Perhaps few periods of English history are more remarkable than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey; a period which had to boast the most illustrious potentates who have ever filled the thrones of Europe. The age of Henry was also that of Leo, of Charles, and of Francis:—a period big with political events of singular interest:—the captivity of the French monarch and of the Roman Pontiff,—the sacking of Rome,—the divorce of Queen Katherine,—and the train of circumstances which led the way to the Reformation,—Events in which Wolsey’s hand may be often traced, and in some of which he was a principal actor. The record of his life and its vicissitudes,—his humble origin—his towering fortunes, and his sudden fall,—could not well fail of interesting even in ordinary hands:—But he has been extremely fortunate in his biographer. The narrative contained in the following pages, of course, only affords a glance at these events; it is not the work of a professed historiographer, but the production of a simple-hearted and honest eyewitness of what he relates. George Cavendish was the faithful attendant of this princely prelate in his triumphant as well as in his declining fortunes:—One who failed him not in his adversity, but shed over his fallen master the tears of affection, performed for him the last sad offices of humanity, and then in his retirement sat down with honest indignation to vindicate him from slander, and to transmit to future ages a faithful picture of his life, with a sacred regard to truth.

It is this circumstance which renders his work so much more interesting than any thing of a similar kind with which I am acquainted. We are here occasionally introduced to the secret recesses of the private life of one of the most distinguished statesmen the world ever saw; of one who not only divided the sway of empire with his monarch, but who governed or influenced the conduct alternately of France and Spain; whose power for a time was almost unlimited, and whose magnificence has never been exceeded.

There is a sincere and impartial adherence to truth, a reality in Cavendish’s narrative, which bespeaks the confidence of his reader, and very much increases his pleasure. It is a work without pretension, but full of natural eloquence, devoid of the formality of a set rhetorical composition, unspoiled by the affectation of that classical manner in which all biography and history of old time was prescribed to be written, and which often divests such records of the attraction to be found in the conversational style of Cavendish. There is an unspeakable charm in the naÏvetÉ of his language—his occasional appeals to his reader—and the dramatic form of his narration, in which he gives the very words of the interlocutors, and a lively picture of their actions, making us as it were spectators of the scenes he describes. Indeed our great poet has literally followed him in several passages of his King Henry VIII. merely putting his language into verse. Add to this the historical importance of the work, as the only sure and authentic source of information upon many of the most interesting events of that reign; from which all historians have largely drawn, (through the secondary medium of Holinshed and Stowe, who adopted Cavendish’s narrative,) and its intrinsic value need not be more fully expressed.

Upon the death of the Cardinal his master, Cavendish relates that the king gave him the same appointment, of Gentleman Usher, in his service, which he had filled in the household of Wolsey: yet at the close of his work he tells us that he returned to his own home in the country. Whether his retirement was only temporary, or whether he then took his final leave of the court, we have no exact means of ascertaining. In his poems he does not mention having served the king, yet dwells upon his faithful services to the Cardinal; but the information he displays upon the principal subsequent events of the reign of Henry, and that of Edward VI. seems to lead to the conclusion that he was a spectator of them. In retirement he would have hardly been able to obtain the acquaintance with public affairs which his poems show that he possessed. The circumstance of his sitting down to write in the reign of Philip and Mary[1], “to eschewe all ociosite,” would seem to point to that as the period of his retirement, or otherwise his conscience had long slumbered before it accused him that his “tyme he spent in idelnes.”

