all the anti-papal legislation of Henry's reign. We shall see presently how unjust this charge has been; but now we address ourselves to the task of calling for evidence upon which to base our own judgment of the man and his deeds.1

First of all, biography demands personal and family history, and these shall be given in the briefest possible form.

Thomas Wolsey was born at Ipswich in March 1471 (?) and was the son of Robert and Joan Wolsey. He was "an honest poor man's son," says Cavendish. His father, as evidenced by his will, was a man of good position with relatives well to do, and was probably a grazier and wool-merchant. This was quite enough to give rise to the contemptuous slander which called Wolsey a butcher's son. The extraordinary ability of the boy marked him out, by his father's consent, for the priesthood. At eleven he left Ipswich Grammar School and went to Oxford, where he graduated B.A. at fifteen. At twenty-five, if not earlier, he has become Fellow, and

1 As we shall rely much upon Brewer's Introductions to the Calendars of State Papers, 1507-1530, edited for the Master of the Rolls, we give here Brewer's own judgment :

"No statesman of such eminence ever died less lamented. On no one did his own contemporaries pile a greater load of obloquy; not one stone of which has posterity seriously attempted to remove -yet in spite of all these heavy imputations on his memory, in spite of all this load of obloquy, obscuring our view of the man and distorting his lineaments, the Cardinal still remains and will ever remain as the one prominent figure of this period-the violent calumnies resting on his memory have in some degree been already lightened by juster and clearer views of the events of his time and the characters of the chief agents. It need not apprehend an examination still more rigid and more dispassionate. Not free from faults by any means, especially from those faults and failings the least consistent with his ecclesiastical profession, the Cardinal was perfectly free from those meaner though less obtrusive vices which disfigure the age and the men that followed him-vices to which moralists are tolerant and the world indulgent. Magnificent in all his designs and doings, he inspired a grandeur and a loftiness into the minds of Englishmen of which he himself was a conspicuous example" (Reign of Henry VIII, 1509-1530, by Dr. Brewer, vol. ii., p. 457).

in 1498 his name appears in the College Register as third Bursar. His father died in the autumn of 1496, and in his will made a few days before his death, he says: "Item, I will that if Thomas, my son, be a priest within a year next after my decease, then I will that he sing (i.e. say mass) for me and my friends by the space of a year and he for to have for his salary 10 marks."

I have not been able to discover when or by whom he was ordained a deacon, but his ordination to the Priesthood took place at the Lenten Ordination, 1498, held in S. Peter's Church, Marlborough, the ordaining Bishop being Augustine Church, titular Bishop of Lydda and suffragan to the Bishop of Salisbury.1

In 1499 Wolsey became Senior Bursar of Magdalen and about the same time Master of the Grammar School connected with the College. He is reported to have been required to resign the office of Bursar for applying funds for completing Magdalen Tower without sufficient authority.2 The following year, 1500, he was appointed Rector of Lymington in Somerset. For some unrecorded reason, but probably because of some dispute about tithes, a neighbouring squire (Sir Amyas Poulet) put the young rector in the village stocks, and found many years afterwards that this affront was not forgotten 1 The entry in the Salisbury Register is :

"M. Thomas Wolsey artium magister Norwicens dioc. : diaconus, socius perpetuus collegei beate Marie Magdelane universitatis Oxon.: per literas &c. ad titulum ejusdem collegii in presbyterum &c."

The words "Norwicens dioc." refer to his birthplace, then, as now, in the diocese of Norwich.

Oxford was at that time in the diocese of Lincoln, and Wolsey, in the usual course, should have been ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln.

2 This tower, which is one of the glories of Oxford, was begun in 1492, and Wolsey was not, as is often stated, the builder of it.. The story of misappropriation of funds must be received with caution, if not dismissed as untrue. Wolsey's enemies invented every kind of slander against him. Other slanders connected with the stocks at Lymington, which assigned at one time incontinence and again drunkenness, have no shadow of evidence to support them. These were not mentioned until after his death, when the malice of his enemies freely invented stories to injure his memory.

when he stood before Wolsey as Chancellor of England. From this time Church preferments began to be heaped upon him, and it is difficult to keep pace with his rapid promotions.

A single year of country life was Wolsey's only experience of strictly pastoral duties, and in 1501 he entered, as chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Deane), upon his great career of statesman and diplomatist. His unusual capacity for business soon attracted attention, and in 1506 he entered the Royal service as chaplain to Henry VII. Thus at a little more than thirty years of age did the brilliant boy, from a humble home in Ipswich, by force of ability and character, win for himself the opportunity of his subsequent great achievements. He entered the service of Henry VIII as Almoner in 1509. Wolsey was about thirty-eight and Henry eighteen when they first came together in public affairs. He had been made Dean of Lincoln by Henry VII in February 1508,1 and Royal Almoner to the King in November of the same year.

