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Cardinal Wolsey (Version 2)

<h2>CHAPTER VIII WOLSEY'S DOMESTIC POLICY</h2> We have been following the laborious career of Wolsey in his direction of foreign affairs. He held in his hands the threads of complicated negotiations, by which he was endeavouring to assure England's power on the Continent, not by means of war but by skilful diplomacy. In doing this he had to guard the commercial relations of England with the Netherlands, and had also to bow before the selfwill of the king, who insisted on pursuing fantastic designs of personal aggrandisement. Still he steered a careful course amidst many difficulties, though when he looked back upon his labours of thirteen years he must have owned to serious disappointment. Perhaps he sometimes asked himself the question, if foreign policy was worthy of the best attention of an English minister, if he had not erred in adventuring on such large schemes abroad. There was much to do at home; many useful measures of reform awaited only a convenient season. He had hoped, when first he began his course, to have seen England long before this time peaceful and powerful, the arbiter of European affairs, a pattern to other kingdoms, dealing {124} honestly and sagaciously with the pressing needs of the time. He had laboured incessantly for that end, but it was as far off as ever. The year 1527 saw England exhausted by useless wars, and Europe plunged in irreconcilable strife. Wolsey's dream of a united Europe, cautiously moved by England's moderating counsels, had vanished before forces which he could not control. Meanwhile domestic reforms had been thrust into the background. Wolsey was keenly alive to their importance, and had a distinct policy which he wished to carry out. He had carefully gathered into his hands the power which would enable him to act, but he could not find the time for definite action. Something he contrived to do, so as to prepare the way for more; but his schemes were never revealed in their entirety, though he trained the men who afterwards carried them out, though in a crude and brutal shape. England was passing through a period of social change which necessitated a re-adjustment of old institutions. The decay of feudalism in the Wars of the Roses had been little noticed, but its results had been profound. In the sphere of government the check exercised by the barons on the Crown was destroyed. Henry VII. carefully depressed the baronage and spared the pockets of the people, who were willing to have the conduct of affairs in the hands of the king so long as he kept order and guarded the commercial interests, which were more and more absorbing national energies. The nation wished for a strong government to put down anarchy and maintain order; but the nation was not willing to bear the cost of a strong government on constitutional principles. Henry VII. soon found that he might do what {125} he liked provided he did not ask for money; he might raise supplies by unconstitutional exactions on individuals provided he did not embarrass the bulk of the middle classes, who were busied with trade. The nobles, the rich landowners, the wealthy merchants, were left to the king's mercies; so long as the pockets of the commons were spared they troubled themselves no further. Henry VII. recognised this condition of national feeling, and pursued a policy of levelling class privileges and cautiously heeding the popular interests; by these means he established the royal power on a strong basis, and carried on his government through capable officials, who took their instructions from himself. Some of the old nobles held office, but they gradually were reduced to the same level as the other officials with whom they consorted. The power of the old nobility passed silently away. With this political change a social change corresponded. The barons of former years were great in proportion to the number of their retainers and the strength of their castles. Now retainers were put down by the Star Chamber; and the feudal lord was turned into the country gentleman. Land changed hands rapidly; opulent merchants possessed themselves of estates. The face of the country began to wear a new look, for the new landlords did not desire a numerous tenantry but a large income. The great trade of England was wool, which was exported to Flanders. Tillage lands were thrown into pasture; small holders found it more difficult to live on their holdings; complaints were heard that the country was being depopulated. England was slowly passing through an economic change which {126} involved a displacement of population, and consequent misery on the labouring classes. No doubt there was a great increase in national prosperity; but prosperity was not universally diffused at once, and men were keenly conscious of present difficulties. Beneath the surface of society there was a widespread feeling of discontent. Moreover, amongst thinking men a new spirit was beginning to prevail. In Italy this new spirit was manifest by quickened curiosity about the world and life, and found its expression in a study of classical antiquity. Curiosity soon led to criticism; and before the new criticism the old ideas on which the intellectual life of the Middle Ages was built were slowly passing away. Rhetoric took the place of logic, and the study of the classics superseded the study of theology. This movement of thought slowly found its way to England, where it began to influence the higher minds. Thus England was going through a crisis politically, socially, and