A stately procession now files by, headed by shaven and tonsured priests carrying silver crosses. Behind them a bareheaded noble carries the Great Seal of England, and another a cardinal’s hat on a cushion. Now you hear gentlemen ushers shout, “Make way for my lord’s grace!” and a splendid figure stalks past you with the air of a king. He wears the scarlet robe of a cardinal, with a tippet of fine sable and a gold chain about his neck, while on his feet are shoes of gold studded with jewels. In his hand he carries an orange-skin with a scented sponge in the midst. This he sniffs from time to time, lest he should catch some infection from the crowd that throngs his path. Behind him two great pillars of silver and a gilt mace are borne, and so he proceeds through Westminster Hall to the seat of justice. At his coming, suitors kneel to present their petitions and beg his favour. Anon he will devote himself diligently to the business of his high office, and will spare neither high nor low, but will judge all who come before him according to their merits and deserts.

No man in the kingdom, not even the king, lives in such splendour and magnificence. His palace is always filled with noblemen, gentlemen, and ambassadors from foreign countries, and his banquets and entertainments are the wonder of the age. Bluff King Hal and he are boon companions, and ofttimes you may see the monarch lean lovingly on the shoulder of his splendid chancellor. Sometimes he will visit his palace, and the cardinal will spare neither money nor ingenuity to divert the king.

A writer of the time tells us that “the banquets were set forth, with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort and costly manner that it was a heaven to behold. I have seen the king suddenly come in thither in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like shepherds, having sixteen torch-bearers, besides their drums. Ye shall understand what joy and delight the cardinal had to see his prince and sovereign lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased.”

Who is this favoured mortal? He is Thomas Wolsey, the son of a wealthy wool-merchant of Ipswich. By his great ability and his zeal in the king’s service, he has raised himself from a comparatively humble position to be the envy of the greatest nobles in the land. “He is the person,” writes the Venetian ambassador, “who rules both the king and the kingdom. He is very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability, and indefatigable. He alone transacts all the business that occupies all the magistrates, offices, and councils of Venice. He has the reputation of being extremely just. He favours the people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and making the lawyers plead gratis for them.” But if he has friends among the poor, his pomp and pride have made him hosts of enemies among the proud and rich. The old nobles hate him, and would fain bring his haughty head to the dust. Nevertheless, even his enemies are forced to admit that he is the ablest statesman of his time, and the chief prop of the kingdom.

Truly, he treads all the ways of glory, and sounds all the depths and shoals of honour; but the knell of his greatness is soon to toll. The sun will no longer usher forth his honours, or gild again the noble troops that wait upon his smiles. Even now a woman’s bright eyes are weaning Henry from him, and soon he will be fain to say—

Listen to the story of his fall.

Never king came to his throne more blessed by nature, fortune, and circumstance than the eighth Henry. Nature had fashioned him as the handsomest and ablest monarch in Christendom. “He was tall and well proportioned ... his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face that would become a pretty woman.” But there was no effeminacy about him. He was devoted to tennis and extremely fond of jousting and hunting—“never taking his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses.” Nor was there a more accomplished king living. He spoke good French, Latin, and Spanish; he was a musician and an author, and even as a boy his ability and address most favourably impressed the great scholar Erasmus. With all these gifts and graces, Henry began his reign with the highest promise; but as the years went by he steadily changed for the worse. His unbridled self-will grew upon him until he became a cold-hearted despot, who made his whim the law of the land, and ruthlessly sent to the scaffold all on whom his displeasure fell. From the first he was absolute master of the realm, and could say, L’État, c’est moi! Nevertheless, he was always careful to make his acts legal by getting Parliament to endorse them. He greatly valued his popularity with the people, and his ministers had to bear the blame of all his unpopular acts.

