rm of all heretical booksellers in the
neighbouring street. Wolsey had always an eye to the emperor's helping
him to the papacy; and when Charles V. came to England to visit Henry,
in 1522, Wolsey said mass, censed by more than twenty obsequious
prelates. It was Wolsey who first, as papal legate, removed the
convocation entirely from St. Paul's to Westminster, to be near his
house at Whitehall. His ribald enemy, Skelton, then hiding from the
cardinal's wrath in the Sanctuary at Westminster, wrote the following
rough distich on the arbitrary removal:--

"Gentle Paul, lay down thy sword,
For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard."

On the startling news of the battle of Pavia, when Francis I. was taken
prisoner by his great rival of Spain, a huge bonfire illumined the west
front of St. Paul's, and hogsheads of claret were broached at the
Cathedral door, to celebrate the welcome tidings. On the Sunday after,
the bluff king, the queen, and both houses of Parliament, attended a
solemn "Te Deum" at the cathedral; while on St. Matthew's Day there was
a great procession of all the religious orders in London, and Wolsey,
with his obsequious bishops, performed service at the high altar. Two
years later Wolsey came again, to lament or rejoice over the sack of
Rome by the Constable Bourbon, and the captivity of the Pope.

Singularly enough, the fire lighted by Wolsey in St. Paul's Churchyard
had failed to totally burn up Luther and all his works; and on Shrove
Tuesday, 1527, Wolsey made another attempt to reduce the new-formed
Bible to ashes. In the great procession that came on this day to St.
Paul's there were six Lutherans in penitential dresses, carrying
terribly symbolical fagots and huge lighted tapers. On a platform in the
nave sat the portly and proud cardinal, supported by thirty-six zealous
bishops, abbots, and priests. At the foot of the great rood over the
northern door the heretical tracts and Testaments were thrown into a
fire. The prisoners, on their knees, begged pardon of God and the
Catholic Church, and were then led three times round the fire, which
they fed with the fagots they had carried.

Four years later, after Wolsey's fall, the London clergy were summoned
to St. Paul's Chapter-house (near the south side). The king, offended at
the Church having yielded to Wolsey's claims as a papal legate, by which
the penalty of praemunire had been incurred, had demanded from it the
alarming fine of L100,