The fate of this Life of Wolsey has been indeed singularly unfortunate; after remaining in manuscript nearly a century, it was first printed in 1641, for party purposes, but in such a garbled form as to be hardly recognized for the same work, abridgment and interpolation having been used with an unsparing hand. Its author too had been robbed of his literary honours, which were bestowed upon his younger and more fortunate brother Sir William Cavendish, until the year 1814, when his cause was ably advocated in a Dissertation by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.A.S. author of the History of Hallamshire. I am indebted to the kind intervention of my friend J. H. Markland, Esq. for the privilege of reprinting that Dissertation, which the reader will find at the commencement of the volume, and will, I doubt not, be gratified in the perusal. It affords the best example of clear argumentative solution of a literary paradox from circumstantial evidence with which I am acquainted, at the same time it is so skilfully interwoven with curious matter bearing upon the question, as not only to divest it of the sterile character with which disquisitions of the same kind from less able hands have been marked, but to render it very interesting. I owe Mr. Hunter my best acknowledgements for the ready manner in which the favour was conferred, and I look to have the thanks of those, who are yet unacquainted with it, for uniting this tract with the work of George Cavendish, from which it should never again be disjoined. For all that relates to the Life of Wolsey and its author, therefore, I shall beg leave to refer to this source of information; and it will only remain for me to give an account of the present edition.

Having purchased two valuable ancient manuscript copies of the work, one of them from among the duplicates of the late Duke of Norfolk’s library[2], I conceived that the text might be very much improved by collation of these and the several manuscripts in private and public libraries. Upon naming the design to my friend Mr. Douce, he mentioned to me a very curious copy in the possession of Mr. Lloyd, which contained some verses apparently by the same author, and which from this circumstance might have some claim to be considered the author’s original autograph. Upon application to that gentleman, he, with a liberality which calls for my warmest thanks, immediately placed the manuscript in my hands. I at once saw that its pretensions were undoubted, and that it contained not only a more valuable text of the Life, but a series of poems, evidently in the hand writing of the author, with occasional corrections and interlineations, and thus attested:—“per le Auctor G. C.” in numerous places. On the first blank leaf is written in the same hand with the body of the manuscript, “Vincit qui patitur q^d G. C. Maxima vindicta paciencia;” and then “Cavendysh de Cavendysh in Com. Suff. gent.” and beneath, “I began this booke the 4. day of Novemb^r.” On the reverse of the same leaf is another Latin sentence and the motto of Cavendish, Cavendo tutus. On a succeeding blank leaf is the name of a former possessor, C. Rossington[3], under which is written in another hand, “i. e. Clement Rossington of Dronfield, Gent. whose son Mr. James Rossington gave me this MS.” It is remarkable that it should have passed into the possession of a person in Derbyshire. Those who have made Sir William Cavendish the author would have seized upon this circumstance with avidity as lending colour to their assertion, and would probably have argued that the initials G. C. by which George Cavendish has attested it as his production in so many places, were intended to designate Gulielmus Cavendish. Mr. Hunter has, however, settled the question beyond the possibility of dispute; it is sufficient to remark here that Sir William Cavendish died in 1557, and that this manuscript affords unequivocal evidence that the writer survived Queen Mary, who died at the close of 1558. Unfortunately the first leaf of the text of the Life is wanting. At the end of the Author’s Address to his Book, with which the poems conclude, is the date of the completion of the manuscript, which will be found on the plate of fac-similes:

This invaluable acquisition made me at once change my plan, and proceed earnestly to the work of transcription; feeling convinced that all other manuscripts were, in comparison, of little authority, I determined to follow this, as most entitled to confidence. Upon comparing it with my own manuscript copies and the text of Dr. Wordsworth, I found that it supplied the chasm which, for some unknown reason, is found in all the manuscripts that have come under my notice. The suppressed passages contain the description of a boar hunt, and an account of the libels written against Wolsey by the French[4]; the imperfection is generally indicated by a blank space being left, which in Mr. Douce’s MS. is accompanied by a note saying, “in this vacante place there wanteth copy.” It was at first my intention to give various readings, but upon closer comparison I found this would have been impracticable, because the text, as it appears in Dr. Wordsworth’s edition and in the common manuscript copies, has been almost entirely rewritten; changes in the structure of the phrase and verbal discrepancies occur in almost every line. Under such circumstances I was obliged to content myself with indicating the most important variations, I mean such as in any way affected the meaning of the text. I have however availed myself of my own manuscript copies, or of Dr. Wordsworth’s edition, to supply an occasional word or phrase which seemed necessary to the sense of a passage, but have always carefully distinguished these additions, by enclosing them in brackets.

