Note (back) — Chapter IX

In spite of his remorseless blows and arbitrary temper, Henry was too shrewd and too great a man to despise the counsel of others, or think any worse of an adviser because his advice differed from his own. He loved to meet argument with argument, even when he might command. To the end of his days he valued a councillor who would honestly maintain the opposite of what the King desired. These councillors to whom he gave his confidence were never minions or servile flatterers. Henry had his Court favourites with whom he hunted and shot and diced; with whom he played—always for money—tennis, primero and bowls, and the more mysterious games of Pope July, Imperial and Shovelboard;[685] and to whom he threw many an acre of choice monastic land. But they never influenced his policy. No man was ever advanced to political power in Henry's reign, merely because he pandered to the King's vanity or to his vices. No one was a better judge of conduct in the case of others, or a sterner champion of moral probity, when it did not conflict with his own desires or conscience. In 1528 Anne Boleyn and her friends were anxious to make a relative abbess of Wilton.[686] But she had been notoriously unchaste. "Wherefore," wrote Henry to Anne herself, "I would not, for all the gold in the world, cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour; nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so distain mine honour or conscience." He objected, on similar grounds, to the prioress whom Wolsey wished to nominate; the Cardinal neglected Henry's wishes, and thereby called down upon himself a rebuke remarkable for dignity and delicacy. "The great affection and love I bear you," wrote the King, "causeth me, using the doctrine of my Master, saying Quem diligo, castigo, thus plainly, as ensueth, to break to you my mind.... Methink it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant, when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and judgment (specially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest), to elect and choose a person which was by him defended (forbidden). And yet another thing, which much displeaseth me more,—that is, to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my determinate mind in that behalf." Then, after showing how empty were Wolsey's excuses, he continues: "Ah! my Lord, it is a double offence, both to do ill and colour it too; but with men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more hateth it." He then proceeds to warn the Cardinal against sinister reports with regard to his methods of raising money for his college at Oxford. "They say the college is a cloak for all mischief. I perceive by your letter that you have received money of the exempts for having their old visitors. If your legacy (legatine authority) is a cloak apud homines, it is not apud Deum. I doubt not, therefore, you will desist." Wolsey had used his legatine authority to extort money from monasteries as the price of their immunity from his visitatorial powers. The monasteries, too, had strenuously opposed the late Amicable Loan to the King; by Wolsey's means they had been released from that obligation; and Henry strongly suspected that they had purchased their exemption from relieving his necessities by lavish contributions to the Cardinal's colleges. "I pray you, my Lord," he concludes, "think not that it is upon any displeasure that I write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge afore God, being in the room that I am in; and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you." Henry possessed in the highest degree not a few of the best of kingly attributes. His words are not the words of a hypocrite without conscience, devoid of the fear of God and man. For all the strange and violent things that he did, he obtained the sanction of his conscience, but his imperious egotism made conscience his humble slave, and blinded to his own sins a judgment so keen to detect and chastise the failings of others.