CARDINAL WOLSEY (1522).
"Why come ye not to courte."
Source.—John Skelton, Chalmers' Works of the English Poets. London, 1810. Vol. II., p. 274.
Once yet again
Of you I would frayne,[25]
Why come ye not to court?
To which court?
To the King's court?
Or to Hampton Court:
The king's court
Should have the excellence;
But Hampton Court
Hath the preeminence,
And Yorkes Place,[26]
With my lord's grace,
To whose magnificence
Is all the confluence,
Suits and supplications,
Embassies of all nations.
Be it sour or be it sweet
His wisdom is so discreet,
That in a fume or an heat—
"Warden of the fleet,
Set him fast by the feet!"
And of his royal power
When him list to lower,
Then, "Have him in the tower,
[27] 'Saunz aulter' remedy!
Have him for the by and by
[28] To the Marshalsea,
Or to the King's bench!"
He diggeth so in the trench
Of the court royal,
That he ruleth them all.
So he doth undermine
And such sleights doth find,
That the king's mind
By him is subverted,
And so straightly cöarted[29]
In credensynge his tales,
That all is but nutshells
That any other saith;
He hath in him such faith.
And, yet all this might be,
Suffered and taken in gre[30]
If that that he wrought
To any good end were brought:
But all he bringeth to nought,
By God, that me dear bought!
He beareth the king on hand,
That he must pull his land,
To make his coffers rich.
But he layeth all in the ditch
And useth such abusion
That in the conclusion
He cometh to confusion,
Perceive the cause why,
To tell the truth plainly
He is so ambitious
And so superstitious
And so much oblivious
From whence that he came,
That he falleth into a "caeciam"[31]
Which, truly to express,
Is a forgetfulness
Or wilful blindness.
"A caecitate cordis,"
In the Latin sing we,
"Libera nos, Domine!"
But this mad Amalecke
Like to a Mamelek,
He regardeth lordes,
No more than potsherdes,[32]
He is in such elation
Of his exaltation,
And the supportation
Of our sovereign lord,
That, God to record,
He ruleth all at will
Without reason or skill,
How be it the primordial
Of his wretched original,
And his base progeny,
And his greasy genealogy,
He came of the sank[33] royal,
That was cast out of a butcher's stall.
But however he was borne,
They would have the less scorn,
If he could consider
His birth and room together,
And call to his mind
How noble and how kind
To him he hath found,
Our sovereign lord, chief ground
Of all this prelacy
And set him nobly
In great authority,
Out from a low degree
Which he cannot see.
For he was, parde![34]
Nor doctor of divinity,
Nor doctor of the law,
Nor of none other saw;[35]
But a poore master of arte,
God wot, had little parte
Of the quatrivials,[36]
Nor yet of trivials,[37]
Nor of philosophy,
Nor of philology,
Nor of good policy,
Nor of astronomy,
Nor acquainted worth a fly
With honourable Italy,
Nor with royal Ptholomy,
Nor with Albumasar
To treate of any star
Fixed or else mobile;
His Latin tongue doth hobble,
He doth but clout and cobble
In Tully's faculty
Called humanity;
Yet proudly he dare pretend
How no man can him amend
But have ye not heard this,
How an one-eyed man is
Well sighted when
He is among blind men?
[38] Than our process for to stable,
This man was full unable
To reach to such degree,
Had not our prince be
Royal Henry the eight,
Take him in such conceit,
That to set him on sight
In exemplifying
Great Alexander the King
In writing as we find;
Which of his royal mind,
And of his noble pleasure,
Transcending out of measure
Thought to do a thing
That pertaineth to a king,
To make up one of nought,
And made to him be brought
A wretched poore man
Which his living won
With planting of lekes
By the days and by the wekes,
And of this pore vassall
He made a king royal,
And gave him a realm to rule,
That occupied a shovel,
A mattock and a spade,
Before that he was made
A king, as I have told,
And ruled as he would.
Such is a king's power,
To make within an hour,
And work such a miracle,
That shall be a spectacle,
Of renown and worldly fame:
In likewise now the same
Cardinal is promoted,
Yet with lewd conditions coted,
Presumption and vain glory,
Envy, wrath, and lechery,
Covetousness and gluttony,
Slothful to do good,
Now frantick, now starke wode.[39]
[25] Pray.
[26] Wolsey's Palace as Archb. of York: after his fall it became the Royal Palace of Whitehall.
[27] Sans autre.
[28] The name of a prison.
[29] Restrained.
[30] Good will.
[31] Caecitatem = blindness.
[32] Potsherdes = broken pieces of earthenware.
[33] Sang (Fr.), blood.
[34] Pardieu.
[35] Sort.
[36] Quatrivials = astrology, geometry, arithmetic, music.
[37] The trivials = grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
[38] To make good our story.
[39] Mad.