a fire-board or consigned to a lumber-room.
The love-making of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn was a mixture of mawkishness, childishness, hypocrisy, and scholastic pedantry, tinctured with an affectation of religion that was not the least disgusting feature of this disgraceful courtship. Henry used to write love-letters full of extracts from Thomas Aquinas, complaints of headache, reference to pious books, and sickly sentimentalism about "mine own sweet heart," while the good-for-nothing Nancy B. would reply by sending him pretty little toys and pretty little words of encouragement. She had made good use of her time in Wolsey's absence, for, when the cardinal came back, the king, in answer to his own question, "Guess who's the gal of my 'art?" which his friend gave up, enthusiastically responded, "Anne Boleyn."
The already corpulent monarch was stupidly and spoonily love-sick about this "artful puss," as Catherine might have called her, and he used to leave scraps of paper about the palace scribbled over with charades, conundrums, ana anagrams to the object of his admiration. * Wolsey was a good deal annoyed by this avowal, but, finding his opposition would do no good, he changed his tack and fell in with the sovereign's fancy. Henry ordered him to consult Sir Thomas More, who, not at all liking the job, referred him politely to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, saying it was more in their way than his own, and he felt any interference on his part would be irregular and unprofessional. Wolsey next tried the bishops, who shook their heads and said, "You had better ask the pope," to whom the king at last determined upon a reference.
The pope, whom we left locked up in the castle of St. Angelo, had been obliged to "come out of that" for want of provisions, and had escaped in the disguise of a gardener, in which a shovel hat may have been of some use to him. He played his cards so well as the one of spades, that, with the assistance of one or two true hearts who turned out trumps, he reached in safety the town of Orvieto, where he expected reinforcement from a French army. Long before the promised aid arrived, he received a card inscribed "Dr. Knight," and he had scarcely time to say, "Doctor Knight? Who is Doctor Knight? I don't know any Doctor Knight," when the king of England's secretary, who bore that name, rushed into the presence of the pontiff. The doctor, having briefly explained his object in coming, which was to get the pope's consent to Henry's divorce, succeeded in extracting the requisite authority from his holiness, who was very unwilling, but he could not keep back his bull without finding himself on the horns of a worse dilemma. He at all events wished the matter to be kept secret for a short time; but a friend of Wolsey stepped forward to stipulate that an Italian cardinal should be sent to England with Dr. Knight, to prove that the document he took with him was genuine. Poor Clement, being afraid to refuse compliance, pointed to half-a-dozen cardinals standing in one corner, and hurriedly observed, "There, there, Dr. Knight, take any one of those, for the whole six are quite at your service." In conformity with this permission, Cardinal Campeggio was selected to visit England, and he carried with him in his pocket a decree, rendering final any judgment that he and Wolsey might agree upon.
On the arrival of Campeggio a public entry into London was proposed: but he excused himself on the score of gout, which had laid him by the heels, or rather seized him by the great toe, and prevented him from coming into the metropolis on the footing that he might have desired. After spending a few days with his leg in a sling, he was introduced to the king, whom he greatly irritated by advising that the business of the divorce should not be proceeded with. Henry began declaring that he had been deceived, and that the pope was an old humbug, which caused the gouty leg of the legate to tremble in its shoe; and, taking the bull from his pocket, he showed that the pontiff meant business, and had given full authority for transacting it.
Henry's desire for a divorce got soon rumoured about the city, and caused so much dissatisfaction that he called a meeting of the judges, lord mayor, common council, and others, at which it was announced that his majesty would attend to give explanations, and enter into a justification of his conduct. He made an elaborate speech of the most artful and hypocritical kind, in which he asserted that his religious scruples alone made him agitate the question of a divorce, and that if his marriage was valid, nothing would give him greater pleasure than to finish his life in the society of the old lady who had been for many years the partner of his existence. It is notorious that he had made up his mind to desert Catherine for Anne Boleyn; and his speech is therefore a disgusting specimen of low cunning, rendered doubly odious by the religious cant with which it was accompanied.
The unhappy queen, when visited by Wolsey and Campeggio, exclaimed at once, "I know what you have come about." She said she thought it hard to have her marriage doubted after nearly twenty years; and spoke pathetically of those early days when she was in the habit of going out a-Maying with her royal husband.
