That story, obviously derived from an actual witness, gives a fine impression of Elizabeth; but it no less obviously implies a very genuine affection subsisting between her and Henry, and a very sincere devotion in both to their son. Henry, however, was by nature a reserved and somewhat lonely man, and Elizabeth’s death not long after deprived him of the last softening influence. His whole life had been a tremendous strain. His boyhood and early manhood aged him prematurely. From the day that he landed in England to wrest the sceptre from Richard, the strain had never relaxed; the bow had never been slackened. At five-and-forty, he may well have been as much worn out as are men less severely tried twenty-five years later in life. The work he had to do was anything but inspiriting; he did it with dogged patience. The task was thankless, and he got little thanks. It was accomplished ungraciously, and he receives no grace in return. A dreary life, and a dreary reign; yet the reign is not without admirable qualities, nor the life without gleams of nobility.
CARDINAL WOLSEY
I
APPRECIATIONS
He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes; one that by suggestion
Tied all the kingdom: simony was fair-play:
His own opinion was his law: i’ the presence
He would say untruths and be ever double,
Both in his words and meaning. He was never,
But when he meant to ruin, pitiful:
His promises were, as he then was, mighty:
But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
In these words, Shakespeare or another has summed up the character of the great Cardinal as it presented itself to his enemies. As Katharine painted him, posterity has for the most part regarded him. Men who have risen from the ranks, and in their prosperity assume the state and splendour appropriate to hereditary position, are rarely popular. When they are so, it is because they have identified their names in some sort with popular causes. Of all the statesmen who for a long term of years controlled or seemed to control the destinies of England, not one perhaps has found apologists so few as Thomas Wolsey.
Of recent years, however, there has been a change. It has hardly yet made its way into popular accounts; but the attitude of serious historians has been at least largely modified by the publication of the State Papers under the editorship of the late Dr. Brewer, and of his Introductions to those volumes. The doctrine used to be that Wolsey was a man of exceeding arrogance who acquired a pernicious mastery over the mind of Henry VIII., and whose political achievement consisted mainly in a miserably fruitless meddling with foreign affairs in which England had no concern, dictated by an insatiable ambition for the Papal crown. Whereas Dr. Brewer and Bishop Creighton after him have laid it down that Wolsey raised England from the position of a third or fourth-rate Power to an equality with the greatest nations in Europe.
During the years of his power, it is at least clear that Wolsey did achieve for England such a position among the nations as she had not held, at any rate since the days of Henry V.; and that he did this, not, like Henry V., by aggressive militarism, but by diplomatic skill: that he sought to be, and to a great extent succeeded in being, the pacificator of Europe as well as the aggrandiser of England. In his aim and method, however, he followed in the footsteps of Henry VII., and his policy was a natural development, though a vast extension, of that laid down by that astute monarch. And in the second aspect of his policy, he was again developing that of the old king, in striving to make the power of the Crown independent alike of the old nobility and of Parliament.
