i., 626.]

[Footnote 413: _L. and P._, iii., 853.]

[Footnote 414: _L. and P._, iii., 2333, iv.]

[Footnote 415: _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]

[Footnote 416: _L. and P._, iii., 1252, 1646,
1675.]

[Footnote 417: The policy of abstention was often
urged at the council-table and opposed by Wolsey,
who, according to More, used to repeat the fable of
the men who hid in caves to keep out of the rain
which was to make all whom it wetted fools, hoping
thereby to have the rule over the fools (_L. and
P._, vii., 1114; More, _English Works_, p. 1434).
It had cost England, says More, many a fair penny.]

Yet if these were not Wolsey's aims, what were his motives? The
essential thing for England was the maintenance of a fairly even
balance between Francis and Charles; and if Wolsey thought that would
best be secured by throwing the whole of England's weight into the
Emperor's scale, he must have strangely misread the political
situation. He could not foresee, it may be said, the French debacle.
If so, it was from no lack of omens. Even supposing he was ignorant,
or unable to estimate the effects, of the moral corruption of Francis,
the peculations of his mother Louise of Savoy, the hatred of the war,
universal among the French lower classes, there were definite warnings
from more careful observers.[418] As early as 1517 there were bitter
complaints in France of the _gabelle_ and other taxes, and a Cordelier
denounced the French King as worse than Nero.[419] In 1519 an (p. 151)
anonymous Frenchman wrote that Francis had destroyed his own people,
emptied his kingdom of money, and that the Emperor or some other would
soon have a cheap bargain of the kingdom, for he was more unsteady on
his throne than people thought.[420] Even the treason of Bourbon,
which contributed so much to the French King's fall, was rumoured
three years before it occurred, and in 1520 he was known to be
"playing the malcontent".[421] At the Field of Cloth of Gold Henry is
said to have told Francis that, had he a subject like Bourbon, he
would not long leave his head on his shoulders.[422] All these details
were reported to the English Government and placed among English
archives; and, indeed, at the English Cour