"Ah, madam!" replied Wolsey, "if we could have May all the year round, it would be pleasant enough; but the spring of the year, as well as the spring-time of existence, is not perpetual." Catherine acknowledged she was not so young as she had been, and the English cardinal ventured to hint, that, even in those Maying days, she had the advantage of Henry—at least, if there can be any advantage to a lady who is her husband's senior. Finding pathos of no use, she proceeded to argument, and endeavoured to show that Henry had almost lost his claim to a divorce by mere laches, in having so long neglected to apply for one. The two cardinals only shook their heads, as if they would say, "I can't see much in that;" and she then ventured to take another ground for opposing her husband's project. She complained that her husband had paid for the licence and dispensation from the pope, but that the dispensation might be dispensed with as valueless, if one could supersede another at the instigation of the great and powerful against the comparatively friendless and impotent. At length, losing all temper and patience, she turned to Wolsey, taxing him with having "done it all;" when the wily cardinal did nothing but bow and smile in general terms, placing his hand upon his heart, muttering out, "Pon honour!"
"Nothing of the sort!" and giving other similar assurances that he had in no way instigated the conduct pursued by Henry.
The preliminary meeting to which we have referred was held in the Hall of the Black Friars, on the 31st of May, 1529; and an adjournment till the 21st of June having taken place, Wolsey and Campeggio were at their posts at the appointed hour. Henry and Catherine were both in attendance; and the former, when his name was called, gave a terrific shout of "Here!" which had a startling effect upon the whole assembly. Catherine, though she might be considered upon her trial, was accommodated with a seat on the left of the bench, and was attended by four friendly bishops, who had come in the amiable capacity of moral bottle-holders to this injured woman. When her name was called she refused to answer, or to say a word; but the dignity of the queen soon gave way to the volubility of the woman, and her tongue started off into a gallop of the most touching eloquence. She commenced in the old style of appeal, by throwing herself at the king's feet, presuming perhaps, that if he had a tender point it might be upon his toes, and she should thus make sure of touching it. She then implored his compassion, as a woman and a stranger, concluding with a happy alliterative effect by declaring herself "a friendless female foreigner."
At the conclusion of a very powerful speech she rose slowly, and when it was expected she would return to her seat, she marched deliberately out of the hall, to the great amazement of the quartette of bishops by whom she had been accompanied. Henry was a little staggered by what had occurred; but he nevertheless made a reply, which was partly inaudible from the flurry of the king himself, and the consternation into which the Court had been thrown by the queen's very telling speech, and highly dramatic exit. He was understood to say, that he had a very high respect for the distinguished lady who had just addressed them; that she was a very good wife; that he had in fact no fault to find; but that really his scruples as to the lawfulness of his marriage had made him very uncomfortable. He remarked that his conscience was so exceedingly delicate that it could not bear the slightest shock; and here indeed he seems to have spoken the truth, for his conscience appears to have died altogether within a very short time of the occurrence we have mentioned.
Catherine's departure from the Court turned out to be final, for nothing could induce her to enter it again; and, being pronounced contumacious, the proceedings were carried on in her absence. The two cardinals, out of regard to her majesty's interests, requested Dr. Taylor—an aged junior in the back rows—to hold a brief for the defendant, and examine the witnesses: a proposition at which the learned gentleman jumped, for he had previously been occupying his own mind and the official ink in sketching the scene before him on the desk, or handing down his name to posterity by cutting it out on the bench with a pocket penknife. Dr. Taylor, if he had practised little before, had quite enough to do on the occasion that brought him into notice, for Lord Herbert, in his "Life and Reign of Henry the Eighth," gives a list of thirty-seven witnesses for the plaintiff, all of whom our venerable junior had the task of cross-examining. Some idea may be formed of the magnitude of this achievement, when it is stated that several of the witnesses were ladies, and that the evidence of the first of them—namely, Mary, Countess of Essex—is summed up in the report as having amounted to "little," though conveyed in "general terms."
