Note 160 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 3)

Dr. Wordsworth’s edition and the later manuscripts read: “which had bine a strange sight in him afore;” but this can hardly be right? The splendour of Cromwell’s subsequent fortunes, their tragical close, and the prominent figure he makes in the events of this reign, which are among the most important of modern history, gives this circumstantial account a great degree of interest. His father was a blacksmith at Putney, the son was first an agent to an English factory at Antwerp, then a trooper in the Duke of Bourbon’s army, and was present at the sacking of Rome. It appears that he assisted Mr. Russell (afterwards Earl of Bedford), in making his escape from the French at Bologna, and it is probably to this circumstance that he owed the friendly offices of that gentleman at a subsequent period. After passing some time in the counting-house of a Venetian merchant, he returned to England and studied the law. Wolsey, it appears, first met with him in France, and soon made him his principal agent in the dissolution of monasteries and the foundation of his colleges. It was a trust which he discharged with ability, and is said to have enriched himself; yet he here complains that he “never had any promotion at the cardinal’s hands to the increase of his living.” And he tells the cardinal in his troubles, that “the soliciting his cause hath been very chargeable to him, and he cannot sustain it any longer without other respect than he hath had heretofore.” He says, “I am a thousand pounds worse than I was when your troubles began.” And after announcing the king’s determination to dissolve the cardinal’s colleges, he says: “I intreat your grace to be content, and let your prince execute his pleasure.”

Cardinal Pole relates that he openly professed to him his Machiavelian principles; he had learned, he said, “that vice and virtue were but names, fit indeed to amuse the leisure of the learned in their colleges, but pernicious to the man who seeks to rise in the courts of princes. The great art of the politician was, in his judgment, to penetrate through the disguise which sovereigns are accustomed to throw over their real inclinations, and to devise the most specious expedients by which they may gratify their appetites without appearing to outrage morality or religion.” He shared largely in the public odium in which the cardinal was held, and Pole, who was then in London, says that the people loudly clamoured for his punishment.