intellectually, when Wolsey undertook the management of affairs. This crisis was not acute, and did not call for immediate measures of direction; but Wolsey was aware of its existence, and had his own plans for the future. We must regret that he put foreign policy in the first place, and reserved his constructive measures for domestic affairs. The time seemed ripe for great achievements abroad, and Wolsey was hopeful of success. He may be pardoned for his lofty aspirations, for if he had succeeded England would have led the way in a deliberate settlement of many questions which concerned the wellbeing of the whole of Christendom. But success eluded Wolsey's grasp, and he fell from power before he had time to trace decidedly the {127} lines on which England might settle her problems for herself; and when the solution came it was strangely entangled in the personal questions which led to Wolsey's fall from power. Yet even here we may doubt if the measures of the English Reformation would have been possible if Wolsey's mind had not inspired the king and the nation with a heightened consciousness of England's power and dignity. Wolsey's diplomacy at least tore away all illusions about Pope and Emperor, and the opinion of Europe, and taught Henry VIII. the measure of his own strength. It was impossible that Wolsey's powerful hand should not leave its impression upon everything which it touched. If Henry VIII. inherited a strong monarchy, Wolsey made the basis of monarchical power still stronger. It was natural that he should do so, as he owed his own position entirely to the royal favour. But never had any king so devoted a servant as had Henry VIII., in Wolsey; and this devotion was not entirely due to motives of selfish calculation or to personal attraction. Wolsey saw in the royal power the only possible means of holding England together and guiding it through the dangers of impending change. In his eyes the king and the king alone could collect and give expression to the national will. England itself was unconscious of its capacities, and was heedless about the future. The nobles, so far as they had any policy, were only desirous to win back their old position. The Church was no longer the inspirer of popular aspirations or the bulwark of popular freedom. Its riches were regarded with a jealous eye by the middle classes, who were busied with trade; the defects of its organisation had been deplored {128} by its most spiritually-minded sons for a century; its practices, if not its tenets, awakened the ridicule of men of intelligence; its revenues supplied the king with officials more than they supplied the country with faithful pastors; its leaders were content to look to the king for patronage and protection. The traders of the towns and the new landlords of the country appreciated the growth of their fortunes in a period of internal quiet, and dreaded anything that might bring back discord. The labouring classes felt that redress of their grievances was more possible from a far-off king than from landlords who, in their eyes, were bent upon extortion. Every class looked to the king, and was confident in his good intentions. We cannot wonder that Wolsey saw in the royal power the only possible instrument strong enough to work reforms, and set himself with goodwill to make that instrument efficacious. So Wolsey was in no sense a constitutional minister, nor did he pay much heed to constitutional forms. Parliament was only summoned once during the time that he was in office, and then he tried to browbeat Parliament and set aside its privileges. In his view the only function of Parliament was to grant money for the king's needs. The king should say how much he needed, and Parliament ought only to advise how this sum might most conveniently be raised. We have seen that Wolsey failed in his attempt to convert Parliament into a submissive instrument of royal despotism. He under-estimated the strength of constitutional forms and the influence of precedent. Parliament was willing to do its utmost to meet the wishes of the king, but it would not submit to Wolsey's high-handed dictation. The {129} habits of diplomacy had impaired Wolsey's sagacity in other fields; he had been so busy in managing emperors and kings that he had forgotten how to deal with his fellow-countrymen. He was unwise in his attempt to force the king's will upon Parliament as an unchangeable law of its action. Henry VIII. looked on and learned from Wolsey's failure, and when he took the management of Parliament into his own hands he showed himself a consummate master of that craft. His skill in this direction has scarcely been sufficiently estimated, and his success has been put down to the servility of Parliament. But Parliament was by no means servile under Wolsey's overbearing treatment. If it was subservient to Henry the reason is to be found in his excellent tactics. He conciliated different interests at different times; he mixed the redress of acknowledged grievances with the assertion of far-reaching claims; he decked out selfish motives in fair-sounding language; he led men on step by step till they were insensibly pledged to measures more drastic than they approved; he kept the threads of his policy in his own hands till the only escape from utter confusion was an implicit confidence in his wisdom; he made it almost impossible for those who were dissatisfied to find a point on which they could establish a principle for resistance. He was so skilful that Parliament at last gave him even the power over the purse, and