with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty
depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official
class, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry
VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a class, dependent
entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the noble
families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided
the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English
constitutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the
strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the nobles desiring to
maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly
exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry
VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great
extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile
adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated
his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never
become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King
most desired distinction.

Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine's kin,
and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of
Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely
young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis
XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine's nephew,
young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry's bosom friend,
Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political
game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any
case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French
connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in
the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her
father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she
was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and
doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to
disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with
child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with
her father's ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with
Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the
Catholic at las