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Updated: May 10, 2025
Wolsey tried to persuade the King to refer the question to the Pope, but the King asserted the rights of the Crown in uncompromising terms. The Bishops had to submit to a sharp rebuke, and Standish was made a Dean not long after. The episode was a premonition of future events.
From the age of the Plantagenets to the age of the Revolution the country had stood apart from more than passing contact with the fortunes of the Continent; for if Wolsey had striven to make it an arbiter between France and the House of Austria the strain of the Reformation withdrew Henry and his successor from any effective interference in the strife across the Channel; and in spite of the conflict with the Armada Elizabeth aimed at the close as at the beginning of her reign mainly at keeping her realm as far as might be out of the struggle of western Europe against the ambition of Spain.
He was reconnoitring the windows of the house from the opposite side of the cloisters in the hope of discovering something, when he was caught, as before mentioned, by the king. Wolsey, meanwhile, was received by Doctor Sampson at the doorway of his dwelling, and ushered by him into a chamber on the upper floor, wainscoted with curiously carved and lustrously black oak.
His own annual income from bribes royal and otherwise was indeed stupendous, though these were received with the knowledge of the King. So great was the power Wolsey attained to that Fox said of him: "We have to deal with the Cardinal, who is not Cardinal but King." He wrote of himself, "Ego et rex meus," and had the initials, "T. W." and the Cardinal's hat stamped on the King's coins.
Under Wolsey's influence Henry made war with Louis of France, in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with Luther, and persecuted the English protestants. But Wolsey could not blind himself to the true condition of the church.
"To show how noble a palace a subject may offer to his Sovereign," was the reply of the Cardinal a truly courtly and an unquestionably costly compliment. The King accepted the noble gift, but Wolsey continued from time to time to occupy his own whilom palace at Hampton and was besides given permission to make use of the royal palace at Richmond.
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.
But in 1527 Henry had developed a single purpose; he had set his mind on one object to the achievement whereof every political consideration was to be subordinated. The state-craft of the great minister was dominated by and subjected to the king-craft of a master who never brooked opposition to his will; and Wolsey, failing to carry out that will, was hurled without remorse from his high estate.
Another contemporary writes: "He devotes himself to accomplishments and amusements day and night, is intent on nothing else, and leaves business to Wolsey, who rules everything." As a sportsman, Henry was the "beau idéal" of his people.
The jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey had but symbolised the position of his order.
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