FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]See the Life of Wolsey, page102, where he speaks of King Philipnowour sovereign lord.[2]The Norfolk MS. is defective at the beginning, one leaf being lost, which contained a portion of the prologue; there is consequently no title to the work. It has a blank leaf at the place where thelacunæusually occur in the manuscript copies. The hand-writing is of the reign of Elizabeth, and the text corresponds very nearly with that of Dr. Wordsworth: the orthography is not the same. This MS. is in its original binding, and has the name of its ancient possessor,Henrie Farleigh, stamped on each cover. The other manuscript copy in my possession is carefully written, but apparently of more recent date; it has the following title in German text hand prefixed:The Life of MasterThomas WolseyArchbishoppe of Yorkeand Cardinallwritten byGeorge Cavendishhis Gentleman Usher.The same chasm is marked in this MS. as in the former, two pages and a half being left blank, but the imperfect passages at the conclusion of the hunt, and at the commencement of the relation concerning the libels on Wolsey, are completed by a few words as they now stand in Dr. Wordsworth’s text. The variations between these copies are chiefly literal; the orthography is in many respects different.[3]Mr Hunter informs me that Clement Rossington the elder, who must be here alluded to, died in 1737. He acquired the manor of Dronfield by his marriage with Sarah Burton, sister and co-heir of Ralph Burton, of Dronfield, Esq. who died in 1714. The father of Ralph and Sarah Burton was Francis Burton, also of Dronfield, who was aged twenty-five at the visitation of Derbyshire, 1662, and the mother, Helen, daughter and heir of Cassibelan Burton, son of William Burton the distinguished antiquary and historian of Leicestershire. There is good reason to believe that the Rossingtons were not likely topurchasea book of this curiosity, and it is therefore more than probable that it once formed part of the library of William Burton, other books which had been his having descended to them.[4]Vide pp.181,182,183, and for another addition pp.166,167,168; in the present edition the passages are included in brackets.[5]Bound up in the same volume with the Life of Wolsey, in Mr. Heber’s copy, are the following tracts bearing upon the subject; of which a very limited impression appears to have been made, as they are all equally rare. Two Dialogues in the Elysian Fields between Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Ximenes, by Mr. Grove of Richmond. London, Printed for the Author by D. Leach, 1761. A Short Historical Account of Sir William Cavendish, Gentleman Usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and of his Lady Elizabeth (afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury) and their descendants. This has no title page. The Observations and Appendix to the Life of Wolsey appear to have been annexed, as the paging is continued. Six Appendices to a Short History of King Henry VIII. which he had previously published. These have no general title, and are separately paged. A Short Examination into some Reflections cast on the Memory of Cardinal Wolsey, by the Author of the Life of Sir Thomas More, in the Biographia Britannica. 1761. The Life of Robert Wolsey, of Ipswich, Gentleman, Father of the famous Cardinal. 1761. Grove has divided his edition into sections for the purpose of reference. His text has now nothing to recommend it, though it was then a laudable undertaking: he occasionally shows that he could not very well decipher his MS.; he putshinnocrisseforhippocrassat p. 71, and at p. 76peeresforsperes, with many other palpable mistakes. Grove’s ingenuity, though not his ingenuousness, may be admired; for finding in his manuscript the work attributed toGeorgeCavendish, he converts it toGu.Cavendish, Gent. not to disturb his own historical account of Sir William Cavendish, in which he gives a circumstantial relation of the intimacy between Wolsey and Thomas Cavendish of the Exchequer, the father of Sir William, who, he says, placed him in the service of Wolsey, and of the growth of his fortunes in consequence, with a confidence and detail which is truly amusing.[6]This manuscript is carefully written in a volume with other curious transcripts, and has marginal notes by the transcriber, who appears to have been a puritan, from his exclamations against pomp and ceremony. At the end he writes, “Copied forth by S. B. anno 1578, the first day of September.”[7]Kippis’s Edit. vol. iii. p. 321.[8]Vol. i. p. 302.[9]Vol. i. p. 314.[10]See the marginal references in the Biographia and the Peerages.[11]Catalogue Harl. MSS. No. 428.[12]Vol. ii. p. 51.[13]In his ‘Ecclesiastical Biography; or, Lives of eminent Men connected with the History of Religion in England,’ 6 vols. 8vo. a useful and valuable collection, Dr. Wordsworth very properly rejected the parenthesis, “at which time it was apparent that he had poisoned himself,” which had been introduced into the printed copies without the authority of the manuscripts. The editor of the Censura Literaria once intimated his intention to prepare an edition of this work. (C. L. iii. 372.) How could the press of Lee Priory, of whose powers we have had so many favourable specimens, have been more worthily engaged than in producing a correct edition of this valuable piece of antiquarian lore,—except in favouring the public with more of its able director’s own feeling and beautiful essays?[14]Vol. i. p. 321.[15]The reader will bear in mind that this passage was written in 1814, when the writer could not, for obvious reasons, have been acquainted with the claims of Mr. Lloyd’s manuscript, to be considered as theoriginal autographof the author. I will here take occasion to observe that, to the manuscripts enumerated above, two more may be added, described in the preface to the Life, which are in the possession of the writer of this note. S. W. S.[16]It appears by the Catalogus MSS. Anglie that there were two copies in the library of Dr. Henry Jones, rector of Sunningwell in Berks, both in folio: and a third also in folio among the MSS. of the Rev. Abraham De la Pryme, F. R. S. of Thorne in Yorkshire. There was a copy in the very curious library formed about the middle of the last century by Dr. Cox Macro at his house, Norton near St. Edmund’s Bury.[17]See the ‘Royal and Noble Authors,’ p. 202, and Fasti Oxon. vol. ii. col. 706, ed. 1692.[18]P.102in the present edition.[19]In the Autograph MS. it stands—“andafterEarl of Sussex,” v. p.179in the present edition.[20]Milles’s Catalogue of Honour, p. 667.[21]A supposed anachronism explained.The reader will, it is hoped, excuse theminutenessof this inquiry. We have enough to teach us to take nothing upon trust that has been said concerning this work: and some doubts have been expressed as to the period at which it was written, grounded on a passage near the conclusion. Cavendish tells us that when the Cardinal left the hospitable mansion of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield, on the borders of Yorkshire, “he took his journey with Master Kingston and the guard. And as soon as they espied their old master in such a lamentable estate, they lamented him with weeping eyes. Whom my lord took by the hands, and divers times, by the way, as he rode, he would talk with them, sometime with one, and sometime with another; at night he was lodged at a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s, called Hardwick Hall, very evil at ease. The next day he rode to Nottingham, and there lodged that night, more sicker, and the next day we rode to Leicester Abbey; and by the way he waxed so sick, that he was divers times likely to have fallen from his mule.” p. 536. This is an affecting picture. Shakspeare had undoubtedly seen these words, his portrait of the sick and dying Cardinal so closely resembling this. But in these words is this chronological difficulty. How is it that Hardwick Hall is spoken of as a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s in the reign of Henry VIII. or at least in the days of Queen Mary, when it was well known that the house of this name between Sheffield and Nottingham, in which the Countess of Shrewsbury spent her widowhood, a house described in the Anecdotes of Painting, and seen and admired by every curious traveller in Derbyshire, did not accrue to the possessions of any part of the Shrewsbury family till the marriage of an earl, who was grandson to the Cardinal’s host, with Elizabeth Hardwick, the widow of Sir William Cavendish, in the time of Queen Elizabeth? If I recollect right, this difficulty perplexed that learned Derbyshire antiquary Dr. Samuel Pegge, who has written somewhat at length on the question, whether the Cardinal met his death in consequence of having taken poison. See Gent. Mag. vol. xxv. p. 27, and vol. liii. p. 751. The editor of the Topographer proposes to correct the text by reading Wingfield in place of Hardwick; vol. ii. p. 79. The truth, however, is, that though the story is told to every visitor of Hardwick Hall, that “the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,” slept there a few nights before his death; as is also the story, equally unfounded, that Mary Queen of Scots was confined there; it was another Hardwick which received the weary traveller for a night in this his last melancholy pilgrimage. This was Hardwick upon Line in Nottinghamshire, a place about as far to the south of Mansfield, as the Hardwick in Derbyshire, so much better known, is to the north-west. It is now gone to much decay, and is consequently omitted in many maps of the county. It is found in Speed. Here the Earl of Shrewsbury had a house in the time of Wolsey. Leland expressly mentions it. “The Erle [of Shrewsbury] hath a park and maner place or lodge yn it caullid Hardewike upon Line, a four miles from Newstede Abbay.” Itin. vol. v. fol. 94. p. 108. Both the Hardwicks became afterwards the property of the Cavendishes. Thoroton tells us that Sir Charles Cavendish, youngest son of Sir William, and father of William Duke of Newcastle, “had begun to build a great house in this lordship, on a hill by the forest side, near Annesley Woodhouse, when he was assaulted and wounded by Sir John Stanhope and his men, as he was viewing the work, which was therefore thought fit to be left off, some bloud being spilt in the quarrel, then very hot between the two families.” Throsby’s edit. vol. ii. p. 294.