During the later years of Henry the Seventh’s reign, Arthur, the heir to the throne, had been married to Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Arthur died young, and the miserly old king, unwilling to part with Catherine’s rich dowry, proposed to marry her to her brother-in-law, Henry, who was six years her junior. Such an alliance was against the law of the Church, but a dispensation was readily obtained, and shortly after his accession Henry married her. For many years they lived happily together. “The king adores her, and her Highness him,” wrote her confessor, and never had any man a more faithful helpmeet. She was a fair-haired, gentle, pious woman, of a lively and gracious disposition, but not beautiful. As she grew older her health failed, and she became prematurely old and lost much of her attraction. All her children died except one—the Princess Mary. After eighteen years of married life Henry fell violently in love with Anne Boleyn, one of the queen’s maids of honour.

“Madame Anne,” wrote an eye-witness, “is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature and swarthy complexion, and has nothing but the king’s great love, and her eyes, which are black and beautiful.” She was, however, bright and lively, and had “wonderful long hair.” Soon Henry pretended to have scruples about the lawfulness of his marriage with his brother’s widow, and he persuaded himself that the death of his children was a visitation of God for his sin. Further, he argued that a son was necessary in the interests of his kingdom, for hitherto the rule of women had always provoked civil war. The real fact of the matter was that the selfish, self-willed king wanted to cast off Catherine in favour of a new, young wife. Before long Henry asked Pope Clement to declare that his marriage was null and void from the beginning.

Wolsey, as the Pope’s legate in England, was the natural channel of communication between the king and the Pope. Wolsey could not believe that Henry desired a dissolution of his marriage tie in order to contract an alliance with a giddy, insignificant lady of the court. Rather, he assumed, Henry was contemplating a union with some lady of the royal house of France, and this fell in with his pet scheme for securing the friendship of that powerful state. Believing this, he used his influence with the Pope. But the wearer of the triple crown was then in a parlous state. He was in the power of Charles the Fifth, nephew of Queen Catherine, and that monarch was determined that his aunt should not be divorced. At the same time, Clement was an ally of Henry’s, and was naturally anxious to assist him. In his dilemma the Pope sought to gain time, and therefore appointed Wolsey and the Italian Cardinal Campeggio to inquire into the case. In June 1529 the two cardinals opened their court in the great hall of the Black Friars’ Monastery in London. Catherine refused to plead, but knelt at the feet of her husband and made a touching appeal to him to spare her the indignity and injustice of divorce.

She appealed to the Pope himself; then rising, bowed to the king, and refused to face the court again. The trial dragged on, and Henry became impatient and demanded speedy judgment.

Meanwhile Clement had made a treaty with the Emperor, and was no longer solicitous to retain the goodwill of the English king. He therefore revoked the commission, and ordered the cause to be transferred to Rome for a new trial. Henry, baffled and beaten, was furious, and Anne Boleyn skilfully fanned the flame of his wrath. She suggested that Wolsey had bungled the matter, and forthwith his doom was sealed. He was dismissed from his office as chancellor, and brought to trial for breaking an old law which forbade appeals to Rome. Wolsey said truthfully that he had only appealed to the Pope at the king’s request. Henry, however, denied that he had sanctioned the proceeding, and Wolsey, to the joy of his enemies, was found guilty. All his property was seized, and after he had made an abject submission, he was ordered to withdraw to his diocese of York.

Here he flung himself with all his old energy into his work as archbishop, and soon won the affection of the north-country folk. But he hungered and thirsted for his former greatness, and made the serious error of communicating with the ambassadors of the French king and the Emperor. When Henry heard of it his anger blazed forth once more. This was treason and nothing less, and Wolsey’s arrest was immediately ordered. Early in November he began his journey southward under an armed guard. Sick and heart-broken, with his health undermined, he travelled as far as Leicester, where at his coming the abbot of the place met him with the light of many torches and received him with great reverence. “Father abbot,” said he, “I am come to lay my bones among you.” Truer words were never spoken. A few days later he died, lamenting with his failing breath—

So died the victim of a headstrong, selfish sovereign, who remorselessly flung away even the most devoted of his servants as soon as they had ceased to be useful to him.