historian must, if impartial, while condemning this statesman's insatiable ambition, give him credit for his loyalty to both his masters. Wolsey, though continually grasping after fresh dignities and honours, was faithful as well to the Pope as to the king. Had his life been spared a little longer, Henry would never have abjured Catholicity, and England would not have to answer for the blood of so many martyrs. We know not whether we should most admire Leo's conduct in evincing on every occasion his affection for Henry, or that monarch's submissive obedience to the Pontiff. Under Wolsey, the King of England, was a pattern of devotion to the Holy See, and an example to all good Christians, and there was not a prince in Christendom whom Leo loved with such affection. His Holiness openly acknowledged it; and in writing to Henry, said: "You know, indeed, that of all Christian sovereigns we love you the most ardently in the Lord; you in whom reposes our dearest affection and our firmest hope: you whose wishes we have ever studied to gratify."(a) Leo was always ready to serve Henry.

Adrian, Cardinal di Corneto, had for some time filled the station of collector of the royal taxes which the crown had annually paid to Rome. His Eminence naturally of a morose disposition, but a most excellent man, had somehow or other displeased Henry, who consequently demanded his office for Ammonius, an excellent scholar.

or treaty, in which anything unfavourable or prejudicial to the person, rights, honours, or estates of the said Pope, or of the Roman Church, is attempted.

If it shall come to my knowledge that any such attempts are devised or set on foot I will hinder it as far as lies in my power, and will give information thereof to our said lord the Pope, or to some one who may report the same to him.

I will diligently observe and cause others to observe the rules of the holy fathers, the apostolic decrees, ordinances, sentences, dispositions, reservations, provisions, and mandates.

I will pursue (peisequar) and attack (inpugnabo) heretics, schismatics, and rebels against our Lord and his successors aforesaid, to the utmost of my power.

So help me God and these holy gospels. 1514. (a) Rymer, XIII., 493.

The prince's letter to the Sovereign Pontiff is couched in polite terms, and Leo felt no hesitation in recalling the Cardinal di Corneto to Rome.(b) Henry manifested his gratitude in a letter of thanks, wherein he addressed the Sovereign Pontiff as an unfailing source of kindness, a God whom he never addressed in vain, and whom he would always invoke and glorify.() Wolsey continued increasing in power and wealth. He had left Empson's house to live at York-place, a royal dwelling. After having exchanged the title of almoner and private secretary for that of Lord High Chancellor, which post Henry gave him on Warham's resignation of the great seal,(d) Wolsey received other favours through his royal master's interest from Rome; for by the arrival of a bull, shortly after his elevation to the chancellorship, Leo nominated him Cardinal of St. Cæcilia and legate à latere. He was invested with the insignia appertaining to his new rank at St. Peter's Abbey, Westminster, and never was there a more magnificent ceremony, for the minister was vested rather as an emperor of Rome than an humble servant and minister of Christ. The bishops of England assisted rather as slaves at the triumph of the ambitious prelate.(e) The ancient abbey was resplendent with gold and lights. The abbot who had been despatched by the Vatican with the scarlet hat, was so poorly clad, that on his landing at Dover he was hooted at by the populace; but Wolsey sent him rich vestments, and had him escorted to London by bishops, mitred abbots, and gentlemen. Owing to this circumstance, the Papal nuncio entered the abbey, decked out in the splendour of true magnificence.(f)

Wolsey did not confine this puerile ostentation to the sacred precincts alone, but he was invariably accompanied by a guard of abbots, earls, barons, bishops and knights, who were attached to his suite; he was known at a distance by his

long cortège. Who would have then ventured to prophesy that his glory would one day pass away like the morning cloud before the rays of the meridian sun? A long equipage of mules followed him when he travelled, with velvet bags, in which were his plate, &c. Some of his cups had been manufactured at Florence, and were presents from crowned heads. When he entered a town, the bells commenced ringing, and the inagistrates and clergy waited on him with addresses. His apartments, decorated in the oriental style, were magnificently furnished, being ornamented with sculpture, paintings, and mosaics, the works of native and foreign artists, whom he remunerated like a nabob. At this period, in Italy as well as in England, any branch of science, which was not thoroughly understood, was regarded as heterodox. In Italy, it was sheltered by the white cassock of Leo X.; and in England, in the palaces of Henry VIII. and Wolsey, where, secure from every attack, it braved the persecution of its enemies. Thus it was that Colet, the founder of the School of St. Paul's, whom the Bishop of London, deceived by false reports, prosecuted as a heretic, found in the king, and especially in the cardinal, protectors, who defended him as a scientific person, without inquiring into his orthodoxy.(a)