[22]The reference is to Dr. Wordsworth’s text; the passage will be found at p.77of the present edition. The same strain of querulous complaint occurs in his prologue to the Metrical Visions:How some are by fortune exalted to riches,And often such as most unworthy be, &c.Afterwards he checks himself, and calls Dame Reason to his aid:But after dewe serche and better advisement,I knew by Reason that oonly God aboveRewlithe thos thyngs, as is most convenyent,The same devysing to man for his behove:Wherefore Dame Reason did me persuade and moveTo be content with mysmall estate,And in this matter no more to vestigate.Here we have decisive proof that the writer’s fortunes were not in the flourishing condition which marked those of Sir William Cavendish at this period, i. e. in the reign of Mary.S. W. S.[23]John Wilson of Bromhead.It formed part of the curious collection of manuscripts made by the late John Wilson, Esq. of Bromhead near Sheffield, in Yorkshire; a gentleman who spent a long life in collecting, and transcribing where he could not procure possession of the original, whatever might throw any light upon the descent of property, or on the history, language, or manners of our ancestors. He was the intimate friend and correspondent of Burton, Watson, Brooke, Beckwith, and indeed of all that generation of Yorkshire antiquaries which passed away with the late Mr. Beaumont of Whitley Beaumont. Mr. Wilson died in 1783. Cavendish’s library was not the best furnished apartment of his magnificent mansion. For the satisfaction of the gentle Bibliomaniac, I shall transcribe the brief catalogue of his books. “Chawcer, Froyssarte Cronicles, a boke of French and English.” They were kept in the new parler, where were also the pictor of our sovreigne lord the kyng, the pyctor of the Frenche kyng and another of the Frenche quene: also ‘two other tables, one with towe anticke boys, & the other of a storye of the Byble.’ In ‘the lyttle parler’ was ‘a payntyd clothe with the pictor of Kyng Harry the VIIIthour sovereygne lord, & kyng Harry the VIIth& the VIth, Edward the Forthe & Rychard the Third.’[24]The authorities for this detail of the employments, rewards, and honours of Sir William Cavendish are to be found in the Biographia and the Peerages.[25]Life and Times, &c. vol. iii. p. 98.[26]Mary, Countess of Northumberland.Though little ceremony and probably as little time was used in patching up these nuptials. As might be expected, they were most unhappy. So we are told on the authority of the earl’s own letters in the very laboured account of the Percy family given in the edition of Collins’s Peerage, 1779; perhaps the best piece of family history in our language. “Henry the unthrifty,” Earl of Northumberland, died at Hackney in the prime of life, about ten or twelve years after he had consented to this marriage. Of this term but a very small part was spent in company of his lady. He lived long enough, however, not only to witness the destruction of all his own happiness, but the sad termination of Anne Boleyn’s life. In the admirable account of the Percy family, referred to above, no mention is made of the lady who, on these terms, consented to become Countess of Northumberland, in her long widowhood. She had a valuable grant of abbey lands and tythes, from which, probably, she derived her principal support. One letter of hers has fallen into my hands. It presents her in an amiable position. She is pleading in behalf of a poor man whose cattle had been impounded by one of Lady Cavendish’s agents. Its date and place is to the eye Wormhill[27]; but the running hand of that age, when not carefully written, is not to be depended on for representing proper names with perfect exactness, and the place may be Wreshill, which was a house of the Northumberland family. She died in 1572; and on the 17th of May her mortal remains were deposited in the vault made by her father in Sheffield church, where sleep so many of her noble relatives, some of them in monumental honours.[27]In justice to the amiable author of this essay, who is extremely anxious to be accurate, I think it proper to apprise the reader that the note taken from the former edition of his work at p. 127 must be qualified by what is here stated. In a letter with which I have been favoured, he says, “I have looked again and again at the letter, and the word is certainly (if we may judge from the characters which the lady’s pen has formed)Wormhill: yet still I think it must have been intended forWreshill, as I have met with nothing else to show that the lady had a house at Wormhill.” S. W. S.[28]Broadgate in Leicestershire. See the Funeral Certificate. They were married on the 20th Aug. 1 Edw. VI., at two o’clock after midnight.[29]Among the Wilson collection is a list of jewels presented to the Countess of Shrewsbury by the Queen of Scotland.[30]See “Memoirs of the Peers of England during the Reign of James the First,” p. 19. Lodge’s “Illustrations,” &c. iii. 50-64, and Harl. MS. in Brit. Mus. No. 4836. fol. 325. and 6846. fol. 97.[31]“Illustrations,” &c. Introd. p. 17.[32]Original Letter of Sir William Cavendish.To Besse Cavendyshmy wyff.Good Besse, haveing forgotten to wryght in my letters that you shuld pay Otewell Alayne eight pounds for certayne otys that we have bought of hym ovrand above xlithat I have paid to hym in hand, I hertely pray you for that he is desyrus to receyve the rest at London, to pay hym uppon the sight hereof. You knowe my store and therefore I have appoyntyd hym to have it at yorhands. And thus faer you well. From Chattesworth the xiiithof Aprell.W. C.[33]Ath. Oxon. vol. i. col. 569. ed. 1691.[34]Original title of the work.None of the publishers of this work have given us the original title. I shall here transcribe it as it appears upon the manuscript in the Library of the College of Arms.Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinall intituledof StCicile trans Tiberim presbyter andLord Chauncellar of England, his lyfeand deathe, compiled by GeorgeCavendishe, his gentleman Usher.[35]Archæologia, vol. xi. p. 50-62.[36]See page4.[37]See Vincent’s Suffolk. MS. in Col. Arm. fol. 149, and compare with Morant’s Essex, vol. ii. p. 363, and with the account of the Cavendishes in the Peerages.[38]See page84.[39]See p.100.[40]Vol. i. p. 106.[41]Vol. i. p. 122. It is singular enough that in this edition the name of the Cardinal’s attendant and biographer, by a slip of the pen, is writtenGeorge. See line 38. It is plain from the connexion that this must have been an unintended blunder into the truth. It was duly corrected in the later editions.[42]Mr. Grove subsequently (in 1761) met with what he considered “an antient and curious manuscript copy written about one hundred and fifty years ago,” and from this he printed an edition in 8vo, with a preface and notes, the advertisement to which bears the above date. It appears to be one of the rarest of English books, and was probably never published: the copy with which I have been favoured by Richard Heber, Esq. M. P. having no title-page. There are other curious tracts in the volume on the subject of Wolsey, having separate titles bearing no bookseller’s name, but purporting to be printedfor the Authorby Dryden Leach, and all in 1761.S. W. S.[43]4to, 1776, p. 116.[44]The autograph MS. begins here.[45]He was born in the year 1471. See Fiddes’sLife of Wolsey, p. 2. 1726. By some it has been said that his father was abutcher, but the foundation for this assertion is not known. The zealous biographer of the cardinal, Mr. Grove, made two successive journeys to Ipswich for the purpose of obtaining information respecting him, but the whole fruit of both expeditions was ascertaining the Christian name of Wolsey’s father, and that he was a man of some substance! He printed, however, what he calls “The Life of Robert Wolsey, of Ipswich,Gentleman,” in 1761! The will of Wolsey’s father was published by Dr. Fiddes, and for its curiosity I shall give it a place in the Appendix.[46]The place was Lymington, in the Diocese of Bath and Wells. He was instituted October 10,A. D.1500.Fiddes, p. 5.[47]The tradition is, that Wolsey was set in the stocks by Sir Amyas Pawlet’s direction, for disorderly conduct at a fair where he had drunk to excess. The ground for this assertion is not known, but it seems to rest upon no earlier authority than that of Sir John Harrington. It may be remarked that Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, represents him as the injured party:“Wrong’d by a knight for no desert of mine.”[48]September, 1501.[49]Fiddes asserts that Sir John Nanfan was a Somersetshire gentleman. