William Kingston had been dispatched to bring him up to London. As Sir William was Constable of the Tower, Wolsey now perceived that his execution was intended; and sheer terror brought on an illness, of which he died on the way at Leicester.
So passed away the great Cardinal, the animating spirit of whose whole career is expressed in the sad words he uttered at the last, that if he had served God as diligently as he had served the King, He would not have given him over in his grey hairs. Conspicuous beyond all other victims of royal ingratitude, he had strained every nerve to make his sovereign great, wealthy, and powerful. His devotion to the King had undoubtedly interfered with his spiritual duties as a Churchman; it was not until his fall that he was able to give any care to his episcopal function. The new career, so soon terminated, showed another and a more amiable side in his character. That he might have been happy if unmolested, even when stripped of power, there is little reason to doubt. Yet his was a soul that loved grandeur and display, magnificent in building and in schemes for education; he was ambitious, no doubt, and it might be high-handed, as the agent of a despotic master, but with nothing mean or sordid in his character. And something of ambition might surely be condoned in one whose favour the greatest princes of Europe were eager to secure. For with a penetrating glance he saw through all their different aims and devices. The glamour of external greatness never imposed upon him; and, whatever bribes or tributes might be offered to himself, his splendid political abilities were devoted with single-minded aim to the service of his King and country. He raised England from the rank of a second-rate Power among the nations. His faults, indeed, are not to be denied. Impure as a priest and unscrupulous in many ways as a statesman, he was only a conspicuous example in these things of a prevailing moral corruption. But his great public services, fruitful in their consequences even under the perverse influences which succeeded him, would have produced yet nobler results for his country, if his policy had been left without interference.
Meanwhile, the King had fallen on a new device to force the Pope's hand. A meeting of notable persons was called on June 12, to draw up a joint address to his Holiness, urging him to decide the cause in Henry's favour, lest they should be driven to take the matter into their own hands. To obtain subscriptions to this the nobles were separately dealt with, and the document was sent down into the country to obtain the signatures and seals of peers and prelates, among others of Wolsey at Southwell. It was finally dispatched on July 13; and Clement, though he might well have felt indignant at this attempt to influence his judicial decision by threats, made on September 27 a remarkably temperate reply. He had, moreover, a few months before, sent to England a Nuncio named Nicholas del Burgo to smooth matters; and the prospect of justice to Catharine was not improved by this perpetual dallying.
