Wolsey quits York Place-His progress to Esher-Thomas Cromwell-He defends Wolsey in Parliament-Sir Thomas More, Chancellor-Statutes against ecclesiastical abuses-Resistance of the Clergy-Heresy-The king discharged of his debts by statute-Christmas at Greenwich-Embassy to the pope-Cranmer-Opinions of the Universities on the divorce-Wolsey in his see of York-His popularity-Is arrested on a charge of treason -His death, and the king's lament. WOLSEY has left, and for ever, his palace of York Place. In its gallery hung with cloth of gold,-in its gilt chamber and its council chamber,-his cupboards are thrown open, and give to view his astonishing hoards of gold and silver plate, "whereof some was set with pearl and rich stones." His velvet, satin, and damask stuffs; his richest suits of copes; his thousand pieces of fine holland cloth ;-these visible riches are placed upon divers tables, with an inventory upon every table. All these effects-every thing that he possessed-were taken from him, under the sentence of the Court of King's Bench, that his lands, goods, and chattels were forfeited, and that his person was at the mercy of the king. The charge against him was, that, as legate, he had violated the statutes of præmunire, by exercising his powers under a foreign authority. To this charge Wolsey answered: "I have the king's license in my coffers, under his hand and broad seal, for exercising and using VOL. II. Y 322 WOLSEY'S DEPARTURE TO ESHER. [1529. the authority thereof [of the legatine prerogative] in the largest wise, the which now remaineth in the hands of my enemies."* In departing from the scene of his magnificence, the minister, thus abandoned by his treacherous master, says, "It hath pleased the king to take my house ready furnished for his pleasure at this time." + His barge waits at those stairs where poor Buckingham landed and sought him in vain. "At the taking of his barge," says Cavendish, "there was no less than a thousand boats full of men and women of the city of London, wafting up and down in Thames, expecting my lord's departing, supposing that he should have gone directly from thence to the Tower, whereat they rejoiced." He adds: "I dare be bold to say that the most part never received damage at his hands." Who can wonder at the curiosity of this multitude to witness the ejectment of the great statesman who had governed them for twenty years! All the harshness of a harsh time would be attributed to him. His ecclesiastical magnificence had been paraded too long before them, to amaze and subdue as of old. Wolsey was the representative of a Church that was becoming more proud and insolent as its true greatness was fast perishing. "The authority of this cardinal," writes the contemporary chronicler, "set the clergy in such a pride that they dis dained all men." In his temporal office of chancellor the fallen judge had been a protector of the poor. But every man in high office was to some extent an oppressor: "the people be ever pilled and polled by hungry dogs." § And so Wolsey went on amidst the thousand boats to Putney, pitied by the few, scorned by the many who "watch the sign to hate." There was one in his train to whom in that hour all the changes of his own adventurous life must have been rendered doubly vivid by local associations. Thomas Cromwell, the son of a fuller of Putney; the agent of a factory at Antwerp; the trooper in the duke of Bourbon's army at the sack of Rome; the rough tool of Wolsey in the suppression of some of the smaller monasteries,-he, through the fall of his great master, is once more likely to be cast upon a frowning world, and have to fight some new battle for preferment, perhaps even for safety. The cavalcade passes through Putney town. The cardinal has knelt in the dirt when a messenger from the king has brought him a ring in token of the royal favour. He has parted with his poor fool upon Putneyheath-the faithful fool, "who took on and fired so in such a rage when he saw that he must needs depart," even though he was sent to make sport for a jovial king, instead of abiding with a humiliated priest. Wolsey has reached his desolate house of Esher, wholly unprovided with common necessaries, with "beds, sheets, tablecloths, cups, or dishes." It is ten years since he was wont to say to the Venetian ambassador, "I shall do so and so." || He now writes to Dr. Stephen Gardiner, praying him to extend his benevolence towards him; and begging for pecuniary help from the sovereign who has stripped him of everything. These are his abject words: "Remember, good Mr. Secretary, my poor degree, and what service I have done, and how now, approaching to death, I must begin the world again." Well might the French ambassador write, of one who had gone through such a terrible trial to a proud spirit, that Wolsey could say nothing so expressive 1529.j THOMAS CROMWELL-DEFENDS WOLSEY. 323 of his pitiable condition, as what was spoken in his face, "reduced to half its usual size."