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or that, as their knowledge or their sympathies lead. Sharon Turner finds virtue in Henry VIII: Oliver Cromwell is a hero to Carlyle; and Miss Strickland pleads well and wisely for Mary Tudor. There are still persons who, in spite of Mr. Macaulay, believe that something may be said for Cranmer; and Gardiner and Bonner, Dr. Maitland tells us, were no such bad fellows after all. So too, a fresh edition of Galt's "Life of Wolsey," is a witness that there are readers who can tolerate an approving word, even of the great Cardinal; a witness, indeed, more than usually credible, since, of all honest books of history, this of Mr. Galt's is the most difficult to read; and only the obvious integrity of the writer, and a very strong interest in the subject, enables us, though the volume is a short one, to labor to the end of it. It is satisfactory, indeed, that this book continues to be read; but Wolsey has certainly not been fortunate in his champion; and in the various histories of England which swarm out, year after year, there are no traces of any change of opinion produced by it. He remains where fortune flung him, to point a moral of fallen ambition; in fact, as Shakespeare left him a vulgar, unlovely figure, arrogant in prosperity, and mean in his ruina person in whose elevation no one takes pleasure, and whom no one pities in his disgrace, and such, notwithstanding Mr. Galt's well-meant effort, he is likely to remain for ever. The impression of such a portrait, drawn by such a hand, whether it be or be not a representation of the man as he really lived and was, will not again be effaced from the imagination of mankind; and wherever English history is read, the name of Wolsey will still continue shadowed over with pride, injustice, falsehood, and profligacy; with a character from end to end essentially odious, which not all the pathos of his fall, nor the tender "Chronicling" of Griffith, can induce one to forgive, or even to pity.

And yet it is singular, that not any one of the accusations most offensive in Shakespeare's description will bear examination. Some are unquestionably false: and the evidences of the rest are so slight, that it would not cloud the reputation of a living man. Shakespeare followed Hall and Cavendish (as indeed, he might have fairly thought himself safe in following them) without hesitation; vet it is quite certain, from recent discoveries, however the fact be explained, that not Hall only, but Cavendish also, whenever he is speaking of any thing which lay beyond his own personal observation, is, in many in

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stances, glaringly wrong and unjust. Authentic records have come to light, of the Duke of Buckingham's trial; and no one who carefully reads them, if he is in the least acquainted with the temper of the times, can doubt either the reality of his treason, or the necessity of his punishment. He was tried by his peers, fairly and honorably; his guilt, not a thing of the moment, but carefully premeditated for years, was proved beyond possibility of question; and, under the existing circumstances of the country, no honest minister could have advised the remission of the penalty. Still more without ground is the accusation brought against Wolsey about the "benevolences," which he is represented as having originated without consulting the king; which Henry is made so grandly to remit, and Wolsey basely to claim credit for the remission. The money was required to carry out the war in France, at the moment at which it was crippled by the defeat and imprisonment of Francis I.; and the war itself was one which Wolsey regarded as disastrous alike to England, to Europe, and to Christendom; a war against which his influence had been strained to its utmost. The Commons mutinied-but not against him; and he used the opportunity to prevail on Henry to give way. It is true, that when it was the fashion to lay the odium of every unpopular measure upon him, those who were really responsible for it endeavored to escape their fault, and make him answer for it; but Henry's own words are sufficient to bear him clear, who expressly told Anne Boleyn, when she spoke of it to him, "that he knew more of that matter than she, and the Cardinal was not to blame."*

In the story of the French princess, whom Shakespeare makes Wolsey intend for Henry, after the divorce had been completed, he follows Hall, who relates it elaborately. But Cavendish furnishes so complete a refutation of Hall, that we are surprised to find Shakespeare repeating him. Cavendish was with Wolsey in France at the time when the negotiation was supposed to be going forward; and as the story did at that time actually originate, it is worth while to extract what he says about it.

