Note (back) — Chapter IX

He prepared for his installation at York on 7th November, 1530; on the 4th he was arrested for treason. His Italian physician, Agostini, had betrayed him; he was accused of having asked Francis I. to intercede with Henry on his behalf, which was true;[698] and he seems also to have sought the mediation of Charles V. But Agostini further declared that Wolsey had written to Clement, urging him to excommunicate Henry and raise an insurrection, by which the Cardinal might recover his power.[699] By Pontefract, Doncaster, Nottingham, with feeble steps and slow, the once-proud prelate, broken in spirit and shattered in health, returned to meet his doom. His gaol was to be the cell in the Tower, which had served for the Duke of Buckingham.[700] But a kindlier fate than a traitor's death was in store. "I am come," he said to the monks of Leicester Abbey, "I am come to leave my bones among you." He died there at eight o'clock on St. Andrew's morning, and there, on the following day, he was simply and quietly buried. "If," he exclaimed in his last hour, "I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs." That cry, wrung from Wolsey, echoed throughout the Tudor times.[701] Men paid le nouveau Messie a devotion they owed to the old; they rendered unto Cæsar the things that were God's. They reaped their reward in riches and pomp and power, but they won no peace of mind. The favour of princes is fickle, and "the wrath of the King is death". So thought Wolsey and Warham and Norfolk. "Is that all?" said More, with prophetic soul, to Norfolk; "then in good faith between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you shall die to-morrow."[702]