Ferdinand annually paid the minister £300 (Flanders money) as a remuneration for the pains he had taken in drawing up, and concluding the good, firm, and favourable friendship, consideration, and intelligence between the very high and puissant princes, the Kings of England and Castille. (b) From the archiepiscopal see of York he received more than 100,000 fr. (£4,000 sterling). He farmed the revenues of the sees of Hereford and Worcester at a high price, held the abbey of St. Alban's and the bishopric of Bath in commendam, and exchanged the latter see for that of Durham, one of the wealthiest bishoprics in England, and Durham, a little after, for the administration of the still wealthier diocess of Winchester.(c) It would perhaps be a difficult task to

(a) Howard.

(b) Rymer, XIII., 591. (c) Lingard.

mention a monarch as wealthy as Wolsey. Maximilian could scarcely pay his Swiss soldiery; Louis found himself obliged to crave for terms to pay his ally of England a small sum. We must, however, acknowledge that his Eminence spent his princely fortune nobly. Sculptors, poets, artists, in a word, all who were in distress, were sure to find a friend in Wolsey. In vain would have been sought around his palace a single instance of destitute poverty; he always took care that misery should be banished from his domains. He allowed pensions to a great number of superannuated clergymen, and had current accounts with all the apothecaries in London, for the purpose of enabling the poor to obtain medicine in cases of sickness.

Erasmus, the incarnate spirit of slander, in praising the qualities of this minister, says that he was one of those privileged characters whose fortune enables them to obtain grace in the eyes of the world, inasmuch as he was pardoned the high position he occupied in consequence of his noble generosity.(d) He calls the cardinal the glory of the court of the kingdom,(e) another king of England, (f) his virtue, his science, his talent, being his crown. Erasmus, who, if we are to judge from the following passage, was always fond of flattering, thanks the statesman that Britain has been cleared of those highwaymen who have so long infested her. One can travel securely without fear of being molested by those wild beasts in human form. He is Alexander the Great in a scarlet cassock, who has cut the Gordian knot of those interminable lawsuits that perplexed the English bar. He has brought the quarrels which divided noble families to an end; he has restored to the monasteries the discipline of the primitive ages of the Church; he has relit the lamp of study, which was on the point of being extinguished; he has aroused literature from her lethargic slumbers. delphus evinced not more in collecting a library. debted to him for the

Ptolemy Philazeal than Wolsey Are we not inrevival of those

Epis. Eras. III., 31. Epist. Erasm. XXIX., 56. (f) Ep. Eras. XXX., 23.

languages without which science would be incomplete? A glorious minister, whose services to literature posterity will always celebrate.(a) Wolsey was wont to interfere personally in the disputes to which Erasmus refers. He acted as an arbitrator, and invariably succeeded in effecting a reconciliation between the disputants, his decision being accepted, as both parties well knew that he had carefully examined every tittle of evidence pro et con, and, if required, had even taken advice. He founded the Court of Requests, where the rights of the poor were gratuitously defended. Godwin speaks highly of these institutions, and their regulations and equity in the administration of justice.(b) The poor had now advocates to defend their rights and privileges; and woe to him who oppressed the widow and the orphan, for he had in Wolsey a stern and inexorable judge.