In this time of my lord's being in France, over and his nobles, he sustained divers displeasure of and beside his noble entertainment with the king the French slave (sic) that devised a certain bock

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which was set forth in articles upon the cause of my lord being there, which should be, as they surmised, that my lord was come thither to conclude two marriages-the one between the king our sovereign lord, and Madame Renée, of whom I spake heretofore, [the divorce of Queen Catharine had not at this time been mooted in England, but the legitimacy of the Princess Mary had been publicly called in question in the French Chambers; the suggestion of a second marriage, for the king was, therefore, an additional insolence,] the other between my Lady Mary and the Duke of Orleans, with divers other conclusions and agreements touching the same. Of this book many were imprinted and conveyed into England unknown to my lord, he being then in France, to the great slander of the realm of England and of my lord cardinal. But whether they were devised of policy to pacify the mutterings of the people, which had divers communications and imaginations of my lord being there, or whether they were devised of some malicious person, as the disposition of the common people are accustomed to do, whatever the occasion or cause was, this I am well assured of, that, after my lord was thereof advertised, and had perused one of the said books, he was not a little offended, and assembled all the privy council of France together, to whom he spoke his mind thus-that it was not only a suspicion in them but also a great rebuke and defamation of the king's honor to see and know any such seditious untruths openly divulged and set forth by any malicious and subtle traitor of this realm; saying furthermore, that if the like had been attempted within the realm of England, he doubted not but to see it punished according to the traitorous demeanor and deserts of the author thereof.*

In the presence of evidence such as this, it is scarcely possible to maintain the story any longer. And it is not so unimportant as it may seem to ascertain whether there be truth in it or not, since it is commonly represented as an essential feature in Wolsey's scheme of policy. He encouraged, we are told, the divorce of Queen Catharine because he desired to revenge himself on the Emperor Charles for a personal affront; and in marrying Henry to the Princess Renée, he would bind him in a close connection with Charles's most dangerous enemy.

Of his actual conduct in the matter of the divorce, we shall speak at length presently. In the mean time, to proceed with Shakespeare's charges: there is another matter in which a most unfavorable impression is left against him, on which it is desirable to say something. He is said to have shared deeply in the prevailing vice of the celibate ecclesiastics, and to have been a person of profligate

*Cavendish. Singen edition, p. 181.

habits. Shakespeare accuses him, through the mouth of Queen Catharine; and from the manner in which the accusation is brought out, forming part of a judicial estimate of Wolsey's character, it is clear that Shakespeare himself believed it to be just, and desired his readers to believe it. On reviewing the evidence, however,-and we believe that we possess all which Shakespeare had before him, and much which he had not,-it does not the kind is included in the articles of imwarrant any such conclusion. A charge of peachment against Wolsey, which were drawn up by the Lords, and to which Hall most strangely represents him as having pleaded guilty; but these articles, when sent down to the Commons, were dismissed as unworthy of notice; while, at the same time, a fact comes out, which explains the manner in which the impression may have arisen about him, among persons ready to judge hardly, and yet have arisen unfairly. It is certain, that Wolsey had two children, and that both they and their mother were supported by him up to the last year of his life. There is no evidence to show when they were born; and as he was twenty-five years old, at least, before he was in priest's orders, it is quite possible that he broke no vow in his relation with their mother. But if he did,-if, in the days of his early manhood, those iron vows failed to crush in him the instincts and cravings of humanity, and he fell before the temptation,-let it pass for what it is worth. It was a sin, perhaps a great one; yet not an there is no pardon. Doubtless, it furnished infinite sin, nor one, we hope, for which occasion for scandal. The single act admitted easily of being represented as a habit; and the maintenance of the mother might have borne a hard complexion; yet the connection, in itself, may, for all we know, have been of bore Wolsey ill-will may have believed that the briefest duration; and while those who he was keeping a mistress, he may have been but fulfilling the honest duty of an honestly penitent man. We are aware that this is only hypothesis; and that, on the other side, there are the positive assertions of the articles of impeachment, and certain angry words which Hall ascribes to Catherine; but there is no subject in which greater because there is none in which persons are caution is required in forming an opinion, more ready to generalize a habit out of an act. And if we are to believe the fact of the habit, it implies an amount of hypocrisy and insincerity in Wolsey, which it is difficult to believe could have existed in any man who