There is something truly overwhelming in the idea which this slight summary conveys; for it is impossible that the imagination can set any limits to the "little" a lady can contrive to say when she avails herself of "general terms" to give it utterance. Cardinal Campeggio evinced a decided reluctance to bring the matter to a decision, though Henry's case was undoubtedly well supported by evidence; and old Taylor being, professionally speaking, a young hand, was able to do little for his absent client. The king at length grew angry at Campeggio's delay, and instructed counsel to move for judgment, which was accordingly done on the 23rd of July in a somewhat peremptory manner. The Italian cardinal refused the motion, and intimated that he would not be bullied by any man, "be he king or any other potentate." He then went on to say, that "he was an old man, sick, decayed, and daily looking for death:" which certainly gave no reason for delay; and a whisper to that effect went no doubt round the bar, and was caught up by Henry's counsel, who "humbly submitted" that "if the Court expected to be soon defunct, there must be the stronger reason for fixing an early day for its decision." Cardinal Campeggio got up somewhat angrily, and intimated that the cause must be made a "remanet;" that in fact it must stand over until next term, as he was not disposed to continue his sittings. "Is your lordship aware," asked Sampson, K.C., "that you will throw us over the long vacation? for we are now only in July, and the next term begins in October." The cardinal, who was half-way towards the robing-room, turned sharply round to observe that "the Court was virtually up," and that "he really wished gentlemen of the bar would observe more regularity in their proceedings." Sampson, K.C., had nevertheless got as far as "Will your lordship allow us?" in another attempt to be heard, when Campeggio, growling out furiously, "I can hear nothing now, Mr. Sampson," retired angrily to his private apartment.
The Court never met again, and Campeggio left England a few days afterwards, having first taken leave of the king, who kept his temper and behaved very decently. He even gave a few presents to the refractory cardinal, but, as the latter lay at Dover previous to embarkation, his bedroom door was burst open, his trunks were rummaged, and probably all his presents were taken away again.
Wolsey, who had been associated in the hearing of the great cause, Henry versus Catherine, or the Queen at the suit of the King, fell into instant disgrace for the part he had taken, or, rather, for the part he had omitted to take, upon this momentous occasion. Miss Anne Boleyn, who had calculated on his keeping Campeggio up to the mark in pronouncing for the divorce, was especially angry with Wolsey for his apathy. Even the courtiers got up a joke upon the supineness of the English cardinal by calling him the supine in(h)um, while Campeggio was compared to the gerund in do, by reason of his active duplicity, through which he was declared to have regularly done the English sovereign. Many of the nobility attempted to excite the avarice of Henry by hinting to him that Wolsey's overthrow would be a good speculation, if only for the sake of obtaining the wealth he had managed to accumulate; and from this moment the cardinal stood in the precarious position of a turkey that is only crammed to await the favourable opportunity for sacrifice.
Soon after the trial of his cause, in which he thought proper to assume that he was entitled to a verdict, Henry set off on a tour, accompanied by Miss Anne Boleyn, who, in spite of Hume's panegyric on her "virtue and modesty," appears to have been what is commonly called a very pretty character. Wolsey was not invited to be of the party, but he rode after the Court, for he was one of those hangers-on that are not to be shaken off very easily. He came up with the king at Grafton, in Northamptonshire, and was very kindly received, but the next morning he was told distinctly that he was not wanted in the royal suite, and that he might go back to London, after which he never saw his master's face again. * Henry, being anxious to ruin his late favourite selon les règles, took the very decisive method of going to law with him. Two bills were filed against the cardinal in the King's Bench, but Wolsey, nevertheless, proceeded to the Court of Chancery to take his seat, just as if nothing had happened. None of the servants of the Court paid him any respect, and it is probable that even the mace-bearer, the ushers, and other officers omitted the customary ceremonies of preceding him with the mace, and crying out, "Pray, silence!" upon his entrance. On his expressing his readiness to take motions, he was responded to by one general motion towards the door, in which the whole bar joined. Being thus left quite alone, he amused himself by giving judgment in some old suit which had lasted so long that the parties were all dead, and he consoled himself by saying that this accounted for the fact of nobody appearing on either side.
The king, hearing of the cardinal's proceedings, gave orders that he should be forbidden the Court altogether, and when he went to take his seat, as usual, he found the doors closed against him. When he got home to York Place, where he resided, he was told that two gentlemen were waiting to see him, and, on going upstairs, the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk requested to have a few words with him. They told him that the king intended to come and live at York Place, so that Wolsey must "turn out," to which he made no objection; but when they insolently and tauntingly demanded the Great Seal, he declared he would not trust it in their possession without a written authority. "How do I know what you are going to do with it?" cried the cardinal, holding it firmly in his grasp, and returning it to the sealskin case in which he was in the habit of keeping it. The two dukes, having exhausted their vocabulary of abuse, retired for that day, but came back the next morning with an order, signed by the king, for the delivery of the Great Seal, which Wolsey gave up to them, together with an inventory of the furniture and fixtures of the magnificent abode he was about to vacate in favour of his sovereign.