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire states, that the father and the son have been confounded, and that it was Sir Richard Nanfan, a gentleman of that county, who was captain of Calais about this time, i. e. circa 1503. His son’s name was Sir John; but it is evident that the wordsa very grave and ancientknight can only apply to Sir Richard.[50]Place, oroffice.[51]Wolsey had not only the address and good qualities necessary to the acquisition of such friends, but also retained them to the last. The affection of Bishop Fox is apparent in the last letter which he wrote to him; and Sir Thomas Lovell’s esteem was manifested to the close of his life, for he leaves him in his will “a standing cup of golde, and one hundred marks in golde.”[52]This mission related to the intended treaty of marriage between Henry the Seventh, and the Duchess Dowager of Savoy.[53]Shakspeare represents the cardinal as “Exceeding wise, fair spoken and persuading;” and one of the charges exhibited against him was, that “at the privy council he would have all the words to himself, and consumed the time with a fair tale!”[54]Dispatch.[55]Understanding.[56]Wordsworth’s Ed.[57]Bypassengersthe reader will see by the context that thepassage boatsare meant. It was the usual phrase to signify a ferryman, and also his boat, frompassager, Fr. Thus in Baret’s Alvearie, “Apassenger, one that conveyeth over many, convector.”[58]Thomas Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has the following stanza, in which the expedition Wolsey used on this occasion is not unpoetically alluded to:“The Argonautic vessel never pastWith swifter course along the Colchian main,Than my small bark with fair and speedy blastConvey’d me forth, and reconvey’d again;Thrice had Arcturus driv’n his restless wain,And heav’n’s bright lamp the day had thrice reviv’dFrom first departure, till I last arriv’d.”This poem was reprinted by Mr. Park in the Supplement to the Harleian Miscellany. There are extracts from it in the Retrospective Review, Vol. v. p. 275.[59]He was collated Feb. 2.A. D.1508. Le Neve’sFasti. p. 146.[60]These words follow in most of the manuscripts, but are probably an interpolation: “and mother afterwards of the queen’s highness, that now is, (whose virtuous life and godly disposition Jesu long preserve, and continue against the malignity of her corrupt enemies!)”[61]This house merged to the crown by the attainder of Empson, and appears to have been a princely dwelling, for in the patent, an orchard and twelve gardens are enumerated as belonging to it. The grant bears date in 1510. It stood upon the ground which is now occupied by Salisbury Square and Dorset Street, its gardens reaching to the banks of the river.[62]Who had.MS. L.[63]Was.MS. L.[64]Dr. Wordsworth has cited a passage from Sir Thomas More, in hisDialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, in which is a lively and characteristic picture, “designed, no doubt, to represent the cardinal at the head of his own table.” I could not refuse myself the pleasure of laying it before the reader.“Anthony.I praye you, cosyn, tell on.Vincent.Whan I was fyrste in Almaine, uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he saciate of hearinge his owne prayse.So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that at his diner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commend it. And whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, uppon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste, for lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) howe well we lyked his oracyon that he hadde made that daye. But in fayth Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full answered, no manne (I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exquisite prayse. For he that shoulde have brought oute but a vulgare and a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for ever. Than sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of the comon weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my parte, I wyll not saye it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked my selfe the better beecause mee thoughte my wordes beeinge but a straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong wherein lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part with my Lordes commendation, the wyly Fox, hadde be so well accustomed in courte with the crafte of flattry that he wente beyonde me to farre.And that might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life studyeth and busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a solempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched together at that boarde agayne: when we should fall to our flattrye, I would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But Uncle, here beganne nowe the game, he that sate hygheste, and was to speake, was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour onely, but also somewhat learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. And it semed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. The manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it came to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al among us before, that we hadde not lefte hym one wye worde to speake after.Anthony.Alas good manne! amonge so manye of you, some good felow shold have lente hym one.Vincent.It needed not as happe was Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatteryng he passed us all the mayny.Anthony.Why, what sayde he Cosyn?Vyncent.By our Ladye Uncle not one worde. But lyke as I trow Plinius telleth, that whan Appelles the Paynter in the table that he paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the makynge of the sorowefull countenances of the other noble menne of Greece that beehelde it, spente oute so much of his craft and hys cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King Agamemnon her father, whiche hee reserved for the laste, ... he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance—but to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte hym, holdyng his face in his handkercher. The like pageant in a maner plaide us there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a word, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace hadde uttered in that oracyon, he fette a long syghe with an Oh! from the bottome of hys breste, and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe bothe his handes and lift uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wepte.Anthony.Forsooth Cosyn, he plaide his parte verye properlye. But was that greate Prelates oracion Cosyn, any thyng prayseworthye?”Sir Thomas More’s Works, p. 1221, 1222.[65]i.e.haughty.[66]June 1513.[67]100 crowns a day.[68]“Heaven and happiness eternal is τὸ ξητόυμενον, that which is joined in issue, to which we are intituled, for which we plead, to which we have right; from whence by injury and treachery we have been ejected, and from whenceby fine forcewe are kept out: for this we doclamare, by the Clergy, our Counsel, in the view of God and Angels.”Montague’s Diatribe upon Selden’s History of Tithes, p. 130.W.[69]He was consecrated bishop of Lincoln, March 26, A. D. 1514.Le Neve’s Fasti, p. 141.W.[70]Bambridge was poisoned (according to Stow) by Rinaldo da Modena, his chaplain, who was incited to the act by revenge, having suffered the indignity of a blow from the archbishop.[71]Dr. Robert Barnes preached a Sermon on the 24th of December, 1525, at St. Edward’s Church in Cambridge, from which Sermon certain Articles were drawn out upon which he was soon after called to make answer before the Cardinal. Barnes has left behind him a description of this examination. The sixth of these Articles was as follows. “I wyll never beleeve that one man may be, by the lawe of God, a Byshop of two or three cities, yea of an whole countrey, for it is contrarye to St. Paule, which sayth,I have left thee behynde, to set in every citye a byshop.”“I was brought afore my Lorde Cardinall into his Galary, (continues Dr. Barnes), and there hee reade all myne articles, tyll hee came to this, and there he stopped, and sayd, that this touched hym, and therefore hee asked me, if I thought it wronge, that one byshop shoulde have so many cityes underneath hym; unto whom I answered, that I could no farther go, than St. Paules texte, whych set in every cytye a byshop. Then asked hee mee, if I thought it now unright (seeing the ordinaunce of the Church) that one byshop should have so many cities. I aunswered that I knew none ordinaunce of the Church, as concerning this thinge, but St. Paules sayinge onelye. Nevertheles I did see a contrarye custom and practise in the world, but I know not the originall thereof. Then sayde hee, that in the Apostles tyme, there were dyvers cities, some seven myle, some six myle long, and over them was there set but one byshop, and of their suburbs also: so likewise now, a byshop hath but one citye to his cathedrall churche, and the country about is as suburbs unto it. Me thought this was farre fetched, but I durst not denye it.”Barnes’s Works, p. 210. A. D. 1573.W.[72]This was not the first time in which this point of precedency had been contested. Edward III, in the sixth year of his reign, at a time when a similar debate was in agitation, having summoned a Parliament at York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the other Prelates of his Province, declined giving their attendance, that the Metropolitan of all England might not be obliged to submit his Cross to that of York, in the Province of the latter.Fox, p. 387, 388.W.

