Note (return) — LEICESTER ABBEY.—DEATH OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.

Leicester Abbey was rendered famous as being the last residence of the unhappy Wolsey; "within its walls," says Gilpin, "was once exhibited a scene more humiliating to human ambition, and more instructive to human grandeur than almost any which history hath produced. Here the fallen pride of Wolsey retreated from the insults of the world, all his visions of ambition were now gone; his pomp and pageantry and crowded levees! On this spot he told the listening monks, the sole attendants of his dying hour, as they stood around his pallet, that he was come to lay his bones among them, and gave a pathetic testimony to the truth and joys of religion, which preaches beyond a thousand lectures."2