THOMAS WOLSEY was born in the year 1471, in the pleasant and prosperous town of Ipswich in Suffolk. This place, being the chief port of a very rich agricultural and pastoral district, and a great mart of the trade carried on with Holland and the whole of the Low Countries, had from very early times been a thriving town. A considerable portion of that great staple the wool of England had been annually exported from the port of Ipswich and the broad Orwell to the Netherlands, and a very frequent intercourse had been steadily kept up between the men of Ipswich, and the more civilized and manufacturing people of Flanders, Brabant, and Holland. A full century and a half before the birth of Wolsey, Ipswich was one of the most trading of our English cities. At his time commerce had brought both civilization and wealth; and shortly after his death, when the Reformation began in England, the people of Ipswich, and the county of Suffolk generally, were among

the foremost and steadiest that embraced the new doctrines; for in their foreign intercourse they had made themselves acquainted with the object and the operations of Luther and the earliest German Reformers, and their superior enlightenment rendered them more open to conviction than the population of any other of the island. At the date of the birth of our great and last prince of the Roman Church Luther was not born; but the mental development and the prosperity of Ipswich stood remarkably high. Many of the trading burghers were exceedingly wealthy.

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It is quite certain that Thomas Wolsey was the son of plebeian parents, but it is not quite so certain that his father was a mere butcher. It was a poet, and a most bitter satirist, his contemporary John Skelton, who first designated Wolsey as the "butcher's dog," as a man of greasy genealogy," and "that was cast out of a butcher's stall." Lord Herbert of Cherbury says indeed in plain prose that Wolsey was a butcher's son; Shakspere makes the angry Duke of Buckingham call the Lord Cardinal "this butcher's cur," and speak of "this Ipswich fellow's insolence;" but the words proceed from the mouth of an exasperated enemy. The probabilities are that Wolsey's father was a substantial yeoman that may have sold the wool of his flocks to the woolstaplers, and have fattened sheep and cattle for the stalls, without being himself a butcher. It is unquestionable that Robert and Joan Wolsey, his parents, were reputable persons, and possessed of sufficient means to provide a learned education for their son. It is true that children of poor and obscure parents did occasionally obtain the advantages of such an education; but in these cases the youths were devoted to the cloisters, and received gratuitously the instruction of the monks. Such was not the case of Thomas Wolsey. He received preparatory instruction, at the cost of his father, in Suffolk, and was then sent at the same charge to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated at the age of fifteen, gaining by his early advancement to academical honours the nickname of the "boy-Bachelor." He became fellow of

his college, teacher of a school connected with it; and was ordained. Greek was not as yet taught in either of the universities; but the Cardinal's letters and state papers in Latin show that he had diligently studied the Roman classics; and the high reputation he indisputably enjoyed at Oxford, may be taken as good evidence that he cultivated all such learning as was accessible at that time. It is also to be mentioned to his honour that he afterwards, in the days of his greatness, founded a Greek professorship in the college he built at Oxford, and published a general address to the schoolmasters of England, ordering them to institute their youth in the most elegant literature.*

While master of the school attached to Magdalen College, Wolsey had for his pupils three sons of Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and to his acquaintance with this noble and powerful family the future Lord Cardinal owed his first humble preferment in the church, being presented by the marquess to the living of Lymington in Somersetshire. At this time Wolsey was twenty-nine years old. He was not distinguished at any period of his life by temperance and sobriety, and a command of his passions; and in the hot season of youth he is said to have been publicly guilty of various indiscretions. Thus it is said by Bishop Godwin that almost as soon as he had set footing in his Somersetshire living, "he was very disgracefully entertained by Sir Amias Pawlet, who clapped him in the stocks, a punishment not usually inflicted upon any but beggars and base people."† This Protestant prelate does not give the cause of this punishment, but communicative tradition says that Wolsey had gotten drunk at a neighbouring fair. "What the matter was, says Bishop Godwin, "that so exasperated Sir Amias Pawlet against Wolsey, a man not of

*Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet.-G. L. Craik, Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England.

+ Bishop Godwin wrote his History of the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary, in the time of King James. It was first published in 1616. Godwin also has the story of Wolsey's father being a butcher.

least account, I know not: this I know, that Wolsey being afterwards made Cardinal, and Lord Chancellor of England, so grievously punished this injury, that Sir Amias was fain to dance attendance at London some years, and by all manner of obsequiousness to curry favour with him. There remains to this day a sufficient testimony hereof in a building over the gate of the Middle Temple in London, built by the knight at the time of his attendance there, and decked round about very sumptuously with the Cardinal's arms, the knight hoping thereby somewhat to allay the wrath of the incensed prelate." But Wolsey had qualities which could not be obscured, and a spirit that would not be depressed by any temporary disgrace. It is thought that his mind soon looked beyond his poor rural benefice. He certainly did not stay long at Lymington. Among other Somersetshire gentlemen, to whom he recommended himself by his wit and vivacity and captivating address, was Sir John Nafant, Treasurer of Calais, then an English possession and a great emporium of our trade. It appears that at first this knight engaged him as his chaplain: but that being incapacitated by age and sickness, and finding Wolsey admirably qualified for business, he soon appointed him his deputy in the office of Calais Treasurer, and afterwards conceived such a liking for him that he introduced him to King Henry VII. and obtained for him a nomination of king's chaplain. This crafty king, who was very sagacious in judging of the abilities and character of men, and who is said never to have employed or promoted a dull man, was charmed with the alacrity of his new almoner. According to Bishop Godwin, Wolsey's introduction to the king was brought about more indirectly by Sir John Nafant making him first known to Henry the Seventh's favourite minister Fox, who was at that time Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal, and, like his master, "a man that knew right how to judge of good wits." "And he (Fox) finding this young man to be very sprightful, of learning sufficient, and very active in despatch of affairs, so highly recommended him to King Henry the Seventh, who

relied much upon Fox's faith and wisdom, that he thought it good forthwith to employ him in affairs of great moment. What need many words? He so far pleased the king that in short time he became a great man. In these times the clergy were not barred from any state employment, and Henry the Seventh, making more account of their literature than of the pedigree and warlike qualities of the lay aristocracy, generally employed them in the various offices of government, and rarely if ever used any other ambassadors. Wolsey owed his next great rise to his skill as a negotiator and his rapidity as a traveller. The subject of Wolsey's first embassy, or as Bacon calls it, "this his first piece," was matrimonial: the grand cause of his final downfall was a divorce. Henry VII., in his old age, had determined to take to himself another wife, and was looking through all Europe for a rich and fair one. After sundry disappointments he obtained a promise of the hand of Lady Margaret, duchess dowager of Savoy, only daughter to the Emperor Maximilian, and sister to Philip, King of Castile, "a lady wise and of great good fame." In furtherance of this match it was found necessary to send a trusty, quick-witted, and quick-moving_envoy into Flanders; and Wolsey, being named by Henry, went and returned to court before his royal master thought he had had time to get out of England. In the end the negotiation came to nothing; but the king was so much pleased with Wolsey's conduct that he procured for him the valuable deanery of Lincoln, to which he was appointed in February, 1508. In the following year the king died, and was succeeded by Henry VIII. The character and habits of the young sovereign differed in all essentials from those of the old one, but they were much more favourable to the advancement of a man of Wolsey's turn, and accordingly we find the expert, gay, and courtly Dean of Lincoln rising rapidly in favour and greatness from the beginning of this new reign. As he had lived a good deal about the court, and had alike distinguished himself by his aptitude for business and by his captivating manners, he must have attracted the notice of