had seen it."[102]

Symptoms such as these boded ill for a self-reform of the church, and it
was further imperilled by the difficulty which it is not easy to believe
that Wolsey had forgotten. No measures would be of efficacy which spared
the religious houses, and they would be equally useless unless the bishops,
as well as the inferior clergy, were comprehended in the scheme of
amendment. But neither with monks nor bishops could Wolsey interfere except
by a commission from the pope, and the laws were unrepealed which forbade
English subjects, under the severest penalties, to accept or exercise
within the realm an authority which they had received from the Holy See.
Morton had gone beyond the limits of the statute of provisors in receiving
powers from Pope Innocent to visit the monasteries. But Morton had stopped
short with inquiry and admonition. Wolsey, who was in earnest with the
work, had desired and obtained a full commission as legate, but he could
only make use of it at his peril. The statute slumbered, but it still
existed.[103] He was exposing not himself only, but all persons, lay and
clerical, who might recognise his legacy to a Premunire; and he knew well
that Henry's connivance, or even expressed permission, could not avail him
if his conduct was challenged. He could not venture to appeal to
parliament. Parliament was the last authority whose jurisdiction a
churchman would acknowledge in the concerns of the clergy; and his project
must sooner or later have sunk, like those of his two predecessors, under
its own internal difficulties, even if the accident had not arisen which
brought the dispute to a special issue in its most vital point, and which,
fostered by Wolsey for his own purposes, precipitated his ruin.

It is never more difficult to judge equitably the actions of public men
than when private as well as general motives have been allowed to influence
them, or when their actions may admit of being represented as resulting
from personal inclination, as well as from national policy. In life, as we
actually experience it, motives slide one into the other, and the most
careful analysis will fail adequately to sift them. In history, from the
effort to make our conceptions distinct, we pronounce upon these intricate
matters with unhesitating certainty, and we lose sight of truth in the
desire to make it truer than itself. The difficulty is further complicated
by the different points of view which are chosen