Henry, without raising a murmur, imposed taxes which Wolsey would not have dared to suggest. It is impossible not to feel that Henry, perhaps taught in some degree by Cromwell, understood the temper of the English people far better than Wolsey ever did. He established the royal power on a broader {130} and securer basis than Wolsey could have erected. Where Wolsey would have made the Crown independent of Parliament, Henry VIII. reduced Parliament to be a willing instrument of the royal will. Wolsey would have subverted the constitution, or at least would have reduced it to a lifeless form; Henry VIII. so worked the constitutional machinery that it became an additional source of power to his monarchy. But though Wolsey was not successful in his method of making the royal power supreme over Parliament, he took the blame of failure upon himself, and saved the king's popularity. Wolsey's devotion to his master was complete, and cannot be assigned purely to selfish motives. Wolsey felt that his opinions, his policy, his aspirations had been formed through his intercourse with the king; and he was only strong when he and his master were thoroughly at one. At first the two men had been in complete agreement, and it cost Wolsey many a pang when he found that Henry did not entirely agree with his conclusions. After the imperial alliance was made Wolsey lost much of his brilliancy, his dash, and his force. This was not the result of age, or fatigue, or hopelessness so much as of the feeling that he and the king were no longer in accord. Like many other strong men, Wolsey was sensitive. He did not care for popularity, but he felt the need of being understood and trusted. He gave the king his affection, and he craved for a return. There was no one else who could understand him or appreciate his aims, and when he felt that he was valued for his usefulness rather than trusted for what he was in himself, the spring of his life's energy was gone. {131} Still Wolsey laboured in all things to exalt the royal power, for in it he saw the only hope of the future, and England endorsed his opinion. But Wolsey was too great a man to descend to servility, and Henry always treated him with respect. In fact Wolsey always behaved with a strong sense of his personal dignity, and carried stickling for decorum to the verge of punctiliousness. Doubtless he had a decided taste for splendour and magnificence, but it is scarcely fair to put this down to the arrogance of an upstart, as was done by his English contemporaries. Wolsey believed in the influence of outward display on the popular mind, and did his utmost to throw over the king a veil of unapproachable grandeur and unimpeachable rectitude. He took upon himself the burden of the king's responsibilities, and stood forward to shield him against the danger of losing the confidence of his people. As the king's representative he assumed a royal state; he wished men to see that they were governed from above, and he strove to accustom them to the pomp of power. In his missions abroad, and in his interviews with foreign ambassadors, he was still more punctilious than in the matters of domestic government. If the king was always to be regarded as the king, Wolsey, as the mouthpiece of the royal will, never abated his claims to honour only less than royal; but he acted not so much from self-assertion as from policy. At home and abroad equally the greatness of the royal power was to be unmistakably set forth, and ostentation was an element in the game of brag to which a spirited foreign policy inevitably degenerates. It was for the king's sake that Wolsey magnified himself; he never assumed an independent position, but all his {132} triumphs were loyally laid at the king's feet. In this point, again, Wolsey overshot the mark, and did not understand the English people, who were not impressed in the manner which he intended. When Henry took the government more directly into his own hands he managed better for himself, for he knew how to identify the royal will with the aspirations of the people, and clothed his despotism with the appearance of paternal solicitude. He made the people think that he lived for them, and that their interests were his, whereas Wolsey endeavoured to convince the people that the king alone could guard their interests, and that their only course was to put entire confidence in him. Henry saw that men were easier to cajole than to convince; he worked for no system of royal authority, but contented himself with establishing his own will. In spite of the disadvantage of a royal education, Henry was a more thorough Englishman than Wolsey, though Wolsey sprang from the people. It was Wolsey's teaching, however, that prepared Henry for his task. The king who could use a minister like Wolsey and then throw him away when he was no longer useful, felt that there was no limitation to his self-sufficiency. Wolsey, indeed, was a minister in a sense which had never been seen in England before, for he held in his hand the chief power alike in Church and State. Not only was he chancellor, but also Archbishop of York, and endowed beside with special legatine powers. These powers were not coveted merely for purposes of show: Wolsey intended to use them, when opportunity offered, as a means of bringing the Church under the royal power as {133} completely as he wished to subject the State. He had little respect for the ecclesiastical organisation as such; he saw its obvious weaknesses, and wished to provide a remedy. If he was a candidate for the Papacy, it was from no desire to