Note 141 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 2)

“In a Manuscript Life of Sir Thomas More, written not many years after Longland’s death, this account is given. ‘I have heard Dr. Draycot, that was his (Longland’s) chaplain and chancellor, say, that he once told the bishop what rumour ran upon him in that matter; and desired to know of him the very truth. Who answered, that in very deed he did not break the matter after that sort, as is said: but the king brake the matter to him first; and never left urging him until he had won him to give his consent. Of which his doings he did forethink himself, and repented afterward.’ MSS. Coll. Eman. Cantab.” Baker’s Notes on Burnet’s Hist. of the Reformation: in Burnet, Vol. iii. p. 400, Appendix. The same Life is among the MSS. in the Lambeth Library, No. 827, (see fol. 12), and, I have reason to think, was composed about the year 1556, and by Nicolas Harpsfield. From these concurrent testimonies it should appear, that the charge which has been often urged against Wolsey, that it was through his intrigues that Longland first suggested his scruples to the king, is unfounded. W.

Wolsey was at the time loudly proclaimed as the instigator of the divorce, and though he denied it upon some occasions, he admitted it on others; but Cardinal Pole asserts that it was first suggested by certain divines whom Anne Boleyn sent to him for that purpose. It is remarkable that he says this when writing to the king, and would surely not have ventured to say so if he had not had good grounds for the assertion.