was occupying so conspicuous a position. No common hypocrite, indeed, he was, if, being himself consistently profligate, he was so loud against the similar sins of the clergy, and so eager to reform them; yet it is surely possible that a man may have known what sin was by his own experience, and may yet have hated it without hypocrisy,-may honestly have labored to save others from falling into it. If it be not so, God help us all! Let us summon up our own lives before us, and call others hypocrites, if we dare. Once for all, the one fact which we know about the matter is, that he was the father of two children, who were born at some period long preceding his disgrace, and, perhaps, his ordination; the remainder being only inferencewhile, to set against it, we have positive evidence that, in the midst of all his splendor, he was apparently an earnest and devout man-å man in whom, whatever of life was yet remaining in the perishing faith of Catholicism, was present in more than ordinary measure, and to whom God and duty were very meaning and living words.

So it stands with these particular charges; and if we consent to let them drop, it must be acknowledged that the shadows in Shakespeare lose not a little of their depth of hue. Nor, if the discovery, in these instances, of so much rhetorical exaggeration, leads us to look more closely into the narratives of Shakespeare's authorities, and to test them, as we are well able to do, by the State Papers which have since his time been brought to light, will they in any degree regain our confidence. Hall, indeed, except when his personal dislike to Wolsey gets the better of him, (and then he can be incredibly wrong,) is generally accurate. Taken as a whole, we should be inclined to rate Hall's Chronicle among the very best historical works in the language. But Cavendish, with whom, in the subject before us, we are now most concerned, is not to be trusted at all beyond the range of his own actual observation; and with the exception, perhaps, of Sir James Melville, has introduced more elaborate falsehoods into English history, than any other single writer. He was one of those men who, unhappily, are ready with an opinion upon every thing, whether they have or have not a right to have formed one, and guessing with the utmost facility, almost always guess wrong. Brought up as a page in Wolsey's household, he knew as much, perhaps, of the affairs of the state, which were passing through Wolsey's hands, as young gentlemen in similar situations might be supposed to know; that is, such views and

such stories as were current at the pages' dinner table. These, at a distance of twentyfive years from his master's death, he composed into a book, at a time when it was creditable to him to have dared to speak well of Wolsey at all; but when the many years which had intervened of clamor and prejudice had impaired his real knowledge, and had even injured partially his good feeling. Thus his book is full of inconsistency; and, at the first perusal, it is hard to know with what feelings he really regarded Wolsey. At one time he speaks of him with tender affection; at another, he imputes actions to him which would justly have forfeited all affection. Now, he gives him credit for devout and genuine piety; now, he insinuates that he wore but the hypocritical show of piety, writing in fact with one eye on the truth which he knew, with the other on Queen Mary, whom it was dangerous to offend.

Hence a large clearance will have to be made out of our history books, and many favorite stories for which Cavendish has made himself responsible. We have been told much about Henry's carelessness in matters of business during the first years of his reign; and that it was encouraged by an artifice of Wolsey's. "As the ancient councillors," says Cavendish, "advised the king to leave his pleasure and to attend to the affairs of the realm, so busily did the Almoner persuade him to the contrary." And now we have the clearest proof from letters of Henry's own and from authentic correspondence of the members of his council, that at no time after his accession, not even when he was a mere boy, was the king less than his own first minister. His very coronation oath was interlined with his own hand, and in words which he erased, and in the words which he substituted, it is easy to read the spirit of the same Henry who broke the Papal power. Again, Cavendish tells us that Wolsey illtreated Archbishop Wareham, and that in order to secure his own elevation to the chancellorship he contrived to have Wareham dismissed from it-while we find in the contemporary correspondence that Wareham, so far from being dismissed, with difficulty obtained permission to resign; and Sir Thomas More, when afterwards imitating his example, expressly wrote to him in praise and admiration of so great magnanimity.