pursue an ecclesiastical policy of his own, but to make the papal power subservient to England's interests. He was sufficiently clear-sighted to perceive that national aspirations could not much longer be repressed by the high-sounding claims of the Papacy; he saw that the system of the Church must be adapted to the conditions of the time, and he wished to avert a revolution by a quiet process of steady and reasonable reform. He was perhaps honest in saying that he was not greatly anxious for the Papacy; for he knew that England gave him ample scope for his energies, and he hoped that the example of England would spread throughout Europe. So at the beginning of his career he pressed for legatine powers, which were grudgingly granted by Leo X., first for one year, and afterwards for five; till the gratitude of Clement VII. conferred them for life. Clothed with this authority, and working in concert with the king, Wolsey was supreme over the English Church, and perhaps dreamed of a future in which the Roman Pontiff would practically resign his claims over the northern churches to an English delegate, who might become his equal or superior in actual power. However this might be, he certainly contemplated the reform of the English Church by means of a judicious mixture of royal and ecclesiastical authority. Everything was propitious for such an undertaking, as the position of the Church was felt to be in many ways anomalous and antiquated. The rising middle class had {134} many grievances to complain of from the ecclesiastical courts; the new landlords looked with contempt on the management of monastic estates; the new learning mocked at the ignorance of the clergy, and scoffed at the superstitions of a simpler past which had survived unduly into an age when criticism was coming into fashion. The power of the Church had been great in days when the State was rude and the clergy were the natural leaders of men. Now the State was powerful and enjoyed men's confidence; they looked to the king to satisfy their material aspirations, and the Church had not been very successful in keeping their spiritual aspirations alive. It was not that men were opposed to the Church, but they judged its privileges to be excessive, its disciplinary courts to be vexatious, its officials to be too numerous, and its wealth to be devoted to purposes which had ceased to be of the first importance. There was a general desire to see a re-adjustment of many matters in which the Church was concerned; and before this popular sentiment churchmen found it difficult to assert their old pretensions, and preferred to rest contentedly under the protection of the Crown. A trivial incident shows the general condition of affairs with sufficient clearness. One of the claims which on the whole the clergy had maintained was the right of trial before ecclesiastical courts; and the greater leniency of ecclesiastical sentences had been a useful modification of the severity of the criminal law, so that benefit of clergy had been permitted to receive large extension of interpretation. Further, the sanctity of holy places had been permitted to give rights of sanctuary to criminals fleeing from justice or revenge. {135} Both of these expedients had been useful in a rude state of society, and had done much to uphold a higher standard of humanity. But it was clear that they were only temporary expedients which were needless and even harmful as society grew more settled and justice was regularly administered. Henry VII. had felt the need of diminishing the rights of sanctuary, which gave a dangerous immunity to the numerous rebels against whom he had to contend, and he obtained a bull for that purpose from Pope Innocent VIII. The example which he set was speedily followed, and an Act was passed by the Parliament of 1511, doing away with sanctuary and benefit of clergy in the case of those who were accused of murder. It does not seem that the Act met with any decided opposition at the time that it was passed; but there were still sticklers for clerical immunities, who regarded it as a dangerous innovation, and during the session of Parliament in 1515 the Abbot of Winchcombe preached a sermon in which he denounced it as an impious measure. Henry VIII. adopted a course which afterwards stood him in good stead in dealing with the Church; he submitted the question to a commission of divines and temporal peers. In the course of the discussion Standish, the Warden of the Friars Minors, put the point clearly and sensibly by saying, "The Act was not against the liberty of the Church, for it was passed for the weal of the whole realm." The clerical party were not prepared to face so direct an issue, and answered that it was contrary to the decretals. "So," replied Standish, "is the non-residence of bishops; yet that is common enough." Baffled in their appeal to law the bishops fell {136} back upon Scripture, and quoted the text, "Touch not mine anointed." Again Standish turned against them the new critical spirit, which destroyed the old arguments founded on isolated texts. David, he said, used these words of all God's people as opposed to the heathen; as England was a Christian country the text covered the laity as well as the clergy. It was doubtless galling to the clerical party to be so remorselessly defeated by one of their own number, and their indignation was increased when the temporal lords on the commission decided against the Abbot of Winchcombe and ordered him to apologise. The bishops vented their anger on Standish, and summoned him to answer for his