The catalogue exhibited a long list of luxurious appointments, and commencing with "a splendid set of curtains of cloth of gold," * went on with—a ditto—a ditto—and a ditto, down to the end of the three first pages. The neatness and variety of his table-covers cannot be conceived, and his magnificent sideboard of gold and silver plate was in those days unparalleled. He had got also a thousand pieces of fine Holland; but as the chief use of Holland is, we believe, to make blinds, as must regard the purchase of this material in so large a quantity, as one of those blind bargains which are sometimes the result of excessive opulence. Having made over all those articles to the king, Wolsey left his sumptuous palace, and jumping into a barge, desired the bargeman to drop him down with the tide towards Putney. The river was crowded with boats to see him shove off, and he was assailed with the most savage yells from the populace. As the bargeman gave Wolsey his hand and pulled him on board, the poor cardinal stumbled over a block of Wallsend, when an inhuman shout of "That's right, haul him over the coals," arose from one unfeeling brute, and was echoed by countless multitudes.
On reaching Putney, Wolsey gave the word to "pull her in shore," when he disembarked, with his fool and one or two others who had agreed to share his exile. They had not gone very far when they heard a cry of "Ho! hoi hilly hilly hoi" and looking back, they perceived Sir John Norris coming full pelt after them. The cardinal was mounted on a mule—hired probably at Putney, or picked off the common—and though he endeavoured to put the animal along by giving her first her own head, and then the head of a thick stick, the rise of a hill brought Wolsey to a dead stand-still. Here he was easily overtaken by Sir John Norris, who came, as it turned out, with a present of a ring from the king's own finger, and a "comfortable message." The abject cardinal went into the most humiliating ecstasies, and actually grovelled in the very mud, to show his humble sense of the kindness and condescension of his sovereign. Thinking that Sir John Norris possibly expected something for his trouble in bringing the grateful tidings, Wolsey shook his head mournfully, saying, "I have nothing left except the clothes on my back—but here, take this"—and he tore from his neck an old piece of jewellery. "As for my sovereign," he cried, "I have nothing worthy of his acceptance;" when suddenly his eyes lighted upon his faithful fool, who had been such a thorough fool as to follow a fallen master. "Ha!" exclaimed Wolsey, "I will send to his majesty my jester, who is worth a thousand pounds to anybody who has never heard his jokes before; but as I am familiar with the entire collection, I have no further use for him." The faithful fool was exceedingly reluctant to go, and it took six stout yeomen * to drag him away—a fact which, as he was full of wit, proves the humour of the period to have been dreadfully ponderous. Some of the jests of our own time are heavy enough, but we doubt whether it would require half-a-dozen porters to carry a professed wag of the present day—including the Durden of his entire stock-in-trade—into the presence of royalty. It is not impossible that the obstinate resistance of the fool to a transfer from the service of a disgraced subject to that of a powerful king, may have been intended as a sample of his style of joking; but we can only say that if this was a specimen of his wit, the value set upon him by his old master was rather exorbitant.
Wolsey now lodged at Esher, where his spirits soon fell—if we may be allowed an engineering phrase—to a very dumpy level. Continual sighing had fearfully reduced his size, and he fretted so much that a sort of fret-work of tears seemed to be always hanging to his eye-lashes. His face became wrinkled and pale, as if constant crying had not only intersected his countenance with little channels, but had likewise washed out all its colour. It is not unlikely that he sometimes regretted having parted with his fool, whose dry humour might have mitigated the moisture or subdued the soaking which naturally resulted from the emptying of so many cups of sorrow over the dismal drooping and dripping cardinal. Nothing seemed to rouse him from his despondency, and the people about him could never succeed in stirring him up to a fit of even temporary gaiety. After dinner they would sometimes ask him to partake of a bowl of sack; but at the mere mention of the word sack he would burst into tears, and sob out, that the sack he had already received had been the cause of all his wretchedness. Upon this he would leave the dinner table, and wander forth to enjoy his solitary whine in the wood, among the thickly planted solitudes in the neighbourhood of Esher. Sometimes he would sit pining for hours under a favourite pine, or would go and indulge in a weeping match with one of the most lachrymose he could find of weeping willows. All this crying brought on a crisis at last, and Wolsey had so damped all his vital energies by the incessant showers of tears he let fall, that he fell into a slow fever.