Possessing such uncommon facilities for going wrong, it is not to be wondered at that Cavendish should also miss his way among the complications of the Anne Boleyn story. Yet here he goes even beyond our expecta

tions, and he represents himself as having been perfectly cognizant of facts which cannot possibly have taken place, at least in the manner in which he relates them. He declares that Anne Boleyn was contracted* to Lord Percy, one of the young noblemen then residing under Wolsey's care; that Wolsey separated them by the king's order, and that Anne Boleyn never forgave him for the loss of her lover. He introduces conversations

between Wolsey and Lord Percy, in which the latter acknowledges and defends his engagement, declaring that he had entered into it before many witnesses." He brings the

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terbury and York, but also received the blessed sacrament upon the same before the Duke of Norfolk and others the king's council learned in the spiritual law, assuring you, Mr. Secretary, by the said oath and blessed body which afore I received, and hereafter intend to receive, that the same may be to my damnation, if ever there were any contract or promise of marriage between her and me."

Equally remote from the truth is the account which the same writer gives us of the Duke of Bourbon's campaigns in Italy, of the battle of Pavia, and of the double policy which he ascribes to Wolsey; for if he is right in his account of the policy itself, he is so hopelessly wrong in the facts with which he interweaves it, as to oblige us to distrust him wholly, What opportunity, indeed, is he likely to have had of knowing more about the matter than any other Englishman? He could but know the floating rumors of the palace, and if we may interpret the past by our present experience, the amount of truth in such rumors is generally rather below of entire falsehood. zero than above it-a plain negative quantity

But the saddest of all Cavendish's errors

Earl of Northumberland to London on this express occasion, and introduces a long harangue which the earl is supposed to have addressed to his son in the presence of the assembled members of Wolsey's household; he declares that he forced Lord Percy's obedience under a threat of disinheritance, and married him in haste to a daughter of Lord Shrewsbury in order to prevent future difficulties. Now it is possible that something may have pased between Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn; but Percy could not have defended an engagement which could not have existed, is in the version which Shakespeare has copied and Lord Northumberland, if he really interso literally of the great scene before the lefered, could not have said what Cavendish gates, between Queen Catharine and Henry, gives as his words, and for a very simple in the Hall of the Black Friars. It is the reason. We have evidence in a letter to the saddest, not because it is the most incorrect, Earl of Shrewsbury, (Lodge's Illustrations, but because, under Shakespeare's treatment, the beautiful story has woven itself into the vol. 1. p. 20,) that Lord Percy was contracted very heart of our national traditions; and to to Lady Mary Talbot, the lady whom he actually married, before he ever saw Anne Bo- question the truth of it is almost to bring hisleyn, and that, therefore, no second contract tory itself into discredit. Cavendish, as we with the latter could have been entered into said, wrote at the time of the reaction under by him; while it is again impossible that, Queen Mary: he was possessed strongly with supposing him to have attempted it, his father, the Catholic detestation of the Reformation, in his supposed address to him, should have and of all which had arisen out of it; and made no allusion to the previous engagement Queen Catharine's treatment-so justly felt to be the central injury of the Catholics, as which was immediately afterwards fulfilled. But we have stronger proof than this of Ca- if her real figure was not sad enough or her vendish's mistake. Something, indeed, must story pathetic enough in its grand simplicity have passed; for at the time when Queen-shaped itself out in his recollection into an Anne's prematrimonial proceedings were undergoing investigation, Lord Percy was examined upon oath before the Privy Council, but if he had so openly acknowledged his engagement with her to Wolsey, he would scarcely have ventured to swear as he did on that occasion, or to have written such a letter as the following to Cromwell:

"I perceive," the letter runs, " that there is a supposed precontract between the queen and me, whereupon I was not only heretofore examined upon mine oath before the Archbishops of Can

* Cavendish, p. 120-129.

ideal and dramatized form, beautiful indeed,

exceedingly, but which is not a real picture of the wrongs of Catharine of Arragon. It was Burnet who first discovered that the fine speeches attributed both to the king and to

her could never have been delivered. He found the original register of the proceedings of the court, from which it appears, with the utmost clearness, that the king and queen were not present together before the legates at all. His statement has since that time, been called eagerly in question; and no wonder when such a treasure is being wrested

* Burnet. Nares ed. vol. iii. p. 64.

away from us.
the story found by Burnet in the register,
with "Hall's Chronicle," which in all this mat-
ter is most careful and accurate, and also with
the letters of the Bishop of Bayonne, which
furnish almost a second register of the pro-
ceedings from day to day, no doubt can re-
main that Burnet is right.

