their affections. The exuberant loyalty of
1509 had been turned into the wintry discontent of 1527. England had
been raised to a high place in the councils of Europe by 1521, but her
fall was quite as rapid, and in 1525 she counted for less than she had
done in 1513. At home the results were equally barren; the English
hold on Ireland was said, in 1528, to be weaker than it had been since
the conquest;[691] and the English statute-book between 1509 and 1529
may be searched in vain for an act of importance, while the
statute-book between 1529 and 1547 contains a list of acts which have
never been equalled for their supreme importance in the subsequent
history of England.

[Footnote 687: _L. and P._, iv., 5983; _cf._ iv.,
3992, where Henry has an interview (March, 1528)
with a Scots ambassador and tells no one about it.]

[Footnote 688: _Ibid._, iv., 4649.]

[Footnote 689: Brewer, _Ibid._, iv., Introd., p.
dcxxii.]

[Footnote 690: _L. and P._, iv., 5209. One
Hochstetter was imported from Germany in connection
with "the gold mines that the King was seeking for"
(Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 25th January, 1529).]

[Footnote 691: _Ibid._, iv., 4933.]

Wolsey's policy was, indeed, a brilliant fiasco; with a pre-eminent
genius for diplomacy, he thought he could make England, by diplomacy
alone, arbiter of Europe. Its position in 1521 was artificial; it had
not the means to support a grandeur which was only built on the wealth
left by Henry VII. and on Wolsey's skill. England owed her advance (p. 246)
in repute to the fact that Wolsey made her the paymaster of Europe.
"The reputation of England for wealth," said an English diplomatist in
1522, "is a great cause of the esteem in which it is held."[692] But,
by 1523, that wealth had failed; Parliament refused to levy more
taxes, and Wolsey's pretensions collapsed like a pack of cards. He
played no part in the peace of Cambrai, which settled for the time the
conditions of Europe. When rumours of the clandestine negotiations
between France and Spain reached England, Wolsey staked his head to
the King that they were pure invention.[693] He could not believe that
peace was possible, unless it were made by him. But the rumours were
true, and Henry exacted the penalty. The posi