cardinal is his procuring the legatine power, which, however, as it was
certainly done with the king's consent and permission, could be nowise
criminal. Many of the other articles also regard the mere exercise of
that power. Some articles impute to him, as crimes, particular actions
which were natural or unavoidable to any man that was prime minister
with so unlimited an authority; such as receiving first all letters from
the king's ministers abroad, receiving first all visits from foreign
ministers, desiring that all applications should be made through him. He
was also accused of naming himself with the king, as if he had been his
fellow--"the king and I." It is reported that sometimes he even put
his own name before the king's--"ego et rex meus." But this mode of
expression is justified by the Latin idiom. It is remarkable, that
his whispering in the king's ear, knowing himself to be affected with
venereal distempers, is an article against him. Many of the charges are
general, and incapable of proof. Lord Herbert goes so far as to affirm,
that no man ever fell from so high a station who had so few real crimes
objected to him. This opinion is perhaps a little too favorable to the
cardinal. Yet the refutation of the articles by Cromwell, and their
being rejected by a house of commons, even in this arbitrary reign,
is almost a demonstration of Wolsey's innocence. Henry was, no
doubt, entirely bent on his destruction, when, on his failure by
a parliamentary impeachment, he attacked him upon the statute of
provisors, which afforded him so little just hold on that minister. For
that this indictment was subsequent to the attack in parliament, appears
by Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, and Stowe, (p. 551,) and more certainly
by the very articles of impeachment themselves. Parliamentary History,
vol. iii. p. 42, article 7. Coke's Inst. part iv. fol. 89.]

[Footnote 7: NOTE G, p. 183. Even judging of this question by the
Scripture, to which the appeal was every moment made, the arguments for
the king's cause appear but lame and imperfect. Marriage in the degree
of affinity which had place between Henry and Catharine, is, indeed,
prohibited in Leviticus; but it is natural to interpret that prohibition
as a part of the Jewish ceremonial or municipal law; and though it is
there said, in the conclusion, that the Gentile nations, by violating
those degrees of consanguinity, had incurred the divine displeasure;
the extension of this m