[1]See the Life of Wolsey, page102, where he speaks of King Philipnowour sovereign lord.

[2]The Norfolk MS. is defective at the beginning, one leaf being lost, which contained a portion of the prologue; there is consequently no title to the work. It has a blank leaf at the place where thelacunæusually occur in the manuscript copies. The hand-writing is of the reign of Elizabeth, and the text corresponds very nearly with that of Dr. Wordsworth: the orthography is not the same. This MS. is in its original binding, and has the name of its ancient possessor,Henrie Farleigh, stamped on each cover. The other manuscript copy in my possession is carefully written, but apparently of more recent date; it has the following title in German text hand prefixed:The Life of MasterThomas WolseyArchbishoppe of Yorkeand Cardinallwritten byGeorge Cavendishhis Gentleman Usher.The same chasm is marked in this MS. as in the former, two pages and a half being left blank, but the imperfect passages at the conclusion of the hunt, and at the commencement of the relation concerning the libels on Wolsey, are completed by a few words as they now stand in Dr. Wordsworth’s text. The variations between these copies are chiefly literal; the orthography is in many respects different.

The Life of MasterThomas WolseyArchbishoppe of Yorkeand Cardinallwritten byGeorge Cavendishhis Gentleman Usher.

The same chasm is marked in this MS. as in the former, two pages and a half being left blank, but the imperfect passages at the conclusion of the hunt, and at the commencement of the relation concerning the libels on Wolsey, are completed by a few words as they now stand in Dr. Wordsworth’s text. The variations between these copies are chiefly literal; the orthography is in many respects different.

[3]Mr Hunter informs me that Clement Rossington the elder, who must be here alluded to, died in 1737. He acquired the manor of Dronfield by his marriage with Sarah Burton, sister and co-heir of Ralph Burton, of Dronfield, Esq. who died in 1714. The father of Ralph and Sarah Burton was Francis Burton, also of Dronfield, who was aged twenty-five at the visitation of Derbyshire, 1662, and the mother, Helen, daughter and heir of Cassibelan Burton, son of William Burton the distinguished antiquary and historian of Leicestershire. There is good reason to believe that the Rossingtons were not likely topurchasea book of this curiosity, and it is therefore more than probable that it once formed part of the library of William Burton, other books which had been his having descended to them.

[4]Vide pp.181,182,183, and for another addition pp.166,167,168; in the present edition the passages are included in brackets.

[5]Bound up in the same volume with the Life of Wolsey, in Mr. Heber’s copy, are the following tracts bearing upon the subject; of which a very limited impression appears to have been made, as they are all equally rare. Two Dialogues in the Elysian Fields between Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Ximenes, by Mr. Grove of Richmond. London, Printed for the Author by D. Leach, 1761. A Short Historical Account of Sir William Cavendish, Gentleman Usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and of his Lady Elizabeth (afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury) and their descendants. This has no title page. The Observations and Appendix to the Life of Wolsey appear to have been annexed, as the paging is continued. Six Appendices to a Short History of King Henry VIII. which he had previously published. These have no general title, and are separately paged. A Short Examination into some Reflections cast on the Memory of Cardinal Wolsey, by the Author of the Life of Sir Thomas More, in the Biographia Britannica. 1761. The Life of Robert Wolsey, of Ipswich, Gentleman, Father of the famous Cardinal. 1761. Grove has divided his edition into sections for the purpose of reference. His text has now nothing to recommend it, though it was then a laudable undertaking: he occasionally shows that he could not very well decipher his MS.; he putshinnocrisseforhippocrassat p. 71, and at p. 76peeresforsperes, with many other palpable mistakes. Grove’s ingenuity, though not his ingenuousness, may be admired; for finding in his manuscript the work attributed toGeorgeCavendish, he converts it toGu.Cavendish, Gent. not to disturb his own historical account of Sir William Cavendish, in which he gives a circumstantial relation of the intimacy between Wolsey and Thomas Cavendish of the Exchequer, the father of Sir William, who, he says, placed him in the service of Wolsey, and of the growth of his fortunes in consequence, with a confidence and detail which is truly amusing.

[6]This manuscript is carefully written in a volume with other curious transcripts, and has marginal notes by the transcriber, who appears to have been a puritan, from his exclamations against pomp and ceremony. At the end he writes, “Copied forth by S. B. anno 1578, the first day of September.”

[7]Kippis’s Edit. vol. iii. p. 321.

[8]Vol. i. p. 302.

[9]Vol. i. p. 314.

[10]See the marginal references in the Biographia and the Peerages.

[11]Catalogue Harl. MSS. No. 428.

[12]Vol. ii. p. 51.

[13]In his ‘Ecclesiastical Biography; or, Lives of eminent Men connected with the History of Religion in England,’ 6 vols. 8vo. a useful and valuable collection, Dr. Wordsworth very properly rejected the parenthesis, “at which time it was apparent that he had poisoned himself,” which had been introduced into the printed copies without the authority of the manuscripts. The editor of the Censura Literaria once intimated his intention to prepare an edition of this work. (C. L. iii. 372.) How could the press of Lee Priory, of whose powers we have had so many favourable specimens, have been more worthily engaged than in producing a correct edition of this valuable piece of antiquarian lore,—except in favouring the public with more of its able director’s own feeling and beautiful essays?

[14]Vol. i. p. 321.

[15]The reader will bear in mind that this passage was written in 1814, when the writer could not, for obvious reasons, have been acquainted with the claims of Mr. Lloyd’s manuscript, to be considered as theoriginal autographof the author. I will here take occasion to observe that, to the manuscripts enumerated above, two more may be added, described in the preface to the Life, which are in the possession of the writer of this note. S. W. S.

[16]It appears by the Catalogus MSS. Anglie that there were two copies in the library of Dr. Henry Jones, rector of Sunningwell in Berks, both in folio: and a third also in folio among the MSS. of the Rev. Abraham De la Pryme, F. R. S. of Thorne in Yorkshire. There was a copy in the very curious library formed about the middle of the last century by Dr. Cox Macro at his house, Norton near St. Edmund’s Bury.

[17]See the ‘Royal and Noble Authors,’ p. 202, and Fasti Oxon. vol. ii. col. 706, ed. 1692.

[18]P.102in the present edition.

[19]In the Autograph MS. it stands—“andafterEarl of Sussex,” v. p.179in the present edition.

[20]Milles’s Catalogue of Honour, p. 667.