Nevertheless, if we compare | true and were not. The queen behaved like herself, like a noble lady sadly resentful of the measure which was dealt out to her, but buoyed up with her high Castilian heart to endurance and defiance. She never knelt at the king's feet, that history knows of, and she made no fine speeches to him. The words which Cavendish, and Shakespeare after him, assign to her, are composed out of what she said in private to the legates in the preceding October; and those which they assign to the king were uttered by him in her high praise in the court on a later occasion.

The legate Campeggio arrived in England in October, 1528. In the same month the Bishop of Bayonne writes that he and Wolsey had then held their first interview with the queen; and that the queen had spoken violently of Wolsey. Of this interview we have a full account from Hall, who adds that it was at the palace of the Bridewell, and was strictly private; giving also the words which the queen was said to have used, and which the bishop describes only in general terms.

So much for the authority of Cavendish's "Life." If it be our object to prove that fair justice has not been done to Wolsey, we may be thought to have acted unwisely in questioning the evidence of the one English writer who has shown any thing like tenderness for his memory. It is this evident tenderness, however, which lies at the bottom of so many of our mistakes, bespeaking, as it does, so general a credence to his narrative. Through

No progress was made in the trial of the cause throughout the winter, through default of instructions from the pope. In January, 1528-9, it was feared that he would recall the commission, and it was openly stated in Lon-out his book there is an apparent struggle don, that the emperor bad said, that if Henry dared to proceed, "he would hurl him from his throne by the hands of his own subjects." In the spring, the French government laid a pressure on the pope, and the commission was allowed to be opened; but from the first, it appears, there was a private understanding between the legates and the court of Rome, that no sentence was to be delivered. The proceedings, such as they were, commenced at the Hall of the Black Friars, on the 31st of May, 1529. The king and queen were summoned; and then ought to have been the famous scene and the speech at the king's feet. Unhappily, both the register and Hall are agreed that the king appeared by proctor, and the queen only in person. Of what passed, the register only says that she appealed to Rome. Hall is more explicit, but in substance says the same thing.

The queen, being accompanied with four bishops, and others of her council, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her, came personally before the legates, and after her obeisance, sadly, and with great gravity done, she appealed from them as judges not competent for that cause to the court of Rome, and after that done, she departed again.

And this, in sorrow be it confessed, was all that passed, and the beautiful ideal falsehood, for all persons who care to know the hard truths of life, must pass again under the ivory gate through which it entered among us, and take its place with the spirits of those never realized visions, which ought to have been

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between kindly feeling and moral disapprobation, and the censures gain double weight from the seeming unwillingness with which they are uttered. But moreover, we cannot help feeling, on a careful perusal of what Cavendish says, that the picture, as drawn by him, is not a picture of one man, but of two men wholly different, the characteristics of whom cannot possibly have coexisted in any single person, and thus it becomes essential to determine what amount of accurate knowledge of the matter he is really likely to have possessed. Wherever he is telling any thing in which he himself was personally concerned; in his account of all his own interviews with Wolsey, and of almost every thing which he describes himself as having witnessed, he draws the likeness of an exceedingly noble person, as little resembling the Wolsey of ordinary history as the Socrates of Plato resembles the Socrates of Aristophanes. Wherever, on the other hand, he is writing from hearsay, we have the old figure of Hall and Polydore Virgil and Foxe, a figure so unlike the other that both cannot be true, and we must make our choice between them. the one side lies the mass of the authorities; on the other, the experience of a personal friend; and the natural inference is, that as long as Cavendish was kept in check by actual knowledge, he drew his master's features faithfully; and that as soon as he passed beyond his own recollections, he wrote only what other people told him, in the tone in which they told it, yielding to the stream

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