The king now seemed to take some compassion upon his former friend, and sent down a medical man to see the prostrate cardinal; though we are inclined to attribute this anxiety for his health to a desire to keep him alive until the process was complete for depriving him of all his property. At all events a Parliament was suddenly summoned, and a Bill of impeachment promptly prepared against the fallen and feeble Wolsey.
There were no less than four-and-forty articles in this document, which contained, among a variety of other ridiculous accusations, a charge of having, when ill with fever, "come whispering daily in the king's ear, and blowing upon his most noble grace with breath infective and perilous." This would, indeed, have been convicting him out of his own mouth; but though the Lords passed the bill, it was thrown out in the Commons, through a speech of Thomas Cromwell, who had been secretary to the unfortunate cardinal.
Wolsey had always felt that when he did fall, he should fall not only as Shakespeare said, "like Lucifer," but like an entire box of lucifers, "never to rise again." Directly the cardinal learned that the bill had been defeated, his appetite returned, his cheeks resumed their colour, the furrows began to fill out, for grief had been at sad work with its plough all over his countenance. He had still a good deal of property left, but the king began tearing it away by handfuls at a time, until Wolsey had nothing left but the bishoprics of York and Winchester. Even these were a good deal impoverished by Henry, who made a series of snatches at the revenues, and divided the amount among Viscount Rochford, the father of Anne Boleyn—who used to say, "I am sure papa would like that," whenever there was a good thing to be had—the Duke of Norfolk, and a few other lay cormorants. Wolsey was at length completely beggared, by treatment that was of such an impoverishing nature as really to beggar description. He had nothing left him but a free pardon, a little plate—including two table-spoons, which his enemies said were more than his desert,—a small van of furniture, comprising, among other articles, an arm-chair, in which he was tauntingly told he might set himself down comfortably for life, and a little cash for current expenses. He was allowed also to move nearer town, and giving up his lodgings at Esher he took an apartment at Richmond, where he was not permitted to remain very long, for Anne and her party—including several knights of the Star and Garter—persuaded Henry to order the cardinal off to his own archbishopric.
The fallen prelate thought this forced journey so very hard that he tried to soften it by easy stages, and he travelled at the slowest possible pace, in the hope of being sent for back again. At every inn he entered for refreshment on the road he always left a request in the bar, that if anyone should ask for a gentleman of the name of Wolsey, the enquirer should be shown straight up, without the delay of an instant. Not a knock came to the door of his bedroom but he expected it was a messenger from the king; and when he found, in many cases, it was "only the boots," his disappointment would vent itself in terms of great bitterness. Adopting the customary mode of showing grief in those superstitious days, he took to wearing shirts made of horse-hair next his shin, but donkey's-hair would certainly have been more appropriate. He had, however, become so accustomed to hard rubs, that a little extra scarification was scarcely perceptible. On his arrival at York, he endeavoured to make himself neighbourly with the people about him, and became a sort of gentleman farmer, expressing the utmost interest in rural affairs. He made himself an universal favourite, and was the lion of every evening party within twelve miles of his residence. He was, however, scarcely a figure for these réunions, in his horse-hair shirt; but he probably concealed the penitential part of his costume by wearing a camel's-hair waistcoat immediately over it.
The clergy were always getting up little fêtes, of which he was the hero; and he was invited to the the ceremony of installation in his cathedral, which he promised to go through, on condition of the thing being done as quietly as possible. It was understood that there should be "no fuss," but several of the nobility and gentry sent contributions of cold meat and wine, forming themselves in fact into a provisional committee, so that the affair partook rather of the character of a picnic than of a pageant. Three days before it was to take place Wolsey was sitting at dinner, when there came a knock at the door, and it was announced that the Earl of Northumberland—his friend and pupil—was waiting in the courtyard. "Let him come up and do as we are doing," exclaimed the cardinal. "Dear me, I wish he had been a little earlier; but he is just in pudding-time, at any rate." As Northumberland entered the room Wolsey seized him by the hand, entreating him to sit down and enjoy a social snack—or, in other words, go snacks in the humble dinner. Northumberland seemed affected, when Wolsey, continuing his meal, observed, "Well, you will not make yourself at home, and I can't make you out, so I may as well finish my dinner." At length Northumberland, with a tottering foot, a trembling hand, a quivering lip, a faltering tongue, and a tearful eye, approached his friend Wolsey, and threw himself with a heavy heart—adding at least a pound to his weight—upon the old man's bosom. Wolsey had scarcely time to exclaim, "Hold up!" when the earl, mournfully tapping the cardinal on the shoulder, murmured, in a voice completely macadamised with sobs, "My Lord—(oh, oh, oh!)—I arrest you" (here his voice became guttural from a perfect gutter of tears) "for high treason." Poor Wolsey remained rooted to the spot, but it was soon necessary to transplant him, and he was speedily removed in custody. His old weakness again came over him, for he began to leak again at both eyes, as if he carried the veritable New River Head under the hat of a cardinal. He of course made himself ill, and indeed he was frequently warned that if he continued much longer in this liquid state, he would liquidate the debt of nature altogether. The warning was verified very speedily, for on reaching Leicester Abbey, when the monks came to the door with a candle to light him to bed, he observed to the abbot, "Father, I am come to lay my bones among you." He died on the 29th of November, 1530, in the sixtieth year of his age, and was buried in Leicester Abbey.