[21]A supposed anachronism explained.The reader will, it is hoped, excuse theminutenessof this inquiry. We have enough to teach us to take nothing upon trust that has been said concerning this work: and some doubts have been expressed as to the period at which it was written, grounded on a passage near the conclusion. Cavendish tells us that when the Cardinal left the hospitable mansion of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield, on the borders of Yorkshire, “he took his journey with Master Kingston and the guard. And as soon as they espied their old master in such a lamentable estate, they lamented him with weeping eyes. Whom my lord took by the hands, and divers times, by the way, as he rode, he would talk with them, sometime with one, and sometime with another; at night he was lodged at a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s, called Hardwick Hall, very evil at ease. The next day he rode to Nottingham, and there lodged that night, more sicker, and the next day we rode to Leicester Abbey; and by the way he waxed so sick, that he was divers times likely to have fallen from his mule.” p. 536. This is an affecting picture. Shakspeare had undoubtedly seen these words, his portrait of the sick and dying Cardinal so closely resembling this. But in these words is this chronological difficulty. How is it that Hardwick Hall is spoken of as a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s in the reign of Henry VIII. or at least in the days of Queen Mary, when it was well known that the house of this name between Sheffield and Nottingham, in which the Countess of Shrewsbury spent her widowhood, a house described in the Anecdotes of Painting, and seen and admired by every curious traveller in Derbyshire, did not accrue to the possessions of any part of the Shrewsbury family till the marriage of an earl, who was grandson to the Cardinal’s host, with Elizabeth Hardwick, the widow of Sir William Cavendish, in the time of Queen Elizabeth? If I recollect right, this difficulty perplexed that learned Derbyshire antiquary Dr. Samuel Pegge, who has written somewhat at length on the question, whether the Cardinal met his death in consequence of having taken poison. See Gent. Mag. vol. xxv. p. 27, and vol. liii. p. 751. The editor of the Topographer proposes to correct the text by reading Wingfield in place of Hardwick; vol. ii. p. 79. The truth, however, is, that though the story is told to every visitor of Hardwick Hall, that “the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,” slept there a few nights before his death; as is also the story, equally unfounded, that Mary Queen of Scots was confined there; it was another Hardwick which received the weary traveller for a night in this his last melancholy pilgrimage. This was Hardwick upon Line in Nottinghamshire, a place about as far to the south of Mansfield, as the Hardwick in Derbyshire, so much better known, is to the north-west. It is now gone to much decay, and is consequently omitted in many maps of the county. It is found in Speed. Here the Earl of Shrewsbury had a house in the time of Wolsey. Leland expressly mentions it. “The Erle [of Shrewsbury] hath a park and maner place or lodge yn it caullid Hardewike upon Line, a four miles from Newstede Abbay.” Itin. vol. v. fol. 94. p. 108. Both the Hardwicks became afterwards the property of the Cavendishes. Thoroton tells us that Sir Charles Cavendish, youngest son of Sir William, and father of William Duke of Newcastle, “had begun to build a great house in this lordship, on a hill by the forest side, near Annesley Woodhouse, when he was assaulted and wounded by Sir John Stanhope and his men, as he was viewing the work, which was therefore thought fit to be left off, some bloud being spilt in the quarrel, then very hot between the two families.” Throsby’s edit. vol. ii. p. 294.

[21]

A supposed anachronism explained.

The reader will, it is hoped, excuse theminutenessof this inquiry. We have enough to teach us to take nothing upon trust that has been said concerning this work: and some doubts have been expressed as to the period at which it was written, grounded on a passage near the conclusion. Cavendish tells us that when the Cardinal left the hospitable mansion of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield, on the borders of Yorkshire, “he took his journey with Master Kingston and the guard. And as soon as they espied their old master in such a lamentable estate, they lamented him with weeping eyes. Whom my lord took by the hands, and divers times, by the way, as he rode, he would talk with them, sometime with one, and sometime with another; at night he was lodged at a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s, called Hardwick Hall, very evil at ease. The next day he rode to Nottingham, and there lodged that night, more sicker, and the next day we rode to Leicester Abbey; and by the way he waxed so sick, that he was divers times likely to have fallen from his mule.” p. 536. This is an affecting picture. Shakspeare had undoubtedly seen these words, his portrait of the sick and dying Cardinal so closely resembling this. But in these words is this chronological difficulty. How is it that Hardwick Hall is spoken of as a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s in the reign of Henry VIII. or at least in the days of Queen Mary, when it was well known that the house of this name between Sheffield and Nottingham, in which the Countess of Shrewsbury spent her widowhood, a house described in the Anecdotes of Painting, and seen and admired by every curious traveller in Derbyshire, did not accrue to the possessions of any part of the Shrewsbury family till the marriage of an earl, who was grandson to the Cardinal’s host, with Elizabeth Hardwick, the widow of Sir William Cavendish, in the time of Queen Elizabeth? If I recollect right, this difficulty perplexed that learned Derbyshire antiquary Dr. Samuel Pegge, who has written somewhat at length on the question, whether the Cardinal met his death in consequence of having taken poison. See Gent. Mag. vol. xxv. p. 27, and vol. liii. p. 751. The editor of the Topographer proposes to correct the text by reading Wingfield in place of Hardwick; vol. ii. p. 79. The truth, however, is, that though the story is told to every visitor of Hardwick Hall, that “the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,” slept there a few nights before his death; as is also the story, equally unfounded, that Mary Queen of Scots was confined there; it was another Hardwick which received the weary traveller for a night in this his last melancholy pilgrimage. This was Hardwick upon Line in Nottinghamshire, a place about as far to the south of Mansfield, as the Hardwick in Derbyshire, so much better known, is to the north-west. It is now gone to much decay, and is consequently omitted in many maps of the county. It is found in Speed. Here the Earl of Shrewsbury had a house in the time of Wolsey. Leland expressly mentions it. “The Erle [of Shrewsbury] hath a park and maner place or lodge yn it caullid Hardewike upon Line, a four miles from Newstede Abbay.” Itin. vol. v. fol. 94. p. 108. Both the Hardwicks became afterwards the property of the Cavendishes. Thoroton tells us that Sir Charles Cavendish, youngest son of Sir William, and father of William Duke of Newcastle, “had begun to build a great house in this lordship, on a hill by the forest side, near Annesley Woodhouse, when he was assaulted and wounded by Sir John Stanhope and his men, as he was viewing the work, which was therefore thought fit to be left off, some bloud being spilt in the quarrel, then very hot between the two families.” Throsby’s edit. vol. ii. p. 294.

[22]The reference is to Dr. Wordsworth’s text; the passage will be found at p.77of the present edition. The same strain of querulous complaint occurs in his prologue to the Metrical Visions:How some are by fortune exalted to riches,And often such as most unworthy be, &c.Afterwards he checks himself, and calls Dame Reason to his aid:But after dewe serche and better advisement,I knew by Reason that oonly God aboveRewlithe thos thyngs, as is most convenyent,The same devysing to man for his behove:Wherefore Dame Reason did me persuade and moveTo be content with mysmall estate,And in this matter no more to vestigate.Here we have decisive proof that the writer’s fortunes were not in the flourishing condition which marked those of Sir William Cavendish at this period, i. e. in the reign of Mary.S. W. S.

[22]The reference is to Dr. Wordsworth’s text; the passage will be found at p.77of the present edition. The same strain of querulous complaint occurs in his prologue to the Metrical Visions:

How some are by fortune exalted to riches,And often such as most unworthy be, &c.

How some are by fortune exalted to riches,

And often such as most unworthy be, &c.

Afterwards he checks himself, and calls Dame Reason to his aid:

But after dewe serche and better advisement,I knew by Reason that oonly God aboveRewlithe thos thyngs, as is most convenyent,The same devysing to man for his behove:Wherefore Dame Reason did me persuade and moveTo be content with mysmall estate,And in this matter no more to vestigate.