* It is All-hallown-tide, the 1st of November, when a strange scene occurs in the Great Chamber at Esher. Cavendish, the gentleman-usher, sees Thomas Cromwell leaning on the window, with a primer in his hand, repeating his matins. But "he prayed not more earnestly than the tears distilled from his eyes." Cavendish asks, "Why, Master Cromwell, what meaneth all this your sorrow?" Cromwell answers, "It is my unhappy adventure, which am like to lose all that I have travailed for all the days of my life, for doing of my master true and diligent service." He is in disdain, he says, with most men for his master's sake; and then he imparts something to Cavendish, in confidence: "Thus much will I say to you, that I intend, God willing, this afternoon, when my lord hath dined, to ride to London, and so to the court, where I will either make or mar, or I come again." The bold man accomplished the purpose upon which he had mused amidst his prayers and tears. He returned from London, and told Cavendish, "that he had once adventured to put in his foot, where he trusted shortly to be better regarded, or [ere] all were Wolsey's Groat. done." He had whispered some words of magical import into the ears of the king, which saved Wolsey for a season, and made himself, in due time, the most powerful of Henry's servants. The parliament met on the 3rd of November. Thomas Cromwell, through some sudden influence, became at member. Sir Thomas More, as chancellor, in his opening speech, had thus harshly spoken of his predecessor. The people he said were the sheep, and the king the shepherd: "And as you see that amongst a great flock of sheep some be rotten and faulty, which the good shepherd sendeth from the good sheep, so the great wether which has of late fallen, as you all know, so craftily, so scabbedly, yea, and so untruly juggled with the king, that all men must needs guess and think that he thought in himself, that he had no wit to perceive his crafty doing." But Cromwell was in the Commons'-house, there to save the great wether from the knife. "There could nothing be spoken against my lord in the parliament-house," says Cavendish, "but he would answer it incontinent, or else take until the next day; against which time he would resort to my lord to know what answer he should make in his behalf." The articles exhibited by the Lords against Wolsey-such as his writing to Rome, "Ego et Rex meus "-his putting the cardinal's hat on his York groat-his sending large sums to Rome-and similar charges of ecclesiastical assumption, were evidently held insufficient to sustain any accusation of offence "to the prince's person or to the state," as Wolsey himself alleged. It was not Henry's purpose then to crush Wolsey. We may be sure that Cromwell would not have dared to defend him if the king Legrand, tom. iii. p. 370. + Hall, p. 764. 324 SIR THOMAS MORE, CHANCELLOR. [1529. had willed his condemnation. The future was too doubtful to allow the king utterly to destroy a cardinal of the Roman see, whilst there was anything to hope in the matter of the divorce from the decision of the pope. Amongst the charges against Wolsey was one which was probably introduced to make the spiritual lords his severe judges: "He hath slandered the church of England in the court of Rome, for his suggestion to be legate was to reform the church of England." It was an offence to suppose that the church needed reformation. The reforms of Wolsey had touched only "small monasteries," as he wrote to the king, "wherein neither God is served ne religion kept." The endowments of Ipswich and Oxford were his alleged purpose in the appropriation of these monastic revenues. The abbot of York, offering the cardinal three hundred marks to save the priory of Romburgh, in Suffolk, from being united to St. Peter's of Ipswich, desires that his grace would "accept my poor mind towards your most noble acts."* It is related of Cromwell that, in speaking of what might come after the fall of his master, he said, "New statesmen, like fresh flies, bite deeper than those which were chased away before them." + When Cromwell uttered this aphorism, the time was not come when the churchmen would have interpreted the saying as prophetic of his own career. There had not been a parliament called since 1523. During the legatine rule of Wolsey, the pecuniary exactions of the church had become oppressive to all ranks of the people. The spiritualty had grown essentially worldlyminded; and any attempt to resist their encroachments was stigmatised with the terrible name of heresy. In the six weeks of their session the Commons asserted their determination to set some bounds to a power which was more obnoxious, because more systematic in its pecuniary inflictions, than the illegal subsidies and compulsory loans of the crown. That acute observer, the bishop of Bayonne, saw the storm brewing when the protecting shield of Wolsey was removed from the clergy. On the 22nd of October he writes, "It is not yet known who will have the great seal; but I firmly believe that the priests will not touch it again, and that they will have terrible alarms at this parliament." Sir Thomas More, as we have seen, received the seal. There was a certain point of reform to which More would go; but not a step beyond. The reformers of doctrine were as obnoxious to him as to Wolsey; who in his dying hours sent a request to the king, “in God's name, that he have a vigilant eye to depress this new pernicious sect of Lutherans."§ More had the reputation of leaning "much to the spiritual men's part in all causes." || But, though a rigid Catholic in doctrine and discipline, he was too wise and honest not to see that the rapacity of the officials of the church, and the general laxity as to pluralities and nonresidence, were shaking the foundations of ecclesiastical authority, even more than the covert hostility of the dreaded Lutherans. We cannot doubt that it was with his sanction that three important statutes were passed in this parliament of the 21st year of Henry. The statutes themselves furnish a sufficient evidence of their necessity. "An act concerning fines and sums of "Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries," p. 3. § Cavendish, p. 389. Legrand, tom. iii. p. 377. || Hall, p. 771. |