News of his death was at once dispatched to Henry, who was having a little archery practice at Hampton Court on the arrival of the messenger. The king continued his sport for some time, until the straw man, upon whom he was trying his skill, had become thoroughly trussed with arrows, when his majesty turned round with an abrupt "Now then, what is it?" to the bearer of the sad intelligence. At the tale of Wolsey's death Henry pretended to be much affected, but he soon recovered his spirits sufficiently to inquire whether a sum of £1500 had not been left by the cardinal. The king expressed a desire to administer to his lamented friend's effects, but when the discovery was made, that instead of having £1500 to leave, Wolsey had just borrowed and spent that amount, his royal master thought it as well to have nothing to do with the business. Poor Wolsey had been the unfortunate goose who might have continued laying golden eggs for a considerable time had not Henry out him prematurely up for the sake of immediate profit.
We cannot part with Wolsey until we have dropped a few inky tears to his memory. We have already seen that his talents were considerable, but according to one of his biographers * he had a most elastic mind, or in other words he could "pull out" amazingly when occasion required.
Some time before Wolsey's death a new ministry had been appointed, in which the family and friends of Anne Boleyn got very snug berths; but though in those days "any fool" could have a seat in the cabinet, it was necessary to have a chancellor of good abilities. The woolsack was literally in the market for a few days, until Henry thrust it on to the shoulders of Sir Thomas More, who would have declined the profitable burden, and who was somewhat averse to the Back of wool, because he felt that much of the material was obtained by fleecing the suitors. He, however, was persuaded to accept the dignity, or rather to undertake the burden, and he was even heard to say—by a gentleman who wishes to remain incog.—that he wished there were porters' knots for moral responsibilities as well as for actual weights, since it was exceedingly difficult to preserve one's uprightness beneath a load of dignity.
Among the persons recently introduced to Court was Thomas Cranmer, who happened to have met Dr. Gardiner, the king's secretary, and Dr. Fox at a private dinner table. As the party sat over their wine, the divorce of Henry was brought upon the tapis, and Cranmer made the sagacious observation, that the proper way would be to have it looked into. Gardiner and Fox exchanged glances, as much as to say "Shrewd fellow, that;" and they both agreed that he was a wonderful man for his age—which it will be remembered was the sixteenth century. They endeavoured to bring him out, and upon a free circulation of the bottle, Cranmer gave it as his opinion that there was "only one course to pursue," that "the thing lay in a nutshell," that "it was as clear as A, B, C;" a series of sentiments which, though more knowing than conclusive, made a deep impression on Fox and Gardiner. "There's a great deal in that fellow," said Fox after Cranmer had gone home, and indeed there was a good deal in him, no doubt, for scarcely anything had been got out of him. The two doctors hastened to the king to inform him of the enormous catch they had got in Cranmer, whose winks, innuendos, and occasional ejaculations of "I see it all;" "Plain as a pike-staff," etc., etc., had made such a deep impression upon the two doctors. Henry was as much taken with their description of Cranmer as they had been with the original, and the king exclaimed in a perfect rhapsody, "That man has got the right sow by the ear;" * an expression which we are sufficiently pig-headed not to appreciate. It was arranged that Cranmer should be asked to dine at the palace; and after a good deal of desultory conversation, in which "Exactly," "I see it," "No question about it," were Cranmer's running fire of ad captandum remarks, Henry got so puzzled that he requested the gentleman to put his opinions in writing at his earliest convenience.