But after dewe serche and better advisement,

I knew by Reason that oonly God above

Rewlithe thos thyngs, as is most convenyent,

The same devysing to man for his behove:

Wherefore Dame Reason did me persuade and move

To be content with mysmall estate,

And in this matter no more to vestigate.

Here we have decisive proof that the writer’s fortunes were not in the flourishing condition which marked those of Sir William Cavendish at this period, i. e. in the reign of Mary.

S. W. S.

[23]John Wilson of Bromhead.It formed part of the curious collection of manuscripts made by the late John Wilson, Esq. of Bromhead near Sheffield, in Yorkshire; a gentleman who spent a long life in collecting, and transcribing where he could not procure possession of the original, whatever might throw any light upon the descent of property, or on the history, language, or manners of our ancestors. He was the intimate friend and correspondent of Burton, Watson, Brooke, Beckwith, and indeed of all that generation of Yorkshire antiquaries which passed away with the late Mr. Beaumont of Whitley Beaumont. Mr. Wilson died in 1783. Cavendish’s library was not the best furnished apartment of his magnificent mansion. For the satisfaction of the gentle Bibliomaniac, I shall transcribe the brief catalogue of his books. “Chawcer, Froyssarte Cronicles, a boke of French and English.” They were kept in the new parler, where were also the pictor of our sovreigne lord the kyng, the pyctor of the Frenche kyng and another of the Frenche quene: also ‘two other tables, one with towe anticke boys, & the other of a storye of the Byble.’ In ‘the lyttle parler’ was ‘a payntyd clothe with the pictor of Kyng Harry the VIIIthour sovereygne lord, & kyng Harry the VIIth& the VIth, Edward the Forthe & Rychard the Third.’

[23]

John Wilson of Bromhead.

It formed part of the curious collection of manuscripts made by the late John Wilson, Esq. of Bromhead near Sheffield, in Yorkshire; a gentleman who spent a long life in collecting, and transcribing where he could not procure possession of the original, whatever might throw any light upon the descent of property, or on the history, language, or manners of our ancestors. He was the intimate friend and correspondent of Burton, Watson, Brooke, Beckwith, and indeed of all that generation of Yorkshire antiquaries which passed away with the late Mr. Beaumont of Whitley Beaumont. Mr. Wilson died in 1783. Cavendish’s library was not the best furnished apartment of his magnificent mansion. For the satisfaction of the gentle Bibliomaniac, I shall transcribe the brief catalogue of his books. “Chawcer, Froyssarte Cronicles, a boke of French and English.” They were kept in the new parler, where were also the pictor of our sovreigne lord the kyng, the pyctor of the Frenche kyng and another of the Frenche quene: also ‘two other tables, one with towe anticke boys, & the other of a storye of the Byble.’ In ‘the lyttle parler’ was ‘a payntyd clothe with the pictor of Kyng Harry the VIIIthour sovereygne lord, & kyng Harry the VIIth& the VIth, Edward the Forthe & Rychard the Third.’

[24]The authorities for this detail of the employments, rewards, and honours of Sir William Cavendish are to be found in the Biographia and the Peerages.

[25]Life and Times, &c. vol. iii. p. 98.

[26]Mary, Countess of Northumberland.Though little ceremony and probably as little time was used in patching up these nuptials. As might be expected, they were most unhappy. So we are told on the authority of the earl’s own letters in the very laboured account of the Percy family given in the edition of Collins’s Peerage, 1779; perhaps the best piece of family history in our language. “Henry the unthrifty,” Earl of Northumberland, died at Hackney in the prime of life, about ten or twelve years after he had consented to this marriage. Of this term but a very small part was spent in company of his lady. He lived long enough, however, not only to witness the destruction of all his own happiness, but the sad termination of Anne Boleyn’s life. In the admirable account of the Percy family, referred to above, no mention is made of the lady who, on these terms, consented to become Countess of Northumberland, in her long widowhood. She had a valuable grant of abbey lands and tythes, from which, probably, she derived her principal support. One letter of hers has fallen into my hands. It presents her in an amiable position. She is pleading in behalf of a poor man whose cattle had been impounded by one of Lady Cavendish’s agents. Its date and place is to the eye Wormhill[27]; but the running hand of that age, when not carefully written, is not to be depended on for representing proper names with perfect exactness, and the place may be Wreshill, which was a house of the Northumberland family. She died in 1572; and on the 17th of May her mortal remains were deposited in the vault made by her father in Sheffield church, where sleep so many of her noble relatives, some of them in monumental honours.

[26]

Mary, Countess of Northumberland.

Though little ceremony and probably as little time was used in patching up these nuptials. As might be expected, they were most unhappy. So we are told on the authority of the earl’s own letters in the very laboured account of the Percy family given in the edition of Collins’s Peerage, 1779; perhaps the best piece of family history in our language. “Henry the unthrifty,” Earl of Northumberland, died at Hackney in the prime of life, about ten or twelve years after he had consented to this marriage. Of this term but a very small part was spent in company of his lady. He lived long enough, however, not only to witness the destruction of all his own happiness, but the sad termination of Anne Boleyn’s life. In the admirable account of the Percy family, referred to above, no mention is made of the lady who, on these terms, consented to become Countess of Northumberland, in her long widowhood. She had a valuable grant of abbey lands and tythes, from which, probably, she derived her principal support. One letter of hers has fallen into my hands. It presents her in an amiable position. She is pleading in behalf of a poor man whose cattle had been impounded by one of Lady Cavendish’s agents. Its date and place is to the eye Wormhill[27]; but the running hand of that age, when not carefully written, is not to be depended on for representing proper names with perfect exactness, and the place may be Wreshill, which was a house of the Northumberland family. She died in 1572; and on the 17th of May her mortal remains were deposited in the vault made by her father in Sheffield church, where sleep so many of her noble relatives, some of them in monumental honours.

[27]In justice to the amiable author of this essay, who is extremely anxious to be accurate, I think it proper to apprise the reader that the note taken from the former edition of his work at p. 127 must be qualified by what is here stated. In a letter with which I have been favoured, he says, “I have looked again and again at the letter, and the word is certainly (if we may judge from the characters which the lady’s pen has formed)Wormhill: yet still I think it must have been intended forWreshill, as I have met with nothing else to show that the lady had a house at Wormhill.” S. W. S.

[28]Broadgate in Leicestershire. See the Funeral Certificate. They were married on the 20th Aug. 1 Edw. VI., at two o’clock after midnight.

[29]Among the Wilson collection is a list of jewels presented to the Countess of Shrewsbury by the Queen of Scotland.

[30]See “Memoirs of the Peers of England during the Reign of James the First,” p. 19. Lodge’s “Illustrations,” &c. iii. 50-64, and Harl. MS. in Brit. Mus. No. 4836. fol. 325. and 6846. fol. 97.

[31]“Illustrations,” &c. Introd. p. 17.

[32]Original Letter of Sir William Cavendish.To Besse Cavendyshmy wyff.Good Besse, haveing forgotten to wryght in my letters that you shuld pay Otewell Alayne eight pounds for certayne otys that we have bought of hym ovrand above xlithat I have paid to hym in hand, I hertely pray you for that he is desyrus to receyve the rest at London, to pay hym uppon the sight hereof. You knowe my store and therefore I have appoyntyd hym to have it at yorhands. And thus faer you well. From Chattesworth the xiiithof Aprell.W. C.

[32]

Original Letter of Sir William Cavendish.

