[77] Even so early as the reign of Henry III, the annual amount of the benefices in the hands of Italians, in this kingdom, was 70,000 marks; more than three times the value of the whole revenue of the crown. M. Paris, in Vit. Hen. III. Ann. 1252.
Wordsworth.
[78] These are termed under pastelers, in the more recent MSS.
[79] The Gospeller was the priest who read the Gospel. The Pisteller, the clerk who read the Epistle.
[80] Revestry, from the French Revestir; contractedly written Vestry.
[81] Those Lords that were placed in the great and privy chambers were Wards, and as such paid for their board and education. It will be seen below that he had a particular officer called “Instructor of his Wards.” Grove.
[82] Among whom, as we shall see below, was the eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland. This was according to a practice much more ancient than the time of Wolsey; agreeably to which, young men of the most exalted rank resided in the families of distinguished ecclesiastics, under the denomination of pages, but more probably for the purposes of education than of service. In this way Sir Thomas More was brought up under Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury; of whom he has given a very interesting character in his Utopia. From Fiddes’s Appendix to the Life of Wolsey, p. 19, it appears that the custom was at least as old as the time of Grosthed, Bishop of Lincoln, in the reign of Henry III, and that it continued for some time during the seventeenth century. In a paper, written by the Earl of Arundel, in the year 1620, and intitled Instructions for you my son William, how to behave yourself at Norwich, the earl charges him, “You shall in all things reverence, honour, and obey my Lord Bishop of Norwich, as you would do any of your parents: esteeminge whatsoever he shall tell or command you, as if your grandmother of Arundell, your mother, or myself should say it: and in all things esteem yourself as my lord’s page; a breeding, which youths of my house, far superior to you, were accustomed unto; as my grandfather of Norfolk, and his brother, my good uncle of Northampton, were both bredd as pages with bishopps.” See also Paul’s Life of Archbishop Whitgift, p. 97.
It is not out of place to mention, what we are told by Sir George Wheler in his Protestant Monastery, p. 158. A. D. 1698. “I have heard say, in the times no longer ago than King Charles I, that many noblemen’s and gentlemen’s houses in the country were like academies, where the gentlemen and women of lesser fortunes came for education with those of the family; among which number was the famous Sir Beaville Granville and his lady, father and mother of our present lord of Bath.” W.
[83] Dr. Wordsworth’s edition says one hundred and eighty. The manuscripts differ in stating the numbers, the edition of 1641 has eight hundred persons. And, in consequence, Wolsey has been so far misrepresented, by some writers, as to have it asserted that he kept eight hundred servants!
[84] At Bruges, “he was received with great solemnity, as belongeth unto so mighty a pillar of Christes church, and was saluted at the entring into the towne of a merry fellow which sayd, Salve rex regis tui, atque regni sui, Hayle both king of thy king, and also of his realme.” Tindal’s Works, p. 370, A. D. 1572.