ualified, above all men
then living, by a combination of talent, honesty, and arrogance, to open
questions which could not again be closed when they had escaped the grasp
of their originator. Under Wolsey's influence Henry made war with Louis of
France, in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with Luther, and
persecuted the English protestants. But Wolsey could not blind himself to
the true condition of the church. He was too wise to be deceived with
outward prosperity; he knew well that there lay before it, in Europe and at
home, the alternative of ruin or amendment; and therefore he familiarised
Henry with the sense that a reformation was inevitable, and dreaming that
it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a
wiser spirit, he himself fell first victim of a convulsion which he had
assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay.

His intended measures were approaching maturity, when all Europe was
startled by the news that Rome had been stormed by the Imperial army, that
the pope was imprisoned, the churches pillaged, the cardinals insulted, and
all holiest things polluted and profaned. A spectator, judging only by
outward symptoms, would have seen at that strange crisis in Charles V. the
worst patron of heresy, and the most dangerous enemy of the Holy See; while
the indignation with which the news of these outrages was received at the
English court, would have taught him to look on Henry as the one sovereign
in Europe on whom that See might calculate most surely for support in its
hour of danger. If he could have pierced below the surface, he would have
found that the pope's best friend was the prince who held him prisoner;
that Henry was but doubtfully acquiescing in the policy of an unpopular
minister; and that the English nation would have looked on with stoical
resignation if pope and papacy had been wrecked together. They were not
inclined to heresy; but the ecclesiastical system was not the catholic
faith; and this system, ruined by prosperity, was fast pressing its
excesses to the extreme limit, beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey
talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the mean time, the
persons to be reformed showed no fear that it would come at all. The
monasteries grew worse and worse. The people were taught only what they
could teach themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive.
Pluralities multiplied, and non-residence and