To Besse Cavendyshmy wyff.Good Besse, haveing forgotten to wryght in my letters that you shuld pay Otewell Alayne eight pounds for certayne otys that we have bought of hym ovrand above xlithat I have paid to hym in hand, I hertely pray you for that he is desyrus to receyve the rest at London, to pay hym uppon the sight hereof. You knowe my store and therefore I have appoyntyd hym to have it at yorhands. And thus faer you well. From Chattesworth the xiiithof Aprell.W. C.

To Besse Cavendysh

my wyff.

Good Besse, haveing forgotten to wryght in my letters that you shuld pay Otewell Alayne eight pounds for certayne otys that we have bought of hym ovrand above xlithat I have paid to hym in hand, I hertely pray you for that he is desyrus to receyve the rest at London, to pay hym uppon the sight hereof. You knowe my store and therefore I have appoyntyd hym to have it at yorhands. And thus faer you well. From Chattesworth the xiiithof Aprell.

W. C.

[33]Ath. Oxon. vol. i. col. 569. ed. 1691.

[34]Original title of the work.None of the publishers of this work have given us the original title. I shall here transcribe it as it appears upon the manuscript in the Library of the College of Arms.Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinall intituledof StCicile trans Tiberim presbyter andLord Chauncellar of England, his lyfeand deathe, compiled by GeorgeCavendishe, his gentleman Usher.

[34]

Original title of the work.

None of the publishers of this work have given us the original title. I shall here transcribe it as it appears upon the manuscript in the Library of the College of Arms.

Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinall intituledof StCicile trans Tiberim presbyter andLord Chauncellar of England, his lyfeand deathe, compiled by GeorgeCavendishe, his gentleman Usher.

[35]Archæologia, vol. xi. p. 50-62.

[36]See page4.

[37]See Vincent’s Suffolk. MS. in Col. Arm. fol. 149, and compare with Morant’s Essex, vol. ii. p. 363, and with the account of the Cavendishes in the Peerages.

[38]See page84.

[39]See p.100.

[40]Vol. i. p. 106.

[41]Vol. i. p. 122. It is singular enough that in this edition the name of the Cardinal’s attendant and biographer, by a slip of the pen, is writtenGeorge. See line 38. It is plain from the connexion that this must have been an unintended blunder into the truth. It was duly corrected in the later editions.

[42]Mr. Grove subsequently (in 1761) met with what he considered “an antient and curious manuscript copy written about one hundred and fifty years ago,” and from this he printed an edition in 8vo, with a preface and notes, the advertisement to which bears the above date. It appears to be one of the rarest of English books, and was probably never published: the copy with which I have been favoured by Richard Heber, Esq. M. P. having no title-page. There are other curious tracts in the volume on the subject of Wolsey, having separate titles bearing no bookseller’s name, but purporting to be printedfor the Authorby Dryden Leach, and all in 1761.S. W. S.

S. W. S.

[43]4to, 1776, p. 116.

[44]The autograph MS. begins here.

[45]He was born in the year 1471. See Fiddes’sLife of Wolsey, p. 2. 1726. By some it has been said that his father was abutcher, but the foundation for this assertion is not known. The zealous biographer of the cardinal, Mr. Grove, made two successive journeys to Ipswich for the purpose of obtaining information respecting him, but the whole fruit of both expeditions was ascertaining the Christian name of Wolsey’s father, and that he was a man of some substance! He printed, however, what he calls “The Life of Robert Wolsey, of Ipswich,Gentleman,” in 1761! The will of Wolsey’s father was published by Dr. Fiddes, and for its curiosity I shall give it a place in the Appendix.

[46]The place was Lymington, in the Diocese of Bath and Wells. He was instituted October 10,A. D.1500.Fiddes, p. 5.

[47]The tradition is, that Wolsey was set in the stocks by Sir Amyas Pawlet’s direction, for disorderly conduct at a fair where he had drunk to excess. The ground for this assertion is not known, but it seems to rest upon no earlier authority than that of Sir John Harrington. It may be remarked that Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, represents him as the injured party:“Wrong’d by a knight for no desert of mine.”

“Wrong’d by a knight for no desert of mine.”

[48]September, 1501.

[49]Fiddes asserts that Sir John Nanfan was a Somersetshire gentleman. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire states, that the father and the son have been confounded, and that it was Sir Richard Nanfan, a gentleman of that county, who was captain of Calais about this time, i. e. circa 1503. His son’s name was Sir John; but it is evident that the wordsa very grave and ancientknight can only apply to Sir Richard.

[50]Place, oroffice.

[51]Wolsey had not only the address and good qualities necessary to the acquisition of such friends, but also retained them to the last. The affection of Bishop Fox is apparent in the last letter which he wrote to him; and Sir Thomas Lovell’s esteem was manifested to the close of his life, for he leaves him in his will “a standing cup of golde, and one hundred marks in golde.”

[52]This mission related to the intended treaty of marriage between Henry the Seventh, and the Duchess Dowager of Savoy.

[53]Shakspeare represents the cardinal as “Exceeding wise, fair spoken and persuading;” and one of the charges exhibited against him was, that “at the privy council he would have all the words to himself, and consumed the time with a fair tale!”

[54]Dispatch.

[55]Understanding.

[56]Wordsworth’s Ed.

[57]Bypassengersthe reader will see by the context that thepassage boatsare meant. It was the usual phrase to signify a ferryman, and also his boat, frompassager, Fr. Thus in Baret’s Alvearie, “Apassenger, one that conveyeth over many, convector.”

[58]Thomas Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has the following stanza, in which the expedition Wolsey used on this occasion is not unpoetically alluded to:“The Argonautic vessel never pastWith swifter course along the Colchian main,Than my small bark with fair and speedy blastConvey’d me forth, and reconvey’d again;Thrice had Arcturus driv’n his restless wain,And heav’n’s bright lamp the day had thrice reviv’dFrom first departure, till I last arriv’d.”This poem was reprinted by Mr. Park in the Supplement to the Harleian Miscellany. There are extracts from it in the Retrospective Review, Vol. v. p. 275.

[58]Thomas Storer, in his metrical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has the following stanza, in which the expedition Wolsey used on this occasion is not unpoetically alluded to:

“The Argonautic vessel never pastWith swifter course along the Colchian main,Than my small bark with fair and speedy blastConvey’d me forth, and reconvey’d again;Thrice had Arcturus driv’n his restless wain,And heav’n’s bright lamp the day had thrice reviv’dFrom first departure, till I last arriv’d.”

“The Argonautic vessel never past

With swifter course along the Colchian main,

Than my small bark with fair and speedy blast

Convey’d me forth, and reconvey’d again;

Thrice had Arcturus driv’n his restless wain,

And heav’n’s bright lamp the day had thrice reviv’d

From first departure, till I last arriv’d.”

This poem was reprinted by Mr. Park in the Supplement to the Harleian Miscellany. There are extracts from it in the Retrospective Review, Vol. v. p. 275.

[59]He was collated Feb. 2.A. D.1508. Le Neve’sFasti. p. 146.

[60]These words follow in most of the manuscripts, but are probably an interpolation: “and mother afterwards of the queen’s highness, that now is, (whose virtuous life and godly disposition Jesu long preserve, and continue against the malignity of her corrupt enemies!)”

[61]This house merged to the crown by the attainder of Empson, and appears to have been a princely dwelling, for in the patent, an orchard and twelve gardens are enumerated as belonging to it. The grant bears date in 1510. It stood upon the ground which is now occupied by Salisbury Square and Dorset Street, its gardens reaching to the banks of the river.

[62]Who had.MS. L.

[63]Was.MS. L.

