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for his assisting the Earl of Bedford to make his escape from Bologna, the mere fact is mentioned by Fox, but without any date. For the particular stratagem which he is said to have employed the reader may be referred to the old play, in which this incident makes a principal figure. Noble, in his ' Memoirs of the Protectoral House,” makes it to have happened after the sack of Rome, when Cromwell had been “involved in great distress

upon

the defeat of that army which had pillaged the holy city,” and been “relieved by a generous Italian of the name of Friscobaldo,” and when Russell, who was not yet ennobled, was about to be sent a prisoner to France,“ because employed in some secret service by King Henry VIII. against the see of Rome."

But, on the whole, it seems in the highest degree inprobable that Cromwell remained in Italy to so late a date as he must have done if he was really present at the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon. Dr. Lingard states that after his return to England Wolsey “employed him to dissolve the monasteries which had been granted for the establishment of his colleges, a trust which he discharged to the satisfaction of his patron, at the same time that he enriched himself.” Now it was in 1524 and 1525, that Wolsey obtained from Pope Clement VII. the two bulls authorising him to suppress twenty-two small priories and nunneries for the endowment of the college founded by him at Oxford, now called Christ Church. Fox himself, who makes Cromwell to have remained in Italy till after the sack of Rome in 1527, tells us in the next page that he was employed by Wolsey in expediting the suppression of these religious houses—“ which,” says he,

was about the year of our Lord 1525.” At all events, it seems to be admitted on all hands that he was taken into the service or employment of the Cardinal soon after he returned to his native country. Fox asserts that both More, afterwards chancellor, and Gardiner, afterwards bishop of Winchester, were in the Cardinal's household at or about the same time with Cromwell.

This is a strange misstatement as to Sir Thomas More, who never was in Wolsey's household at any time of his life.

But here we meet with another difficulty, which the common accounts of Cromwell do not attempt to clear up, and do not even notice. So far from having remained abroad in Italy even till 1524, he had in all probability returned to his native country at least seven or eight years before that date—for he must have been married, and to an English lady of good connexions, at the latest by the year 1517, seeing that his son Gregory was summoned to the House of Lords in April, 1539, and must therefore have been born in or before 1518. The lady that Cromwell married was Jane (or, according to other accounts, Elizabeth), daughter and heir of Sir John Prior, Knight, and widow of Thomas Williams, Esq., a Welsh gentleman, of the same family with the Morgan Williams who, probably before this, married Cromwell's sister.

From all these facts we should be disposed to conclude that Cromwell returned home from the continent about 1516. And we may now observe, as further illustrative of the dependence to be placed on old Fox even in regard to matters with which it might be thought he ought to be best acquainted, that it was not till this year that Cromwell could possibly have got Erasmus's New Testament by heart, inasmuch as it was only now first published. He was probably still abroad when he met with the book ; and the story told by Fox will accord very well with all the ascertained facts, if we suppose the task he is said to have accomplished to have been performed on his

way home to England about this time. The anecdote may be taken as a remarkable evidence, not only of Cromwell's powers of memory, but of the enthusiasm inspired by Erasmus's translation when it first appeared.

Some time after he was taken into the employment of Wolsey, who, we are told, made him his solicitor, Cromwell is stated to have obtained a seat in the House of Commons; and it is recorded to his honour that, when the articles charging the Cardinal with high treason were sent down to that House, he defended his master there with great wit and eloquence ; " and upon this honest beginning,” says Lord Herbert, in his History of the Reign of Henry VIII., “ Cromwell obtained his first reputation.” It is stated on good authority that he had at this time made himself very generally odious by the zeal and energy with which he served his un popular patron : Cardinal Pole asserts from his own knowledge, that, at the time of Wolsey's fall, Cromwell's punishment was also loudly demanded by the public voice: “I was myself then in London,” writes Pole, “and heard what was said : there was nothing that the people looked for more eagerly.” Dr. Lingard's account is, that “he followed Wolsey to Esher ; but, despairing of the fortune of the fallen favourite, hastened to Court, purchased with presents the protection of the ministers, and was confirmed in that office under the king which he had before held under the Cardinal, the stewardship of the lands of the dissolved monasteries."