conduct before Convocation, whereon he appealed to the king. Again Henry appointed a commission, this time exclusively of laymen, to decide between Standish and his accusers. They reported that Convocation, by its proceeding against one who was acting as a royal commissioner, had incurred the penalties of præmunire, and they added that the king could, if he chose, hold a parliament without the lords spiritual, who had no place therein save by virtue of their temporal possessions. Probably this was intended as a significant hint to the spirituality that they had better not interfere unduly with parliamentary proceedings. Moreover, at the same time a case had occurred which stirred popular feeling against the ecclesiastical courts. A London merchant had been arrested by the chancellor of the Bishop of London on a charge of heresy, and a few days after his arrest was found hanging dead in his cell. Doubtless the unhappy man had committed suicide, but there was a suspicion that {137} his arrest was due to a private grudge on the part of the chancellor, who was accused of having made away with him privily. Popular feeling waxed high, and the lords who gave their decision so roundly against Convocation knew that they were sure of popular support. Henry was not sorry of an opportunity of teaching the clergy their dependence upon himself, and he summoned the bishops before him that he might read them a lesson. Wolsey's action on this occasion is noticeable. He seems to have been the only one who saw the gravity of the situation, and he strove to effect a dignified compromise. Before the king could speak Wolsey knelt before him and interceded for the clergy. He said that they had designed nothing against the king's prerogative, but thought it their duty to uphold the rights of the Church; he prayed that the matter might be referred to the decision of the Pope. Henry answered that he was satisfied with the arguments of Standish. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, turned angrily on Standish, and Archbishop Warham plucked up his courage so far as to say feebly, "Many holy men have resisted the law of England on this point and have suffered martyrdom." But Henry knew that he had not to deal with a second Becket, and that the days of Becket had gone by for ever. He would have nothing to say to papal intervention or to clerical privilege; the time had come for the assertion of royal authority, and Henry could use his opportunity as skilfully as the most skilful priest. "We," said he, "are by God's grace king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the rights of the Crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break and interpret at your pleasure: {138} but we will not consent to your interpretation any more than our predecessors have done." The immemorial rights of the English Crown were vaguer and more formidable than the rights of the Church, and the bishops retired in silence. Henry did not forget the service rendered him by Standish, who was made Bishop of St. Asaph in 1518. In this incident we have a forecast of the subsequent course of events—the threat of præmunire, the assertion of the royal supremacy, the submission of the clergy. Nothing was wanting save a sufficient motive to work a revolution in the ancient relations between Church and State. Wolsey alone seems to have seen how precarious was the existing position of the Church. He knew that the Church was wrong, and that it would have to give way, but he wished to clothe its submission with a semblance of dignity, and to use the papal power, not as a means of guarding the rights of the Church, but as a means of casting an air of ecclesiastical propriety over their abandonment. Doubtless he proposed to use his legatine power for that purpose if the need arose; but he was loyal to the Church as an institution, and did not wish it to fall unreservedly to the tender mercies of the king. He saw that this was only to be avoided by a judicious pliancy on the Church's part, which could gain a breathing-space for carrying out gradual reforms. The fact that Wolsey was a statesman rather than an ecclesiastic gave him a clear view of the direction which a conservative reformation should pursue. He saw that the Church was too wealthy and too powerful for the work which it was actually doing. The wealth and power of the Church were a heritage from a former age, {139} in which the care for the higher interests of society fell entirely into the hands of the Church because the State was rude and barbarous, and had no machinery save for the discharge of rudimentary duties. Bishops were the only officials who could curb the lawlessness of feudal lords; the clergy were the only refuge from local tyranny; monks were the only landlords who cleared the forests, drained the marshes, and taught the pursuits of peace; monastery schools educated the sons of peasants, and the universities gave young men of ability a career. All the humanitarian duties of society were discharged by the Church, and the Church had grown in wealth and importance because of its readiness to discharge them. But as the State grew stronger, and as the power of Parliament increased, it was natural that duties which had once been delegated should be assumed by the community at large. It was equally natural that institutions which had once been useful should outlast their usefulness and be regarded with a jealous eye. By the end of the reign of Edward I. England had been provided with as many monastic institutions as it needed, and the character of monasticism