[64]Dr. Wordsworth has cited a passage from Sir Thomas More, in hisDialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, in which is a lively and characteristic picture, “designed, no doubt, to represent the cardinal at the head of his own table.” I could not refuse myself the pleasure of laying it before the reader.“Anthony.I praye you, cosyn, tell on.Vincent.Whan I was fyrste in Almaine, uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he saciate of hearinge his owne prayse.So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that at his diner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commend it. And whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, uppon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste, for lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) howe well we lyked his oracyon that he hadde made that daye. But in fayth Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full answered, no manne (I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exquisite prayse. For he that shoulde have brought oute but a vulgare and a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for ever. Than sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of the comon weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my parte, I wyll not saye it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked my selfe the better beecause mee thoughte my wordes beeinge but a straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong wherein lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part with my Lordes commendation, the wyly Fox, hadde be so well accustomed in courte with the crafte of flattry that he wente beyonde me to farre.And that might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life studyeth and busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a solempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched together at that boarde agayne: when we should fall to our flattrye, I would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But Uncle, here beganne nowe the game, he that sate hygheste, and was to speake, was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour onely, but also somewhat learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. And it semed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. The manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it came to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al among us before, that we hadde not lefte hym one wye worde to speake after.Anthony.Alas good manne! amonge so manye of you, some good felow shold have lente hym one.Vincent.It needed not as happe was Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatteryng he passed us all the mayny.Anthony.Why, what sayde he Cosyn?Vyncent.By our Ladye Uncle not one worde. But lyke as I trow Plinius telleth, that whan Appelles the Paynter in the table that he paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the makynge of the sorowefull countenances of the other noble menne of Greece that beehelde it, spente oute so much of his craft and hys cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King Agamemnon her father, whiche hee reserved for the laste, ... he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance—but to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte hym, holdyng his face in his handkercher. The like pageant in a maner plaide us there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a word, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace hadde uttered in that oracyon, he fette a long syghe with an Oh! from the bottome of hys breste, and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe bothe his handes and lift uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wepte.Anthony.Forsooth Cosyn, he plaide his parte verye properlye. But was that greate Prelates oracion Cosyn, any thyng prayseworthye?”Sir Thomas More’s Works, p. 1221, 1222.

“Anthony.I praye you, cosyn, tell on.Vincent.Whan I was fyrste in Almaine, uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he saciate of hearinge his owne prayse.

So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that at his diner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commend it. And whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, uppon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste, for lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) howe well we lyked his oracyon that he hadde made that daye. But in fayth Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full answered, no manne (I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exquisite prayse. For he that shoulde have brought oute but a vulgare and a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for ever. Than sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of the comon weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my parte, I wyll not saye it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked my selfe the better beecause mee thoughte my wordes beeinge but a straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong wherein lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part with my Lordes commendation, the wyly Fox, hadde be so well accustomed in courte with the crafte of flattry that he wente beyonde me to farre.

And that might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life studyeth and busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a solempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched together at that boarde agayne: when we should fall to our flattrye, I would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But Uncle, here beganne nowe the game, he that sate hygheste, and was to speake, was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour onely, but also somewhat learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. And it semed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. The manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it came to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al among us before, that we hadde not lefte hym one wye worde to speake after.

Anthony.Alas good manne! amonge so manye of you, some good felow shold have lente hym one.Vincent.It needed not as happe was Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatteryng he passed us all the mayny.Anthony.Why, what sayde he Cosyn?Vyncent.By our Ladye Uncle not one worde. But lyke as I trow Plinius telleth, that whan Appelles the Paynter in the table that he paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the makynge of the sorowefull countenances of the other noble menne of Greece that beehelde it, spente oute so much of his craft and hys cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King Agamemnon her father, whiche hee reserved for the laste, ... he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance—but to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte hym, holdyng his face in his handkercher. The like pageant in a maner plaide us there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a word, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace hadde uttered in that oracyon, he fette a long syghe with an Oh! from the bottome of hys breste, and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe bothe his handes and lift uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wepte.Anthony.Forsooth Cosyn, he plaide his parte verye properlye. But was that greate Prelates oracion Cosyn, any thyng prayseworthye?”Sir Thomas More’s Works, p. 1221, 1222.

[65]i.e.haughty.

[66]June 1513.

[67]100 crowns a day.

[68]“Heaven and happiness eternal is τὸ ξητόυμενον, that which is joined in issue, to which we are intituled, for which we plead, to which we have right; from whence by injury and treachery we have been ejected, and from whenceby fine forcewe are kept out: for this we doclamare, by the Clergy, our Counsel, in the view of God and Angels.”Montague’s Diatribe upon Selden’s History of Tithes, p. 130.W.

[69]He was consecrated bishop of Lincoln, March 26, A. D. 1514.Le Neve’s Fasti, p. 141.W.

[70]Bambridge was poisoned (according to Stow) by Rinaldo da Modena, his chaplain, who was incited to the act by revenge, having suffered the indignity of a blow from the archbishop.

[71]Dr. Robert Barnes preached a Sermon on the 24th of December, 1525, at St. Edward’s Church in Cambridge, from which Sermon certain Articles were drawn out upon which he was soon after called to make answer before the Cardinal. Barnes has left behind him a description of this examination. The sixth of these Articles was as follows. “I wyll never beleeve that one man may be, by the lawe of God, a Byshop of two or three cities, yea of an whole countrey, for it is contrarye to St. Paule, which sayth,I have left thee behynde, to set in every citye a byshop.”“I was brought afore my Lorde Cardinall into his Galary, (continues Dr. Barnes), and there hee reade all myne articles, tyll hee came to this, and there he stopped, and sayd, that this touched hym, and therefore hee asked me, if I thought it wronge, that one byshop shoulde have so many cityes underneath hym; unto whom I answered, that I could no farther go, than St. Paules texte, whych set in every cytye a byshop. Then asked hee mee, if I thought it now unright (seeing the ordinaunce of the Church) that one byshop should have so many cities. I aunswered that I knew none ordinaunce of the Church, as concerning this thinge, but St. Paules sayinge onelye. Nevertheles I did see a contrarye custom and practise in the world, but I know not the originall thereof. Then sayde hee, that in the Apostles tyme, there were dyvers cities, some seven myle, some six myle long, and over them was there set but one byshop, and of their suburbs also: so likewise now, a byshop hath but one citye to his cathedrall churche, and the country about is as suburbs unto it. Me thought this was farre fetched, but I durst not denye it.”Barnes’s Works, p. 210. A. D. 1573.W.

“I was brought afore my Lorde Cardinall into his Galary, (continues Dr. Barnes), and there hee reade all myne articles, tyll hee came to this, and there he stopped, and sayd, that this touched hym, and therefore hee asked me, if I thought it wronge, that one byshop shoulde have so many cityes underneath hym; unto whom I answered, that I could no farther go, than St. Paules texte, whych set in every cytye a byshop. Then asked hee mee, if I thought it now unright (seeing the ordinaunce of the Church) that one byshop should have so many cities. I aunswered that I knew none ordinaunce of the Church, as concerning this thinge, but St. Paules sayinge onelye. Nevertheles I did see a contrarye custom and practise in the world, but I know not the originall thereof. Then sayde hee, that in the Apostles tyme, there were dyvers cities, some seven myle, some six myle long, and over them was there set but one byshop, and of their suburbs also: so likewise now, a byshop hath but one citye to his cathedrall churche, and the country about is as suburbs unto it. Me thought this was farre fetched, but I durst not denye it.”Barnes’s Works, p. 210. A. D. 1573.W.

[72]This was not the first time in which this point of precedency had been contested. Edward III, in the sixth year of his reign, at a time when a similar debate was in agitation, having summoned a Parliament at York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the other Prelates of his Province, declined giving their attendance, that the Metropolitan of all England might not be obliged to submit his Cross to that of York, in the Province of the latter.Fox, p. 387, 388.W.

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