It must have been almost immediately after this, in the end of the year 1530, or early in 1531, that he secured the royal notice and favour by boldly proposing to Henry, as is affirmed, to rid himself at once of all the difficulties about his divorce from Queen Katharine by throwing off the yoke of the Roman Pontiff, and assuming to himself the ecclesiastical supremacy within his own dominions. He is said to have made this proposal at an audience which he solicited and obtained, and to which he went declaring his intention thereby either to make or mar his fortune. The scheme is believed to have met with Henry's instantaneous approval. If we may depend upon this story, which is told with some variations, but with an agreement in the substance, by both Roman Catholic and Protestant authorities, Cromwell has a better right than any other man to be accounted the author of the Reformation in England.

What is perfectly certain is, that from this time Cromwell was taken into the closest confidence by the king, was loaded with honours and other favours, and was raised with almost unexampled rapidity through a succession of offices to nearly all of the supreme authority that could be conveyed to a subject. In 1531 he was knighted, admitted of the Privy Council, and made Master of the Jewel-House; in 1532 he was appointed Clerk of the Hanaper, and soon after Chancellor of the Exchequer for life ; in 1534 he was raised to the posts of Master of the Rolls, and Principal Secretary of State ; in 1535 he was commissioned to superintend the general suppression of the monasteries with the title of Visitor General; in 1536 he exchanged his place of Master of the Rolls for that of Lord Privy Seal, and a few days after was made a peer, with the title of Lord Cromwell of Okeham; the same year he was constituted Vicar

; General and Vicegerent over all the spirituality, under the King, and in that capacity took his seat in the convocation, as the King's representative, above both archbishops ; in 1537 he was made Chief Justice Itinerant beyond Trent, and a Knight of the Garter; in 1538 he was made Constable of Carisbrook Castle, and received a grant of the Castle and Lordship of Okeham in Rutlandshire ; in 1539 he was enriched by grants of thirty other manors which had belonged to the dissolved_religious houses, and was advanced to the dignity of Earl of Essex (the oldest of the then existing English earldoms), his son being at the same time called to the House of Lords by his father's former title ; and shortly

; after his ambition was still farther gratified by having conferred upon him the office of Lord High Chamberlain of England, which had for a long succession of generations been held by the De Veres, Earls of Oxford, one of the most distinguished families of the ancient peerage.

During nearly all this time, too, he may be considered, as we have said, to have been really the ruler of the kingdom. And the most interesting part of his story is the manner in which he used his supreme power.

He was, in the first place, beyond 'all question a most zealous, active, and efficient promoter of the Reformation in religion. With that cause, indeed, his personal interests were intimately and inseparably involved ; but there is every reason to believe that his honest convictions of right and truth were also strongly enlisted on the same side. The popish writers have attributed to him the most flagitious principles, or rather have denied him the possession of any principles of either religion or morals; but their general denunciations are discountenanced by all that we really know of the man and of his life. He may have been, and probably was, both ambitious and rapacious—fond of power, as strong and ardent minds are apt to be, in all its forms; his daring and enthusiastic temperament may have even made him sometimes unscrupulous enough, and reckless of everything except the object of the moment; but it does not follow that he must have been a bad man, or without good and high qualities. He appears to have been on the whole conscientious, at least in so far as regarded the ends he had in view, although not always very particular as to his means. But the latter characteristic belongs more or less to all the more aspiring spirits of that time. The objects for which men then contended against one another appeared to be of such infinite importance as to justify their attainment in any way. Besides, the regular dominion of law had not yet been established ; society was still in a convulsed and semi-chaotic state ; even in civil life, to a great extent, the only recognised morality was something little better than that now practised in war and on the field of battle.

Cromwell, placed in the seat of supreme authority, may have used his power despotically; but, although he no doubt committed some questionable acts, his general administration appears to have been far from oppressive or unpopular. On the contrary, even when he somewhat disregarded or overstepped the law, he seems usually to have acted both with a right purpose and in accordance with the public sentiment. Some stories preserved by Fox are illustrative of this, and are aļso curious as picturing a social state so different from that which now exists in England. One is about the mere report of his approach dispersing a body of ruffians who had barricaded both ends of Paternoster Row with carts,