[52] This mission related to the intended treaty of marriage between Henry the Seventh, and the Duchess Dowager of Savoy.
[53] Shakspeare represents the cardinal as “Exceeding wise, fair spoken and persuading;” and one of the charges exhibited against him was, that “at the privy council he would have all the words to himself, and consumed the time with a fair tale!”
[54] Dispatch.
[55] Understanding.
[56] Wordsworth’s Ed.
[57] By passengers the reader will see by the context that the passage boats are meant. It was the usual phrase to signify a ferryman, and also his boat, from passager, Fr. Thus in Baret’s Alvearie, “A passenger, one that conveyeth over many, convector.”
[58] Thomas Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has the following stanza, in which the expedition Wolsey used on this occasion is not unpoetically alluded to:
“The Argonautic vessel never past
With swifter course along the Colchian main,
Than my small bark with fair and speedy blast