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Updated: June 5, 2025
And then, as much to distract her thoughts and prevent tears as to reassure her, he told her what he had before told his nephews of the inducements that had made him Wolsey's jester, and impressed on her the forms of address. "Thou'lt hear me make free with him, but that's part of mine office, like the kitten I've seen tickling the mane of the lion in the Tower.
As Wolsey's policy was a development of that of Henry VII. in the direction of raising England's international prestige, so it was also in the concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign: and the process was carried still further though in a somewhat different way when Wolsey had fallen.
Not perhaps unjustly has he been called the greatest statesman England ever produced. England, at the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, was weakened after the struggles of the Civil Wars, and wished to find peace at home at the cost of obscurity abroad. But it was this England which Wolsey's policy raised "from a third-rate state of little account into the highest circle of European politics."
It may be doubted, however, whether any great goodwill between the two nations was born of all the display of amity; nor were there any very marked diplomatic results. If it was Wolsey's particular object to evolve a triple league, he was disappointed. The two Kings met and parted, Henry proceeding to a fresh conference with his nephew of Spain, from which Francis, in his turn, was excluded.
The reign of Henry VIII., after Wolsey's fall, was rich in horrors and in tragical catastrophes. But it was not a mere carnival of lust and blood. High principles were at stake, and profound issues divided parties, beside which the levity of Anne Boleyn and the eyes of Jane Seymour were not worth a moment's thought.
Once again he was acquitted and restored to Ireland, and after a while the deputyship was restored to him, John Allen, a former chaplain of Wolsey's, being however appointed Archbishop of Dublin, and Chancellor, with private orders to keep a watch upon Kildare, and to report his proceedings to the English Council. Yet a third time in 1534 he was summoned, and now the case was more serious.
Under the influence of the Boleyn clique, and knowing Wolsey's aversion to the Boleyn marriage, the King may have suspected that his minister would play him false if he lost all hope of averting that conclusion to the divorce. Or he may merely have resolved that it was time to check any development of his minister's authority.
It is probably an allegorical subject, such as we find in the tapestry of the same date under the gallery of Wolsey's Hall at Hampton Court, and in that of Nancy published by Mons. Juninal. I believe one of the seven pieces of "the siege of Troy," mentioned in Query, No. 3, or an eighth piece unmentioned, is now in the possession of Mr. Pratt, of Bond Street, who bought it of Mr. Yarnold's widow.
Language of this kind boded ill for the "Christian Brethren;" and the choice of Wolsey's successor for the office of chancellor soon confirmed their apprehensions; Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas More would chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the Utopia, the friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of the human character.
In this single specimen we may see a complete image of Wolsey's persecution, as with varying details it was carried out in every town and village from the Tweed to the Land's End.
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