began to decline. Benefactions for social purposes from that time forward were mainly devoted to colleges, hospitals, and schools. The fact that so many great churchmen were royal ministers shows how the energy of the Church was placed at the disposal of the State and was by it absorbed. The Church possessed revenues, and a staff of officials which were too large for the time, in which it was not the only worker in the field of social welfare. It possessed rights and privileges which were necessary for its protection in days of anarchy and {140} lawlessness, but which were invidious in days of more settled government. Moreover, the tenure of so much land by ecclesiastical corporations like monasteries, was viewed with jealousy in a time when commercial competition was becoming a dominant motive in a society which had ceased to be mainly warlike. From this point of view Wolsey was prepared for gradual changes in the position of the Church; but he did not wish those changes to be revolutionary, nor did he wish them to be made by the power of the State. He knew the real weakness of the Church and the practical omnipotence of the king; but he hoped to unite the interests of the Crown and of the Church by his own personal influence and by his position as the trusted minister of king and Pope alike. He did not, however, deceive himself about the practical difficulties in the way of a conservative reform, which should remove the causes of popular discontent, and leave the Church an integral part of the State organisation. He knew that the ecclesiastical system, even in its manifest abuses, was closely interwoven with English society, and he knew the strength of clerical conservatism. He knew also the dangers which beset the Church if it came across the royal will and pleasure. If any reform were to be carried out it must be by raising the standard of clerical intelligence. Already many things which had accorded with the simpler minds of an earlier age had become objects of mockery to educated laymen. The raillery of Erasmus at the relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the Virgin's milk preserved at Walsingham expressed the difference which had arisen between the old practices of religion and the belief of {141} thoughtful men. It would be well to divert some of the revenues of the Church from the maintenance of idle and ignorant monks to the education of a body of learned clergy. This diversion of monastic property had long been projected and attempted. William of Wykeham endowed his New College at Oxford with lands which he purchased from monasteries. Henry VI. endowed Eton and King's College with revenues which came from the suppression of alien priories. In 1497 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, obtained leave to suppress the decrepit nunnery of St. Rhadegund in Cambridge and use its site for the foundation of Jesus College. Wolsey only carried farther and made more definite the example which had previously been set when in 1524 he obtained from Pope Clement VII. permission to convert into a college the monastery of St. Frideswyde in Oxford. Soon after he obtained a bull allowing him to suppress monasteries with fewer than seven inmates, and devote their revenues to educational purposes. Nor was Wolsey the only man who was of opinion that the days of monasticism were numbered. In 1515 Bishop Fox of Winchester contemplated the foundation of a college at Oxford in connection with the monastery of St. Swithin at Winchester. He was dissuaded from making his college dependent on a monastery by his brother bishop, Oldham of Exeter, who said, "Shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of bussing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see? No, no: it is meet to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as by learning shall do good to Church and commonwealth." Oldham's advice {142} prevailed, and the statutes of Fox's college of Brasenose were marked by the influence of the new learning as distinct from the old theology. Still Wolsey's bull for the wholesale dissolution of small monasteries was the beginning of a process which did not cease till all were swept away. It introduced a principle of measuring the utility of old institutions and judging their right to exist by their power of rendering service to the community. Religious houses whose shrunken revenues could not support more than seven monks, according to the rising standard of monastic comfort, were scarcely likely to maintain serious discipline or pursue any lofty end. But it was the very reasonableness of this method of judgment which rendered it exceedingly dangerous. Tried by this standard, who could hope to escape? Fuller scarcely exaggerates when he says that this measure of Wolsey's "made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing that the king would fell the oaks when the cardinal had begun to cut the underwood." It would perhaps have required too much wisdom for the monks to see that submission to the cardinal's pruning-knife was the only means of averting the clang of the royal axe. The method which Wolsey pursued was afterwards borrowed by Henry VIII. Commissioners were sent out to inquire into the condition of small monasteries, and after an unfavourable report their dissolution was required, and their members were removed to a larger house. The work was one which needed care and dexterity as well as a good knowledge of business. Wolsey was lucky in his agents, chief amongst whom {143} was Thomas Cromwell, an attorney whose cleverness Wolsey quickly