On his nomination to the chancellorship, the poor from all parts of the kingdom applied to him for relief; so that Henry found himself compelled to create four new courts, which existed for some time under the presidency of the Keeper of the Archives, whose office it was to examine into every complaint brought before him, and to administer quick and prompt justice.(c) The country felt that Henry had but acted justly in entrusting the seal to Wolsey. On the 22nd of December, 1515, the Archbishop of Canterbury emitted the great seal enclosed in a leathern case to the king, and sealed in five places with his own signet, (d) and on the 24th, after vespers, Wolsey took the customary oath as Lord High Chancellor of England.(e) This new dignity required fresh duties from the minister,

who, while discharging its functions, thought more of his master than his own conscience. Wolsey was the first that regarded diplomacy as a science. He had paid agents in the various courts of Europe, who kept him au courant with every turn in political matters. He bestowed pensions on all those who acted as spies on the courtiers; and to more than one woman was he indebted for the disclosure of diplomatic secrets. Erasmus, to whom he often remitted cheques on the bankers at Nuremburg and Basle, was one of the Chancellor's most faithful and docile agents. Connected with the cleverest men in Germany, the philosopher was au courant with the religious movement then commencing to harass Saxony and Wittemberg. Had any one been told that Erasmus was enacting the spy for Wolsey, he would have been astonished. The Chancellor's chief object, as Raynaldi remarks, was to maintain the balance of power between the rival houses of France and Austria. He might be justly accused of versatility, were he to be judged by his fickleness of conduct towards Francis and Charles V., but his principal object was, as events afterwards showed, and as the reader will perceive in course of this history, to make England the supreme arbitrator of European destinies.

shall serve our sovereyn lord the kyng and his people in the office of Chancellor:

And ye shall do right to all maner of people, pore and riche, after the lawes and usages of this realme;

And truly ye shall counceill the king, and his councill ye shall leyne and kepe;

And ye shall not knowe, nor suffer the hurt, nor disheretyng of the king, nor that the right is of the crowne be discresed by any mean, as for forth as ye may lett.

And, if ye may not lett it, ye shall make it clerely and expresly to be knowne to the king with your true advice and counsell;

And ye shall doo and purchase the kinges profite in all that ye maye.

As God helps you and the holy Evangeliez. -Rymer, XIII., 529.

THE Duke de Valois, who had succeeded Louis XII. as Francis I., was just of age, and was one of the handsomest men of his day; of a majestic figure, an agreeable address, a generosity thoroughly liberal, and endowed with great feeling.(a) His accession to the throne was hailed with great joy by the people; the students recalled the day when the prince had taken his gold collar from his neck at Orleans, and placed it on that of Alciati.(b) The soldiers spoke of his bravery on the field of battle, and the tears he shed when informed of the exploits of Gaston de Nemours ; (c) the magistrates of his sympathy for the literati,(d) the women of his chivalric conduct to Mary of England, who threatened, by her marriage with Louis XII., to put an end to his claims to the crown of France; the learned, of his self-government in refusing to listen to his passions for the young and beautiful widow ;(e) and the courtiers of his gallantry. On his accession to the throne, it was predicted that he would be the king of the people, the hero of the soldiery, and the prince of the ladies.(f) But none felt greater joy than his mother Louisa. Not long before, he had been thrown from his horse near Amboise. "The Lord had pity on the poor widow," remarked Louisa; "pity on her tears and prayers, and took not from her maternal

(a) Mezerai, Histoire de France.
(b) Audin.-Histoire de Calvin.
() Hume.

(d) Brantôme, Captaines François, à l'art. François I.

(e) Gaillard, Histoire de François I.
Gregorio Leti, storia di Carlo Quinto.

embraces an orphan son." She had lost her husband when Francis was an infant; and recalling to mind that in 1511, he had been nearly carried off by a fever, she thanked God, and said: "Now, indeed, am I rewarded, in living to hear of his being anointed with the holy oil of Rheims; notwithstanding all my anxiety and sorrow, heaven be praised, I never yet distrusted Divine Providence."(5) Louisa of Savoy, entirely wrapt up in her son, had no thought of the future; nor did she seem alarmed at his age and disposition. Francis ascended the throne at twenty-one. The King of Scotland was but a child, and Henry was then in his 24th year. Not a single gray hair had yet appeared on the heads of those sovereigns to whom heaven had confided the destiny of the world.(h) France was preparing for war. Three hundred cannon, two feet long,(i) were ordered to be cast and conveyed by mules across the Alps. Leo, on being apprised of this circumstance, appealed to Switzerland, ever ready to fly to the aid of the Church when in danger. Again was the terrible cry of war against the barbarian heard amidst the mountains of Unterwalden. Francis could not reconquer Milan without the aid of England. Would Henry consent to the renewal of the treaty which he had made with France? This was a question requiring immediate solution.

