ndoned and that of Scotland not even undertaken.

[Sidenote: Wolsey, c. 1475-1530]

The gratification of the national vanity redounded the profit not only
of Henry but of his minister, {280} Thomas Wolsey. A poor man, like
the other tools of the Tudor despot, he rose rapidly in church and
state partly by solid gifts of statesmanship, partly by baser arts. By
May, 1515, Erasmus described him as all-powerful with the king and as
bearing the main burden of public affairs on his shoulders, and fifteen
years later Luther spoke of him as "the demigod of England, or rather
of Europe." His position at home he owed to his ability to curry favor
with the king by shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote:
May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of
standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many
people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that
"it was a pity so noble a _buck_ should have been slain by such a
hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that
delighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice that
accumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for his
law in regard to enclosures, and the poor for not having that law
enforced, he recked little of aught, knowing himself secure under the
royal shield.

To make his sovereign abroad as great as at home, he took advantage of
the nice balance of power existing on the Continent. "Nothing pleases
him more than to be called the arbiter of Christendom," wrote
Giustiniani, and such, in fact, he very nearly was. His diplomatic
gifts were displayed with immense show during the summer of 1520, when
Henry met both Francis and Charles V, and promised each secretly to
support him against his rival. The camp where the royalties of France
and England met, near Guines, amid scenes of pageantry and chivalry so
resplendent as to give it the name of The Field of Cloth of Gold, saw
an alliance cemented by oath, only to be followed by a solemn
engagement between Henry and Charles, {281} repugnant in every
particular to that with France. When war actually broke out between
the two, England preferred to throw her weight against France, thereby
almost helping Charles to the throne of universal empire and raising up
for herself an enemy to menace her safety in many a crisis to come. In
the end, then, Wolsey's perfidious policy failed; and his personal
ambition for the pap