sh
nobles and the whole of the merchant class, his sympathies were with the
house of Burgundy. He looked upon Wolsey as the real hinderance to the
divorce through the French policy which had driven Charles into a
hostile attitude; and he counted on the Cardinal's fall to bring about a
renewal of friendship with the Emperor and to insure his support.

The father of Anne Boleyn, now created Earl of Wiltshire, was sent in
1530 on this errand to the imperial court. But Charles remained firm to
Catharine's cause, and Clement would do nothing in defiance of the
Emperor. Nor was the appeal to the learned world more successful. In
France the profuse bribery of the English agents would have failed with
the University of Paris but for the interference of Francis himself,
eager to regain Henry's good-will by this office of friendship. As
shameless an exercise of the King's own authority was needed to wring an
approval of his cause from Oxford and Cambridge. In Germany the very
Protestants, then in the fervor of their moral revival and hoping little
from a proclaimed opponent of Luther, were dead against the King. So far
as could be seen from Cranmer's test every learned man in Christendom,
but for bribery and threats, would have condemned the royal cause.

Henry was embittered by failures which he attributed to the unskilful
diplomacy of his new counsellors; and it was rumored that he had been
heard to regret the loss of the more dexterous statesman whom they had
overthrown. Wolsey, who since the beginning of the year had remained at
York, though busy in appearance with the duties of his see, was hoping
more and more as the months passed by for his recall. But the jealousy
of his political enemies was roused by the King's regrets, and the
pitiless hand of Norfolk was seen in the quick and deadly blow which he
dealt at his fallen rival.

On November 4th, the eve of his installation feast, the Cardinal was
arrested on a charge of high treason and conducted by the lieutenant of
the Tower toward London. Already broken by his enormous labors, by
internal disease, and the sense of his fall, Wolsey accepted the arrest
as a sentence of death. An attack of dysentery forced him to rest at the
Abbey of Leicester, and as he reached the gate he said feebly to the
brethren who met him, "I am come to lay my bones among you."

On his death-bed his thoughts still clung to the Prince whom he had
served. "Had I but served God as diligently as I h