THE CARDINAL'S POMP AS LORD CHANCELLOR. 37

ushers and waiters of his privy chamber, nine or ten lords, forty persons acting as gentlemen cup-bearers, carvers, sewers, etc.; six yeomen ushers, eight grooms of the chamber; six and forty yeomen of his chamber, "daily to attend upon his person"; sixteen doctors and chaplains, two secretaries, three clerks and four counsellors learned in the law. These, and many more whom we need not particularize, were constantly in attendance on him while he resided at Hampton Court; and the cost of entertaining them raised Wolsey's household expenses alone to something like £50,000 a year in modern reckoning.

As Lord Chancellor, he had an additional and separate retinue, almost as numerous and various-clerks, running footmen, armourers, minstrels, sergeants-at-arms, heralds, etc.

The display of such pomp and splendour could not fail to rouse to fury such austere spirits as Skelton and Roy, who, being unable to recognize anything in magnificence but the outward show, looked on it only as vulgar ostentation. The late Mr. Brewer, who made so deep a study of Wolsey's administration, and analyzed his character to its very elements, attributes his taste for the magnificent to its true motives. "He was resolved," he says, "to invest his new dignity with all that splendour and magnificence, which no man understood better, or appreciated more highly than he did. Even in that age of gorgeous ceremonial, before Puritan sentimentalism had insisted on the righteousness of lawn sleeves; when the sense aches with interminable recitals of cloth of gold, silks and tapestries, even then amidst jewelled mitres and copes, a Cardinal in his scarlet robes formed a conspicuous object. Not that Wolsey was the slave of a vulgar vanity; magnificent in all his doings,—in plate, dress, tapestry, pictures, buildings, the furniture of a chapel or a palace, the setting of a ring, or the arrangements for a congress, there was the same regal taste at work, the same powerful grasp of little things and great. A soul as capacious as the sea, and minute as the sands upon its shores, when minuteness was required he would do nothing meanly. The last great builder this country ever had, the few remains that survive him show the vastness of his mind and the universality of his genius."

Wolsey himself, in answer to the upbraidings of Dr. Barnes,

one of the new puritanic sect, vindicated himself by asking: "How think ye? were it better for me, being in the honour and dignity that I am, to coin my pillars and pole-axes, and give the money to five or six beggars? Do you not reckon the commonwealth better than five or six beggars?" To this Dr. Barnes, who himself tells the story, answered that he reckoned it " more to the honour of God and to the salvation of his soul, and also to the comfort of his poorer brethren, that they were coined and given in alms." To such theories Wolsey had much too much love of art and of magnificence to assent,

"yet in bestowing

He was most princely: Ever witness for him
Those twins of learning, that he raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford !"

While at Hampton Court, Wolsey, though not so overwhelmed with labour as when in London, found little time for exercise or recreation. He rose early, said usually two masses in his private closet, and by eight o'clock, after having breakfast and transacting some private business, he came out of his Privy Chamber in his Cardinal's robes, his upper garment, which was "either of fine scarlet, or else of crimson satin, taffety, damask, or caffa, the best that could be got for money, and upon his head a round pillion, with a noble of black velvet set to the same in the inner side; he had also a tippet of fine sables about his neck." He then gave audiences and received any person of import

ance.

Of his appearance when attired in his Cardinal's robes, the best idea is afforded by his portrait, still preserved at his college of Christ Church. He was at this time about forty years old, and is described by the Venetian ambassador as very handsome"; though Skelton and Roy, his satirists, both speak of him as being disfigured by the small-pox; and Skelton, in addition, taunts him with being

66

"So full of melancholy
With a flap afore his eye-"

probably a hanging eyelid.

The rest of the morning was occupied in reading, writing,

WOLSEY'S APPEARANCE.

39

and signing despatches and other documents, corresponding with the King, and inditing instructions to countless agents abroad. In the afternoon, if any time remained, he took his

recreation by walking in his galleries and cloisters when the weather was rough, and strolling in his park or garden when it was fine. Even then, however, his mind was not at rest, for Cavendish tells us he was accustomed to walk towards evening in his garden to say his even-song and other divine

service with his chaplain. And elsewhere he assures us that "what business matters soever he had in the day, he never went to his bed with any part of his divine service unsaid, yea, not so much as a single collect." The same delightful biographer gives us, in his metrical life of his master, a pleasing picture of his habit of evening recreation:

"My galleries were fayer, both large and long,

To walk in them when that it lyked me best;"

"My gardens sweet, enclosed with wallés strong,

Embanked with benches to sytt and take my rest,
The knots so enknotted, it cannot be exprest;
With arbors and alyes so pleasant and so dulce,
The pestylent ayers with flavors to repulse."

This stanza gives a vivid idea of Wolsey's old garden at Hampton Court; though, unfortunately, but few traces of it now remain. It was situated to the south of the Base and Clock Courts, where can still be seen the inclosed parterres -known as the Pond Gardens-which were laid out, as we shall see further on, by Henry VIII. And along the very pathway, by which thousands of careless sightseers, in the summer months, now flock to see the great vine, paced the myriad-minded Cardinal 360 years ago, pondering his mighty schemes of imperial politics.

When term began, he had to return to London to sit daily in Westminster Hall. His progresses from the palace on these occasions were made with the greatest display, his ordinary pomp as Cardinal being swelled by that of his office of Lord Chancellor. As he entered from his Privy Chamber, "apparelled all in red, as a Cardinal," into his Chamber of Presence, which was thronged with servants and "noblemen and very worthy gentlemen," waiting to attend him, he was preceded by his pursuivant-at-arms, with a great mace of silvergilt, and by his gentlemen ushers calling out: "On, my lords and masters, on before; make way for my Lord's grace." In this manner he passed from his Presence Chamber through the hall, and down to the door, where he mounted his mule. Here the whole procession was formed, everyone almost being on horseback. First went the Cardinal's attendants, attired in liveries of crimson velvet

THE CARDINAL'S PROCESSIONS.

41 with gold chains, and the inferior officers in coats of scarlet, bordered with black velvet. After these came two gentlemen bearing the great seal and his Cardinal's hat, then two priests with silver pillars or pole-axes, "and next two great crosses of silver, whereof one of them was for his Archbishop

rick, and the other for his legacy, borne always before him, whithersoever he went, or rode, by two of the most tallest and comeliest priests that he could get within all this realm." Then came the Cardinal himself " very sumptuously on a mule, trapped with crimson velvet, and his stirrups of copper gilt." He was followed by four footmen with gilt pole-axes in their hands, and many other followers, his yeomen being