England was, at this time, much dis

(8) Lettres de Louise, 12th Sept., 1494.Journal.

(h) Sharon Turner. Mem. de Bayard.

turbed by a priest who was engaged in preaching a crusade against France,"Arise!" said he, in his semi-pagan, semichristian language, to his auditory, “arise, in the name of the gods, arise! Fortune calls on you to arise: she offers you a kingdom, wealth, dignities, glory, honour, all this belongs to you—take it. To arms! to arms! show the world what it has to expect from the king, from the aristocracy, in a word, from Great Britain herself."(a) It was more as an artist than an orator that Schinner described the future events of the life of Henry VIII. The harangue was like a panorama, wherein the king was represented on his war-horse rushing on his flying enemies, entering Picardy in triumph, at the head of an army of 60,000 men to conquer France, (b) and re-demanding at St. Denys a crown which was his both by right of birth and conquest. Schinner was no longer addressing, unfortunately for his cause, the mountaineers of Switzerland.(c) Henry felt no inclination to undertake a new war against France, as his first expedition had nearly exhausted the treasury bequeathed to him by his father Two of his bravest naval officers had fallen, several of his ships had been lost, and Wolsey, who directed the prince's councils, busied in the designs of his palace at Hampton Court,(d) saw neither profit nor glory in another war with France; the minister, moreover, had lost all confidence in Ferdinand, whose prudence he admired, but in whose fidelity he could place no dependence.(e) Francis had chosen a skilful negotiator, in the first president of Rouen, to treat with Henry, who, by flattering the monarch's vanity, and bribing Wolsey, concluded a treaty between the two crowns in the name of his master; this treaty to last during the lifetime of both the monarchs, and a year after the death of

him who should be first called hence, was signed on 5th of April, 1515,(f) at the very moment that the French artillery was passing through Dauphiny, on its way to Italy.

These warlike preparations did not frighten the English cabinet. Wolsey had resolved not to oppose the Transalpine expedition, inasmuch as he believed that the Swiss would successfully resist Francis, and that, though victorious, still France would necessarily shed some of her best blood for conquests that she would necessarily never be able to keep, England at the same time remaining perfectly neutral. The chancellor in his correspondence acknowledges in every line the courage of the French. He concedes to them the possession of all those military virtues which once distinguished the Romans, but refuses them the credit of civilization. Born to conquer, the French knew not how, especially in Italy, to keep their conquests. "Let them go on, let them triumph. England, when she pleases, can arrest their progress, not by her soldiers, but by her sailors;" for Wolsey depended more for the future renown of England on her naval than military strength. The treaty included those maritime questions which in the last reign had so often menaced the peace of the two nations. To secure the liberty of commerce between England and France, it was agreed that no armed vessel in time of war should sail from either nation without having first given bail that she would neither directly nor indirectly molest merchant-men sailing under the allied flags; and, moreover, that she would carry no ammunition for the enemy.(g) This clause was entirely in favour of England, which, under Cabot, was about to undertake one of those voyages of circumnavigation which would extend her traffic to unknown lands.(h) Wolsey felt certain that England would one day play a considerable part in the commercial as well as in the naval transactions of the world.

(f) Rymer, XIII, 476.

(g) Léonard, Traité, &c., II., 125.

(h) Memoirs of Sebastian Cabot, by Biddle of Pittsburg.-Historical view of the progress of discovery on the more northern coasts of ¡Africa.-Edinburgh Cabinet Library.