Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/464

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but a success, and it is hard to see that much could have been expected of it. For the Pope, just before his coming, had issued a Bull, dated March 7, committing the King's cause to Capisucchi, Auditor of the Rota; which after his arrival was followed by another on the 21st, forbidding all ecclesiastical judges or lawyers from speaking or writing against the validity of the marriage. Worse still, Wiltshire's presence gave opportunity to serve him, as Henry's representative, with a summons for his master to appear in person or by deputy before the tribunal at Rome. The Pope, however, offered to suspend the cause till September, if Henry would take no further step till then; and the King accepted the offer.

Wolsey, meanwhile, had been living at Esher, in a house belonging to him as Bishop of Winchester, whither on his disgrace he was ordered to withdraw. But his enemies, fearing lest the King should again employ his services, were anxious that he should be sent to his other and more remote northern diocese; and an arrangement was made in February, 1530, by which he received a general pardon, resigning to the King for a sum of ready money the bishopric of Winchester and the Abbey of St Alban's, while the possessions of his archbishopric of York were restored to him. He began his journey north early in Lent, paused at Peterborough over Easter, and spent the summer at Southwell, a seat of the Archbishops of York, where he was intensely mortified to learn that the King had determined to dissolve two Colleges, the one at Ipswich and the other at Oxford, of which he had brought about the establishment with great labour and cost. For this object, as early as 1524, he had procured Bulls to dissolve certain small monasteries and apply their revenues to his new foundations; and the obloquy he had incurred from other causes was certainly increased by the dissolution of those Houses. Indeed in 1525 a riot took place at Bayham in Sussex, where a company in disguise restored, though only for a few days, the extruded Canons. The Ipswich College was suppressed by the King. At Oxford, however, the buildings had advanced too far to be stopped and the work was completed on a less magnificent design. After Wolsey's death the King called it "King Henry VIII's College." It is now known as Christ Church.

In the autumn Wolsey moved further north, and, reaching Cawood by the beginning of November, at length hoped to be installed in his own Cathedral of York on the 7th. But on the 4th he was visited by the Earl of Northumberland, who suddenly notified to him his arrest on a charge of treason. His Italian physician Agostini had been bribed by the Duke of Norfolk to betray secret communications which he had held with the French Ambassador de Vaulx, and the charge was added that he had urged the Pope to excommunicate the King and so cause an insurrection. Unconscious of this, he was conducted to Sheffield, where, at the Earl of Shrewsbury's house, he was alarmed to learn that Su1