It is not easy to account for the extraordinary difference in the language of the original autograph copy and the later manuscripts, by any other means than a supposition that the copyist thought he could improve the style of Cavendish, which is indeed sometimes involved and obscure, but many of the discrepancies have clearly arisen from the difficulty of reading his hand-writing, and the substitutions most frequently occur where the original manuscript is the most illegible. It is scarcely probable that Cavendish wrote another copy, for he was already, as he himself says, old, and probably did not survive the date of the completion of this MS. above a year. There are no additions of the least importance in the more recent copies; the few which occur have been carefully noted.

Of the Poems, to which I have given the title of Metrical Visions, no other copy is known to exist. They have little or no merit as verses, being deficient in all the essential points of invention, expression and rhythm, and it is to be regretted that Cavendish, who knew so well how to interest us by his artless narration of facts in prose, should have invoked the muse in vain. He seems to have been sensible of his deficiency, and says very truly

In the former limited impression these Metrical Visions were printed, but as they have little in them to interest the general reader, it has been deemed advisable to give only a specimen in the Appendix to the present edition; the omission enabling the publishers to compress the work into one volume, and thereby to make it more generally accessible.

I have ventured to take the spelling and pointing into my own hands; but in no instance have I presumed to alter the disposition of the text. I have reason to think that the judicious reader will not be displeased at what is done in this respect; it is no more than what has been effected for Shakspeare and other of our ancient classics. The orthography of Cavendish, as the specimen given from his poems will evince, was exceedingly uncouth and unsettled; retaining it could have answered no good end; those who wish to have recourse to the work for philological purposes would most assuredly prefer the authority of manuscripts; and the disguise of old spelling might have deterred many from reading this interesting narrative, to whom it will now afford pleasure.

The remaining portion of the volume comprises a very curious Memoir of Queen Anne Boleyn by George Wyatt, grandson of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, containing some particulars relating to that unfortunate lady not elsewhere noted. It must be considered a valuable supplement to the notice of her contained in the Life of Wolsey. In the Appendix is also given a Parallel between Wolsey and Laud, written at the time when Cavendish’s work first issued from the press; though its purpose was to excite prejudice against Laud, it is not deficient in interest, and is conducted with tolerable temper. The original being of extreme rarity, and of sufficient brevity, I have thought that it would be an agreeable addition to this work. The few letters and papers which are added were necessary illustrations of passages in the text and notes, and though some of them are to be found in books readily accessible, they are not placed in connexion with the work to which they relate without sufficient reasons, which the reader will find stated in the preliminary notices; it is therefore unnecessary to repeat them in this place. A few notes on the Life of Wolsey which have been adopted from Dr. Wordsworth’s edition are distinguished by the letter W.

It is not generally known that a very curious edition of this Life was printed by the zealous biographer of Wolsey, Mr. Grove of Richmond, as long since as the year 1761. He had first adopted the old spurious copy, which he printed in the form of notes to his own work in 1742-4; but afterwards meeting with a manuscript, he was so indignant upon finding by comparison the forgeries and scandalous interpolations of the old editions, that he printed off a small impression with a preface and notes; but it is one of the rarest of English books. For the loan of this curious volume[5] I am indebted to the kindness of Richard Heber, Esq. M.P. for the University of Oxford, whose liberality, in imparting the inexhaustible treasures of the richest and most comprehensive library ever formed by one individual, it has been my good fortune frequently to experience.

My excellent and highly valued friend Francis Douce, Esq. with his accustomed kindness, threw open to me his valuable library, and placed in my hands a very curious manuscript[6] of this Life, embellished with spirited drawings in outline of some of the principal occurrences, from which three prints have been accurately copied as appropriate embellishments of the book. With these advantages, I have reason to hope that this edition will be found in all respects worthy of the singular merit of the work, and of the auspices under which it goes forth to the world.

Box Hill,

June 1, 1825.