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The Lutheran movement that broke out in Germany two years after Cardinal Wolsey's acceptance of the twofold office of papal legate and royal chancellor, found little favour in England.
The French were thus enabled to throw their whole force on the Emperor, and Charles found himself in a position from which negotiation alone could extricate him. His ends were in fact gained by the humiliation of France, and he had as little desire to give England a strong foothold in the neighbourhood of his own Netherlands as in Wolsey's days.
In this frankness we recognise once again a flicker of greatness one might almost say a touch of divine humour. The lives of great men compose themselves dramatically; Wolsey's end was indeed a fit theme for the dramatist. His Fall In his later years, Wolsey began to totter on his throne. The King had become more and more masterful.
A few more years, should you survive them, will bestow on you the title of "an old man": and in some hour of future reflection you may probably find the fitness of Wolsey's despairing penitence "had I served my God as faithful as I have served my king, he would not thus have forsaken me in my old age." The character you appear to us in, is truly ridiculous.
This tomb was stripped of its ornaments and destroyed by the Parliamentary rebels in 1646; but the black marble sarcophagus forming part of it, and intended as a receptacle for Wolsey's own remains, escaped destruction, and now covers the grave of Nelson in a crypt of Saint Paul's Cathedral.
On Wolsey's disgrace, Henry VIII decided that the tomb should be continued for his own bones; but the sculptor died first and it was unfinished. Later Charles I cast envious eyes upon it and wished to lie within it; but circumstances deprived him too of the honour.
This strange incident gave some diversion to Wolsey's thought; but ere long they returned to their former channel. Sleep would not be summoned, and as soon as the first glimpse of day appeared, he arose, and wrapping his robe around him, left his room and ascended a winding staircase leading to the roof of the tower.
He concluded an armistice with his prisoner, and used Wolsey's French negotiations in the previous year as a ground for evading fulfilment of his stipulations. The alliance was in fact at an end; and the schemes of winning anew "our inheritance of France" had ended in utter failure. So sharp a blow could hardly fail to shake Wolsey's power.
Thus when Wolsey appointed a suitable person to be Abbess of Wilton, instead of a very unsuitable person who was connected with the Boleyns, the King reprimanded him in his most elevated style taking occasion at the same time to be scandalised at the subscriptions to Wolsey's educational schemes provided by monasteries which had pleaded poverty at the time of the "Amicable Loan". It was at least tolerably evident that "the King's matter" as the divorce was generally called would have to be brought to a speedy and successful issue if Wolsey was to retain the royal favour.
The government, however, while granting absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people.
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