perceived. In fact most of the men who so cleverly managed the dissolution of the monasteries for Henry had learned the knack under Wolsey, who was fated to train up instruments for purposes which he would have abhorred. The immediate objects to which Wolsey devoted the money which he obtained by the dissolution of these useless monasteries were a college in his old university of Oxford and another in his native town of Ipswich. The two were doubtless intended to be in connection with one another, after the model of William of Wykeham's foundations at Winchester and Oxford, and those of Henry VI. at Eton and Cambridge. This scheme was never carried out in its integrity, for on Wolsey's fall his works were not completed, and were involved in his forfeiture. Few things gave him more grief than the threatened check of this memorial of his greatness, and owing to his earnest entreaties his college at Oxford was spared and was refounded. Its name, however, was changed from Cardinal College to Christ Church, and it was not entirely identified with Wolsey's glory. The college at Ipswich fell into abeyance. Wolsey's design for Cardinal College was on a magnificent scale. He devised a large court surrounded by a cloister, with a spacious dining-hall on one side. The hall was the first building which he took in hand, and this fact is significant of his idea of academic life. He conceived a college as an organic society of men living in common, and by their intercourse generating and expressing a powerful body of opinion. Contemporaries mocked and said, "A fine piece of business; this cardinal {144} projected a college and has built a tavern." They did not understand that Wolsey was not merely adding to the number of Oxford colleges, but was creating a society which should dominate the University, and be the centre of a new intellectual movement. For this purpose Wolsey devised a foundation which should be at once ecclesiastical and civil, and should set forward his own conception of the relations between the Church and the intellectual and social life of the nation. His foundation consisted of a dean, sixty canons, six professors, forty petty canons, twelve chaplains, twelve clerks, and sixteen choristers; and he proposed to fill it with men of his own choice, who would find there a fitting sphere for their energies. Wolsey was a man well adapted to hold the balance between the old and the new learning. He had been trained in the theology of the schools, and was a student of St. Thomas Aquinas; but he had learned by the training of life to understand the new ideas; he grasped their importance, and he foresaw their triumph. He was a friend of the band of English scholars who brought to Oxford the study of Greek, and he sympathised with the intellectual aspirations of Grocyn, Colet, More, and Erasmus. Perhaps he rather sympathised than understood; but his influence was cast on their side when the opposition to the new learning broke out in the University and the Trojans waged a desperate and at first a successful war against the Greeks. The more ignorant among the clerical teachers objected to any widening of the old studies, and resented the substitution of biblical or patristic theology for the study of the schoolmen. They dreaded the effects of the critical method, and were {145} not reassured when Grocyn, in a sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, declared that the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite were spurious. A wave of obscurantism swept over Oxford, and, as Tyndale puts it, "the barking curs, Dun's disciples, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew." Wolsey used the king's authority to rebuke the assailants of learning; but the new teachers withdrew from Oxford, and Wolsey saw that if the new learning was to make way it must have a secure footing. Accordingly he set himself to get the universities into his power, and in 1517 proposed to found university lectureships in Oxford. Hitherto the teaching given in the universities had been voluntary; teachers arose and maintained themselves by a process of natural selection. Excellent as such a system may seem, it did not lead to progress, and already the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, Henry VII.'s mother, had adopted the advice of Bishop Fisher, and founded divinity professorships in the two universities. Wolsey wished to extend this system and organise an entire staff of teachers for university purposes. We do not know how far he showed his intention, but such was his influence that Oxford submitted its statutes to him for revision. Wolsey's hands were too full of other work for him to undertake at once so delicate a matter; but he meant undoubtedly to reorganise the system of university education, and for this purpose prevailed on Cambridge also to entrust its statutes to his hands. Again he had prepared the way for a great undertaking, and had dexterously used his position to remove all obstacles, and prepare a field for the work of reconstruction. Again he was {146} prevented from carrying out his designs, and his educational reform was never actually made. We can only trace his intentions in the fact that he brought to Oxford a learned Spaniard, Juan Luis Vives, to lecture on rhetoric, and we may infer that he intended to provide both universities with a staff of teachers chosen from the first scholars of Europe. Another matter gives another indication of Wolsey's desire to remove the grievances felt against the Church. If the monasteries were survivals of a time when the