To complete the story of Wolsey's promotions we record the chief offices he afterwards held: Bishop of Tournai in France (1514) 2; Bishop of Lincoln (1514) 3;

1 The list of his Church preferments about this time is a formidable one, though it was no more than a presage of greater things: Rector of Lymington (1500), a dispensation to hold two other benefices with it a week or two later; Rector of Redgrave in Suffolk (1506); Vicar of Lydd in Kent (1508); Prebendary of Lincoln (1508); Prebendary of Hereford (1510); Rector of Torrington in Devonshire (1510); Canon of Windsor (1511); Prebendary of Goole (1512); Dean of S. Stephen's Collegiate Church, Westminster (1512); Dean of Hereford (1512) (resigned); Dean of York and Precentor of York (1513).

2 This was Henry VIII's reward for the success of Wolsey's diplomatic services in the campaign of 1513, which gave the King the power to appoint. The mad ambition of English kings to rule in France was a legacy from the days of the Norman kings, and amongst his other titles Henry bore that of King of France. Wolsey shortly surrendered the bishopric in consideration of a pension for life paid out of its funds.

3

Wolsey was consecrated to the episcopate at Lambeth on March 26, 1514, by Archbishop Warham, being designated by

Archbishop of York (1514-1530); Bishop of Bath and Wells (1518-1523); Bishop of Durham (1523-1529); Bishop of Winchester (1529); Abbot of St. Albans (1521-1529)1; Cardinal (1515-1530); Lord Chancellor (1515-1529); Legate (1518); confirmed for life in 1524 with faculties never before heard of.

It is well known that Wolsey aspired to the Papacy. As a last effort, and when many other attempts had failed, he wrote in 1528 to two Roman cardinals upon his election. Henry VIII urged it by letters and through his ambassadors, with the sinister purpose of profiting himself in the matter of the divorce. On three different occasions Wolsey's name was before the College of Cardinals, but members of this body deceived him with false hopes, and there was never the remotest chance of his selection. He has been charged herein with overweening ambition, but a Roman Catholic priest justly remarks that there was nothing very extraordinary in this, for almost every one of the cardinals

Leo X. He resigned Lincoln upon his appointment to York. The King asked that the heavy fees for the Bull to Lincoln might be remitted, but Leo X replied that the request could not be granted because it was detrimental to the Holy See. Cardinal de Medici wrote to Wolsey to say that the Consistory would not listen to the application, as the Church of Lincoln was very rich, and had always paid the tax, and that the Pope was greatly in debt, especially for his coronation, and had intolerable daily expenses. The election to York later in the same year brought the demand for more fees, and Wolsey had to pay about £25,000 of our present money to the Court of Rome for the expenses of his promotion. He had to borrow, by giving a bond to three

merchants.

1 Wolsey had secured the promise of an imperial son-in-law for the infant Princess Mary, and an indemnity against all pecuniary losses incurred by a rupture with France. "By God!" said Henry VIII, "the Lord Cardinal hath sustained many charges on this his voyage, and expended £10,000" (£120,000 of present money); and so the King added to Wolsey's other dignities and emoluments the most ancient mitred abbey in England (Brewer, Henry VIII, vol. ii., p. 428).

2 Thomas Wolsey, Legate and Reformer, by E. L. Taunton, 1902, p. 142. Father Taunton adds this significant note: "Since Wolsey's days Italians only have sat in Peter's Chair, and the

did the same, that he had nothing to gain by his election, as the position of the Papacy was in those days so critical that Wolsey as Cardinal Legate, Archbishop and Chancellor held a more powerful and effectively greater personal position in the eyes of the world than did the Pope of Rome.

The Proud and Haughty Prelate.

To argue against Wolsey because he never visited his dioceses and devoted himself wholly to the high offices of State, counts for very little. Herein he was no better nor worse than many other ecclesiastics. The revenues of the Church were shamefully raided in the interests of the State. But this alone renders it impossible for us to regard him as a whole-hearted reformer, while in his own person he offered the most conspicuous example of the abuse of pluralities. He has with justice been described as the greatest statesman England ever produced. He was more than a match for the astutest schemers at Rome. The successive popes disliked him with the hatred of fear. The Emperor and the King of France well knew the extent of his influence and

courted his support. He served his king with unbounded zeal, and made the names of Henry VIII and England regarded as never before in the councils of Europe. At home and in public he was fond of display. The gorgeousness of his household and the multiplicity of his servants more than rivalled the splendour of the Court. What wonder, then, the nobility, whether the older families or those recently ennobled, looked upon him with envy! In personal surroundings he eclipsed them all, and in the extent of his influence none of them could even approach as a rival.

government of the universal Church has been practically in the hands of that nation. Although the principle of nationality is vehemently decried as being opposed to the catholicity of the Church, it can hardly be denied that never has a more striking example of this principle been shown to the world than at Rome for the last three hundred years or more."