r to procure a lithe from the clergy, for enabling the
pope to oppose the progress of the Turks; a danger which was become
real, and was formidable to all Christendom, but on which the politics
of the court of Rome had built so many interested projects that it had
lost all influence on the minds of men. The clergy refused to comply
with Leo's demands: Campeggio was recalled; and the king desired of the
pope that Wolsey, who had been joined in this commission, might alone
be invested with the legatine power, together with the right of visiting
all the clergy and monasteries, and even with suspending all the laws
of the church during a twelvemonth. Wolsey, having obtained this new
dignity, made a new display of that state and parade to which he was so
much addicted. On solemn feast-days, he was not content without saying
mass after the manner of the pope himself: not only he had bishops and
abbots to serve him; he even engaged the first nobility to give him
water and the towel. He affected a rank superior to what had ever been
claimed by any churchman in England. Warham, the primate, having written
him a letter in which he subscribed himself "your loving brother,"
Wolsey complained of his presumption in thus challenging an equality
with him. When Warham was told what offence he had given, he made light
of the matter. "Know ye not," said he, "that this man is drunk with too
much prosperity?"

But Wolsey carried the matter much further than vain pomp and
ostentation. He erected an office which he called the legatine court;
and as he was now, by means of the pope's commission and the king's
favor, invested with all power, both ecclesiastical and civil, no man
knew what bounds were to be set to the authority of his new tribunal. He
conferred on it a kind of inquisitorial and censorial powers even over
the laity, and directed it to inquire into all matters of conscience;
into all conduct which had given scandal; into all actions which, though
they escaped the law, might appear contrary to good morals. Offence was
taken at this commission, which was really unbounded; and the people
were the more disgusted, when they saw a man who indulged himself in
pomp and pleasure, so severe in repressing the least appearance of
licentiousness in others. But to render his court more obnoxious, Wolsey
made one John Allen judge in it, a person of scandalous life,[*] whom he
himself, as chancellor, had, it is said, condemned for perjury: and as