Church discharged the humanitarian duties of society, the ecclesiastical courts were in a like manner survivals of a time when the civil courts were not yet able to deal with many points which concerned the relations between man and man, or which regulated individual conduct. Thus marriage was a religious ceremony, and all questions which arose from the marriage contract were decided in the ecclesiastical courts. Similarly wills were recognised by the Church, as resting on the moral basis of mutual confidence, long before the State was prepared to acknowledge their validity. Besides these cases which arose from contract, the Church exercised a disciplinary supervision over its members for the good of their souls, and to avoid scandals in a Christian community. On all these points the principles of the Church had leavened the conceptions of the State, and the civil jurisdiction had in many matters overtaken the ecclesiastical. But the clerical courts stood stubbornly upon their claim to greater antiquity, and the activity of ecclesiastical lawyers found plenty of work to do. Disciplinary jurisdiction was unduly extended by a class of trained officials, and was resented by the growing independence {147} of the rising middle class. No doubt the ecclesiastical courts needed reform, but the difficulties in the way of reforming legal procedure are always great. Wolsey faced the problem in a way which is most characteristic of his statesmanship. He strove to bring the question to maturity for solution by getting the control of the ecclesiastical courts into his own hands. For this purpose he used his exceptional position as Papal Legate, and instituted a legatine court which should supersede the ordinary jurisdiction. Naturally enough this brought him into collision with Archbishop Warham, and his fall prevented him from developing his policy. His attempt only left the ecclesiastical courts in worse confusion, and added to the strength of the opposition, which soon robbed them of most of their powers. It added also to Wolsey's unpopularity, and gave a shadow of justice to the unworthy means which were used for his destruction. In fact, wherever we look, we see that in domestic affairs Wolsey had a clear conception of the objects to be immediately pursued by a conservative reformer. But a conservative reformer raises as much hostility as does a revolutionist, for the mass of men are not sufficiently foreseeing or sufficiently disinterested willingly to abandon profitable abuses. They feel less animosity against the open enemy who aims avowedly at their destruction, than against the seeming friends who would deprive them of what they consider to be their rights. The clergy submitted more readily to the abolition of their privileges by the king than they would have submitted to a reform at the hands of Wolsey. They could understand the one; they could not understand the other. {148} This was natural, for Wolsey had no lofty principles to set before them; he had only the wisdom of a keen-sighted statesman, who read the signs of the times. Indeed he did not waste his time in trying to persuade others to see with his eyes. He could not have ventured to speak out and say that the Church must choose between the tender mercies of the royal power and submission to the discretion of one who, standing between the king and the Pope, was prepared to throw a semblance of ecclesiastical recognition over reforms which were inevitable. It is clear that Wolsey was working for the one possible compromise, and he hoped to effect it by his own dexterity. Secure of the royal favour, secure through his political importance of the papal acquiescence in the use which he made of his legatine power, standing forward as the chief ecclesiastic in England, he aimed at accomplishing such reforms as would have brought into harmony the relations between Church and State. He did not hope to do this by persuasion, but by power, and had taken steps to lay his hand cautiously on different parts of the ecclesiastical organisation. With this idea before him we may safely acquit Wolsey of any undue ambition for the papal office; he doubted whether his influence would be increased or not by its possession. In everything that Wolsey did he played for the highest stakes, and risked all upon the hope of ultimate success. He trusted to justify himself in the long-run, and was heedless of the opposition which he called forth. Resting solely upon the royal favour, he did not try to conciliate, nor did he pause to explain. Men could not understand his ends, but they profoundly disliked his means. The suppression of small monasteries, which {149} might be useless but served to provide for younger sons or dependants of country families, was very unpopular, as coming from a cardinal who enjoyed the revenues of many ecclesiastical offices whose duties he did not discharge. The setting up of a legatine court was hateful to the national sentiment of Englishmen, who saw in it only another engine of ecclesiastical oppression. The pomp and magnificence wherewith Wolsey asserted a greatness which he mainly valued as a means of doing his country service, was resented as the vulgar arrogance of an upstart. Wolsey's ideas were too great to pay any heed to the prejudices of Englishmen which, after all, have determined the success of all English ministers, and which no English statesman has ever been powerful enough to disregard. <div class="pagenum">{150}</div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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