[1] Act of Praemunire. See S243 and Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xiii, S14, and p. xxxii.
It was an easy matter for him to crush the Cardinal. Erasmus said of him, "He was feared by all, he was loved by few—I may say by nobody." His arrogance and extravagant ostentation had excited the jealous hate of the nobility; his constant demands for money in behalf of the King set Parliament against him; and his exactions from the common people had, as the chronicle of the time tells us, made them weep, beg, and "speak cursedly."
Wolsey bowed to the storm, and to save himself gave up everything; his riches, pomp, power, all vanished as suddenly as they had come. It was Henry's hand that stripped him, but it was Anne Boleyn who moved that hand. Well might the humbled favorite say of her:
"There was the weight that pulled me down.
… all my glories
In that one woman I have lost forever."[1]
[1] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act III, scene ii.
Thus deprived of well-nigh everything but life, the Cardinal was permitted to go into retirement in the north; less than a twelve-month later he was arrested on a charge of high treason. Through the irony of fate, the warrant was served by a former lover of Anne Boleyn's, whom Wolsey, it is said, had separated from her in order that she might consummate her unhappy marriage with royalty. On the way to London Wolsey fell mortally ill, and turned aside at Leicester to die in the abbey there, with the words:
"…O, Father Abbot,
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye:
Give him a little earth for charity!"[2]
[2] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act IV, scene ii.
347. Appeal to the Universities.
Before Wolsey's death, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, of Cambridge, suggested that the King lay the divorce question before the universities of Europe. Henry caught eagerly at this proposition, and exclaimed, "Cranmer has the right pig by the ear." The scheme was at once adopted. Several universities returned favorable answers. In a few instances, as at Oxford and Cambridge, where the authorities hesitated, a judicious use of bribes or threats soon brought them to see the matter in a proper light.